You've gotta bee kidding

The anointed family members met at Paddy's Pad at the prescribed time with the requisite equipment. Scrapers. Sanders. Ladders. Trestles. Primer. Paint brushes. Miscellaneous tools. Sunscreen.

And food.

"O stop, stop," cried the Mole in ecstacies: "This is too much!"

"Do you really think so?" enquired the Rat seriously. "It's only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me that I'm a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!"
 

Paddy or Phil? You be the judge.

There were no mean beasts on our expedition. We had enough in the way of supplies to muddle through this working bee and several others. Much hilarity ensued as we unloaded all our chilly bins into the valiant fridge.
Next morning was balmy and pleasant, and some of us were up very early. Others eventually trickled through, and breakfast was a do-it-yourself affair. Kay and Edwina took turns with the hay-making on the front lawn while the others set up trestles and whatnot. Then, with Phil briefing the team, and leading by example, we spent the day scraping, sanding, and priming weather boards. I say "we" but some did more than others. Kay, Claudia and I found ourselves on an essential excursion to Cheviot for extra equipment, and later Edwina and I had a very successful expedition to the Macintosh-Harding lockup. All this time, Phil and Ian were the stand-out workers du jour, which was no mean feat because most of the day we were being gently pot-roasted at about 30 degrees.



Inspecting the east wall

 Keys were a major theme of the weekend; Paddy's enormous bunch always involves many irritating minutes standing in front of locks, trying different keys and then losing track of which ones have been tried already. I swear there are 30 keys all tied together. I suspect that at least half of the padlocks they unlock have been lost long since...

To elaborate on the visit to Mac's shed, I need to explain that Ed had some keys, but she wasn't sure if they were the right ones. Of course, the padlock was stiff, so even when we had the right key in it, a great deal of persistence and teamwork was needed to ease the thingy out of the whatsit - especially given that we didn't know whether it was the right key. It was a great triumph to get inside.

Look at that smooth greensward!

Then, what treats in store! I'm sure the shed really was very neat pre-earthquake... But on this day it was about 100 degrees and full of cobwebs and (sorry Ed), chaos. The big frustration for Ed was that she (or someone) had lost the keys to the car parked inside. This had been the source of much speculation and, dare I mention it, marital friction. We peered through the car windows looking frustratedly at suitcases of belongings that couldn't be reached. I went through every key on Paddy's bunch in the hope that one of them would open the car, but no luck. Sooo, we gave up on the car, liberated a few priceless items from the shed and were about to leave when, glory of glories, Ed spotted the car keys on a shelf by the door. (This find was a mixture of unknown quantities of intuition, logic, and luck. The existentialist in me wonders about the secret life of missing objects - sitting waiting to be picked up for two whole years, and oblivious to our joy.) Anyway, there was much delight as Ed was able to OPEN the car and GET STUFF OUT. Happy reunions ensued.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, good progress was being made. We all laboured on until it was time to down tools. The evening was one of those you look back on with incredulity - great food, perfect weather, and no arguments.

A perfect evening

The next day, the weather came from the east in that coastal way that is very hard to like. Fog and drizzle set in with single-minded determination. Ian and Phil continued to chip away at the last, east-facing wall - it needed extra work because the paint had cracked and hardened - while the mizzle drifted sideways very wetly. The rest of us were of course occupied with difficult and tedious indoor tasks such as drinking coffee and hoovering up flies.

So, to summarise for those who weren't there (lest we forget them), we had a successful bee. Thanks to all who attended and thanks also in advance to those who will come after us to finish the prepping and actually paint. We're legends!

Million dollar view, with dead pine

More pics here...

The truth about Book-Book

I made a discovery on Sunday, at the annual street party. I'm not talking about the public revelations of my inability to throw gumboots the furtherest or hammer nails in the fastest or sing melodiously; I'm talking about the provenance of the dreaded Book-Book.

It transpires that Book-Book's erstwhile owner is my neighbour from up the hill, who attended the party and was overheard (by me) talking fowlly. Naturally I leapt into the conversation (a shameless eavesdropper, me), explained my interest, listed the damage inflicted by this bird, and finally withdrew with the following information:

• She bought several hens a few years ago.
• Most were pure white, but there was a white one with black speckles (Book-Book answers to this description).
• The speckly one absconded almost immediately and hasn't been seen in her hen-house since.

When I asked this neighbour her name, she prevaricated a little, and finally said "It's, it's,... Sue". She was clearly lying through her teeth. My response was delivered with menace, as you would expect: "How, appropriate". She blenched.

I'm not sure how to proceed. However I do know exactly where "Sue" lives.... I think she owes me a brace of tomato plants, several lettuces, and a brand new and tender tarragon, less one clutch of fresh eggs.

This neighbour is Kathleen, NOT "Sue"

Meanwhile Meredith and Tim have offered Book-Book a home at their Dunsandel estate; the cage arrives here in late January and all we need then is A Plan.

Not another blogging year

Haven't written much this year. I blame the iPhone - there's always a puzzle to do instead. Terrible waste of time.

2010 has been 'the year of British guests' at our house. In late Feb aunty Jean arrived from Portsmouth and we set off, sans kids, for adventures on the West Coast and down South. It was my first visit to Milford, and we had huge fun showing Newzild off to Jean. (Also, we learnt lots and lots about Ian's mum's mum, which was dead interesting, and explains a lot.) Such a pity that George took such very full advantage of our absence. Hmmm. Anyway, you can view photos of the expedition here.

March saw Cressida's friend Sian arrive for 2 nights and stay a week. The poor lass was dragged hither and thither and forced to labour quite hard - although actually I think the challenge lies in stopping her. She even went fishing with Paddy in the Fizzy Fuzz II.

