I've just been away to my old home town of Wellington. I miss that city and in a way, visiting there is like going home.
I had to go to Paraparaumu to visit my sister who has moved into a new house a few months ago. She's been living on her own for a few years since my mother died and basically wasn't handling things - house maintenance, day to day care etc so we as a family helped her to sell the old family house and buy a tidier and easier to handle cottage in a kind of gated community. My other sister and I helped this sister with the move a while ago and since then I've been worrying how she might be handling things hence my visit. I didn't know what to expect since she had been living in a mess at the old, and bigger house. I was pleasantly relieved to see that she has the cottage sorted and is looking and acting much better than before. I put most of this down to the shift.
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I flew to Wellington on Tuesday afternoon and had booked an Airbnb in Oriental Bay for the night planning to take the train to Paraparaumu the next morning.
Richard (of RBB) met me at the airport and drove me to my accommodation after which we strolled down to Courtenay Place for a couple of glasses of wine.
Richard must have been in a hurry to get to the airport or he was in a state of excitement to meet me because he still had his slippers on - bless him.
We had, as I said a couple of glasses of chardonnay - as much wine as I ever feel like drinking nowadays and wandered back to Oriental Bay. Richard had to drink a decent Hawkes Bay and a Martinborough chardonnay as The Hummingbird wine bar didn't stock cleanskins. His taste buds were very thankful. We had a little chat about things old guys chat about - basically nothing as anything serious gets forgotten 20 seconds later although the subject of Robert's religion did come up. We toasted 'good riddance' to that and moved on. I remember once before sharing a couple of glasses of chardonnay with Richard in a wine bar in Wellington. This was in a bar on the corner of Boulcott and Willis streets and was to turn out to be a sad time in Richard's life. See: THE WINE GUY
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On the way back we walked past Chaffers marina and I decided to cheer Richard up by telling him of my brother's death by drowning there and pointing out the spots where he was thought to have gone in and the spot where his body was definitely recovered. The Old Guy likes a good story.
I'm sure that I wrote a post on this a few years ago but might have deleted it.
We walked past the newly sanded Oriental Bay beach and pretended not to notice the nubile young women (un)dressed in their bikinis. "It wasn't like this when I lived in Oriental Bay in the 1970s" I thought. It must be global warming. In a coffee bar Richard and I lamented the fact that when we were in our early 20s, young women didn't lay about in bikinis and we didn't have social media hook-up sites like Tinder to meet women. We looked at each other and laughed and agreed that we'd have still managed to fuck it all up.
Old friends - getting older but still good company. My current health situation demands that I have a 'nap' in the afternoon though and so while Richard battled the motorway traffic home I went back to my digs and had a snooze.
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After visiting my sister I travelled back to Wellington (free on the train using my Super Gold Card) and had some time in hand before getting to the airport (free on the airport bus using my Super Gold Card) I wandered up New Zealand's best street. Cuba Street. I wish that every city and town in New Zealand had a Cuba street. It's magic. It always has been and I'm so pleased to see that it still is. I can see why Richard loves it. (Robert wouldn't as there is too much sin going on there).
I made it to the airport with body and soul intact and had the not unusual wait because of a plane delay arriving home to the Auckland apartment tired but happy.
The Old Girl and I met up with some friends for breakfast and drove home, to the real and current home later in the morning.
3 comments:
Good that you are home, special to catch up.
Yep, you got it Robert.
We all can't meet your standard of erudition with our blog posts.
Right, this decides it.
I thought about getting Tony and Mike involved in blogging some time ago but they both decried it suggesting that they were busy doing serious work and that this was just Richard's latest silly thing.
Well, guess what? Mike is retired now and Tony is on sick leave so those two old jokers (not as old as Richard and me though) need to front up to reality. Blogging is a good way of keeping your mind alive and to keep in contact with other silly old buggers that you know or have met in the past.
Yes, yes, I know, it does mean that you'll have to suffer from the religious 'nutterisms' from the likes of Robert but that's just part of the game.
It's time now for me (and Richard - but he'll have to ditch the slippers and put real shoes on to be taken seriously) to recruit some new members.
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