This blogging whilst lying in bed on a weekend morning is obviously becoming a habit. Kim Hill on the radio, cat curled up at our feet and Eric is finishing a novel. I read it and recommended he do so (John Katzenbach’s The Analyst). He is at the prologue and I have just told him who the perpetrators are thinking that was revealed in the last chapter – it wasn’t!! Opps.
Unusually, it’s raining. We have had some lovely weather this last few weeks and the Waikato has settled into its very foggy mornings typical of autumn and winters. Fortunately this has been followed by lots of sun and temps are still up to 200C. I spent some of Anzac Day (Wednesday) planting seedlings in the veg plot so am pleased with the rain.
Gosh what a busy week it has been. I haven’t been in for one evening. Monday teaching in Hamilton (more on that to come), Tuesday Rotary (ditto), Wednesday more teaching, Thursday band and Friday a community debate.
Kim (my Waikato DIF colleague) and I have been asked to do some teaching with community pharmacists and their staff on influenza so that they promote it in their work. We have organised a programme and are doing 8 sessions around the region. At the first session on Monday evening we were warned that they were not a lively bunch and not to expect many questions. Well, that wasn’t true. They were great, really enthusiastic and they did ask lots of questions. The evaluations were brilliant and we left really buzzing. I had a discussion with the chairperson of the National Influenza Strategy Group about this and she asked me to write up an evaluation). We have also formally requested that resources be developed for this group and a national training be rolled out. I really hope this makes a difference to the immunisation rates. It took a patient in ICU when I worked there in 2002 to open my eyes to how serious this disease is. Seeing a 34 year old healthy mother nearly die of influenza, a disease than can be prevented easily by immunisation, was a serious wake up call. I have been vaccinated every year since, as are E, H and A. Are you?
I may have mentioned a while ago that I did a talk at Rotary and it was suggested that Eric and I consider joining. We decided to give it a go and have been to a couple of meetings. The work they do is so worthwhile that you have to ignore the irritating ways of some things about the organisation. The meetings are dominated by older men and I think we will bring the average age down significantly but if some young people don’t join then no other ones will, will they. There are a couple of younger members so we are not the only ones. Problem is that both working full time we are not available for a lot of the work they do but I guess they will make allowances for that. We will see how it goes.
Anzac Day is a national holiday in Auz and NZ. Alice did a sleep over the night before with the Guides so she could do a dawn parade on the day. Their remembrance services start at dawn, usually with a 9am one and other events through the day. Alice, who was always very enthusiastic about Remembrance Sunday was quite downbeat about the dawn parade. We still do our remembering in November as Cambridge has celebrations over that whole weekend and we attend the cenotaph service there. The Guides had trip to Hamilton to go bowling in the afternoon so we went as a family to that.
Band reconvened for the first time since camp on Thursday. Our conductor was away and so I roped Clare Hitchcock (a longstanding and inspiring music teacher in Matamata, the one who has agreed to teach me piano) into conducting for the evening. The guys really enjoyed catching up with each other. I am not sure how it is in the UK now but kiwi kids love to hug, actually I think all kiwis love to hug, especially the Maori. It is so nice to see my children comfortable with expressing themselves physically and shedding some of that British reserve their father exhibits!
Matamata is developing a new tradition (I that a contradiction in terms?) of an annual fund raising community debate organised by the staff at the medical centre. We were unable to get to lat years first one but managed the one last night. It was such a hoot. Harriette went but found herself the only child (sorry Harriette ‘young person’ she definitely is not a child anymore) so felt a bit conspicuous. They had a few performances from Matamata college musicians, including 2 incredibly talented Maori boys playing guitar. They then had 2 guys up from Wellington doing theatre sports (refer to the band camp entry if you don’t know what I am talking about). I am rapidly becoming a convert to theatre sports. Both times I have experienced them I have been in hysterics. Alice didn’t come so we dropped her at R+R’s where she is sleeping over as she wanted to go to netball with Sarah and Katherine this morning. (H and A are not doing netball this year as they will miss so much because of our UK trip). The Chiefs were playing a crucial match in the Super 14 so we called in on R+R on the way home to watch the second half. Chiefs won so are hanging in there after an appalling start in the competition.