Then, in May, Matthew Ellison was touring the Antipodes and while in ChCh was deprived of the sanctuary of an hotel; instead, we housed and fed him. You'd have to ask him whether we entertained him - but he was a great guest and also gave some members of the local TCANZ branch a really, seriously good intro to e-learning tools. (Matthew followed up later in the year with some Captivate webinars which were a hugh benefit for those TCANZ members who participated.) Ian and I took him to Arthur's Pass (normally only somewhere we drive through, or stop at to pee) and clambered up for miles and miles to a waterfall where curiously we all had mobile coverage. Brilliant!

My niece Cressida, her husband Jon, and my great-nephew James were the final Brits in November. What a delightful lot they are. By way of example, when James, aged three, desires peace, he returns to the sanctuary (that word again!) of his bedroom, clambers (that word again!) onto his bed, and reads. No mobile coverage required - yet. For some reason I didn't take photos of the lads but here's a corker of Cressa with Mum, James and Luke.

We also had Dutch cuzzies Janet, Jim, and Annelies at the bach at Easter with Helen (Cooper that is, not Janet's sis Helen) and Fen/Lucas/Ruby. Happy, happy times! We love them all so much but have no powers to make the Dutchies stay. Grr. Am working on it. Am seeking krypton, so that the next attempt will do more than just prolong their holiday (the volcano in Iceland, while reasonably effective, only produced a short-term result).

In September Meredith and I had the TCANZ conference in Welly which was a blast. We met old friends and new. One of us, who will remain nameless, ponced around being a first-time MC, and wasn't a complete disgrace.


Then Megan joined us for the culmination of our exciting Wellington Expedition - at the Plain English awards ceremony at Parliament - where our Meredith won Best Plain English Technical Communicator of 2010. She looked very glamorous and beautiful and happy. See the pics here. We celebrated afterwards at the Green Parrot (the only restaurant open in Welly at midnight) and then returned to our hotel, where I took some frivolous snaps before we all crashed, exhausted....

...only for me to be woken at 4:35 am by an Earthquake! Except that, apart from bouncing out of bed and saying "Earthquake!" I wasn't quite sure, and by 4:37 I was back in bed wondering whether I'd imagined it. But then, at 4:39 maybe, my brother Phil texted me to see whether I was all right, and soon after, Meredith's phone rang, with Tim at the other end reporting the massive earthquake that we'd just missed. Relatives in Christchurch thought it was a Wellington earthquake and had to be reassured that we were absolutely fine.


 Then we had the strangest day, really. We couldn't fly home because Christchurch airport was closed. It opened later on in the day, and Megan, who was on a later flight, managed to get home. But Meredith and I were turned away from our 10:00 am flight and told we wouldn't be able to get home until Monday. So we rented a car and ended up driving around Porirua and Plimmerton, trying to get news of home and feeling very discombobulated. Why Porirua? I hear you ask. Well... Ian and George had already planned to spend the night at Whitby with our friends Shelley and Fred - you may remember from an earlier post that they were bringing Sweetwater south - this event coincided with the earthquake weekend. So in the end we all met up at Fred and Shelley's place - an unplanned stopover for Mega and me but we had a lovely evening and got lots of cuddles with baby Angus.

We discovered later that someone had written a press release about Meredith's win, but of course with the quake happening so soon afterwards, the item sank without trace!

By this time you may be counting on your fingers and realising that one member of our family has not been mentioned. Claudia had remained in Christchurch while the rest of us were having adventures up north. I wish to make it very clear that I had invited her to the Plain English Awards, but she had declined because she didn't want to miss any school. How either of us can look more virtuous I really don't know! Luckily, our dear pal Robyn was holding the fort with Claudia so she wasn't home alone. She and Robyn did a wonderful job of clearing up, saving water, checking rellies and neighbours and so on. Claudia made Nigel drive her to Streamliners so that she could check it was OK. Kaitiakitanga, she reckoned.

Fuelling up in Blenheim

SO anyway the rest of us all came home on the ferry the next day, bringing the enormous pontoon boat with us. There were lots of soldiers on the ferry, coming to help out in Christchurch. We were desperate to get home and see everyone and everything - it all seemed very surreal. The following day Claudia and I drove around and took some pictures, largely to reassure relatives overseas that it wasn't all doom and gloom - hence the picture of St Mike's looking unharmed. You can see those pics here.

Ian spent the next few weeks having the pontoon boat repaired. We named her Piwakawaka in honour of her two round pontoons - if you don't get the awful puns, just enjoy the name, which of course means fantail. Claudia designed the artwork which now adorns her side. We have already had several great days out on her and we're looking forward to loads of fun on our four-week break which starts next weekend!

September continued to be action-packed right until the very last day. In addition to conferences, awards, and earthquakes, in mid-Sept I managed a "sustained loss of traction" on the Kaniere road by hitting the aftermath of a very localised hailstorm, and banged into the side of the road. This happened when I was over there by myself for work, and led to a long lonely weekend while I waited for repairs to the Harrier. But much worse was to follow. On the last day of this excessively dramatic month, our friend Billy was cycling home when he was hit by a very large truck. It put an end to both of his jobs for the year - he is still recovering from the broken leg and skin grafts.

Ian and I did a recap of our year the other day, reflecting on all that we'd achieved/survived (including at work, which I've largely spared you in this account), and decided that we'd never have planned such a crazy year - but it all just happened anyway. The only sensible response is to set the Out of Office message and bugger off for a few weeks.

Happy Christmas to all!