Monday 3 October 2016

AWAY FROM HOME

I arrived back to the 'farm' this morning, flying in from Auckland.

I've been away for a week - the longest that I've been away for ages.

Last Tuesday I went to Auckland as I had a work meeting on Wednesday. The Old Girl and I took the bus down, she delaying her usual Sunday evening or Monday morning trip to coincide with me. Nice that. When we arrived she headed off to work and I for a haircut and some shopping meeting up again alter for tea (not dinner) at our favourite Mezze.



After that a reasonably early night home where I watched TV ( a treat for me as we don't have TV up north) where I watched The Real Housewives of Auckland - much to the Old Girl's disgust as she pointedly went to bed when it came on.

On Wednesday I was up early (for me) after The Old Girl had gone to work to prepare for a 10AM meeting which went OK. In the afternoon I caught up on correspondence, had a nap and made my way later to Newmarket to meet up with The Old Girl for a film at Rialto. The film was 'Our Kind of Traitor' which was damned good and I recommend it especially if you like John Le Carre stuff. After that we rowed about where to eat before settling on where we always eat in Newmarket at an excellent Spanish theme tapas-type restaurant - small plates and a glass of wine.

On Thursday I worked from the apartment (correspondence, arranging labels and orders) and met up with The Old Girl at a whisky shop in town where her social club had arranged a special tasting.  This was pretty good as we like whiskies and we tried some pretty good examples of the stuff there presented by an enthusiastic whiskyphile.

On Friday I worked again from the apartment in the morning until the Old Girl came home from work in the afternoon and we headed off the the airport on route to Wellington. We were off to WOW - The World of Wearable Art show that evening. I must admit that I had to be dragged to this, kicking and screaming but it was OK. The Old Girl said that it lacked the wow-factor of previous years. I think that this will be my first and last WOW.



On Saturday we filled the day with a visit to Te Papa  and the excellent Gallipoli exhibition:



The Sister Corita exhibition at the City Gallery:




And, at the same gallery the Francis Uprichard (yes, that's her name) exhibition:




Before going to the Dominion Museum and the outstanding WW1 exhibition where I managed to see my great uncle's (on my father's side) name on the list of fallen amongst the Gallipoli dead. He died two days before evacuation!




I've seen my great uncle's name (on my mother's side) on the list at the Auckland museum.




I knew that we wouldn't get a chance to get out to Nuova Lazio to see Richard and Shelley but we stayed in an Air B & B in Wilton next to the Italian Embassy:



I knocked on the door to give them Richard's greetings:

"Ciao. Saluti fro Richard che dice Vai a farti fottere"

I don't think they were very appreciative.




2 comments:

Richard (of RBB) said...

Uprichard? Who has a name like that? She should be a gay man, not a woman. Though I could be wrong (to steal a line from Robert).

Richard (of RBB) said...

I taught that naughty phrase to my nephew and he said it to an Italian in a bar. Nearly got punched. You be careful using that language.