Daddy’s 70th birthday is on 3rd May and he wants to do something at their house next Saturday similar to what we did for Mom last November. Several people won’t be able to come (eg Ann and Mike have gone back to the UK etc) so we will do what we can. Unfortunately Mom is not well at the moment and her sister in the UK has just died so things are a bit down there at the moment but hopefully that will turn around before Thursday. Several of Daddy’s male relatives died in their 70th year so I think he will be quite relieved to get to this birthday!!!
Alice came home from school yesterday with ‘a bone to pick’ with me. She had received a commitment award for ‘commitment to achievement in all areas of school life’ (I think) and apparently parents are told so they can be at the school for this. The moms of the other 2 recipients were there but not us. Poor Alice. But we had not been told. The others got awards for commitment to other things and Alice was told that her award was highly prestigious. I will go and take a photo of her picture on the board in school as I couldn’t be there to take her photo on the day.
H. is plodding on though we are a bit disappointed with her attitude to school. She continues to achieve at a high level but does no work to get there. Her attitude is ‘I get excellence in everything so that should be good enough’. It is difficult to get through to her that she should be going the extra mile despite her results. Still nagging won’t help so we try not to do that. I am planning to go in and see her GATE co-ordinator this week if I can.
We have topped up our mortgage and plan to do some work on the house, another bedroom, a workshop for Eric, the drive and a retaining wall. Poor Eric is going to be busy drawing up plans etc over the coming weeks. Naturally I want everything done yesterday!
Oh I suppose I’d better get up. Walking then a major supermarket shop are on the agenda today. I haven’t been in a supermarket for weeks and I have a list as long as your arm. I may just sneak in a trip to the garden centre and tidy up my hanging baskets for the winter as I don’t think I will be able to get into the veg plot.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
A Lazy Sunday in April (Raglan and NP)
Sunday morning and lying in bed listening to Chris Laidlaw’s Sunday programme. No need to rush out and walk as it is definitely cooler these days and I don’t have to dash out before it gets too warm. The down side of that is the mornings are darker now. Last year I just stopped walking in the winter but I want to try and keep it going this time round, especially as a month of the winter will be in the UK. It has is getting very hard though to drag myself out of a warm bed on a cool dark morning! I am starting to run a bit but the distances I am doing are so pathetic compared to a ‘normal’ sized/fitness person. I increase the distance by 10m each time so the distance is increasing slowly. My efforts look paltry compared to my, long time co-couch potato, friend Elly who has walked the great Wall of China and is planning to climb Kilamanjaro this year, and runs miles in her fitness programme now. Still at least I’m trying. Shame the weight is coming off as fast as I was hoping though.
A few weeks ago it looked as if winter had hit us overnight, bypassing autumn altogether. We then had a bit of an Indian summer but this week has been definitely cooler (not cold) with lots of wind and rain. Balloons over the Waikato, a week long balloon festival, has been a write-off but the final day was moved from yesterday to today and looks like that will be OK. Today there are definitely blue skies out there and it looks fairly still. We are going to see it with Juliet and Kev, and both sets of parents. J+K’s rented house is fight by the university where it is all happening.
Having a lazy-ish weekend as I have been away for the last 2. The first was with Waikato Schools Band (which you may recall I am managing) on a music camp which I organised. I felt it had been thrown together and was quite apprehensive about it. Come Friday evening, after a busy week and with a headache the last thing I wanted to do was take 22 hormonal teenagers (12-17years) off to camp! However, it was fabulous and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The camp is on top of the cliffs overlooking Raglan and it’s bay, on the North Island’s west coast about an hour from Hamilton. The views are to die for and, if I can get photobucket to do what I want I’ll try and post some piccies later. The band is quite new and the point of the weekend was getting them to know each other and a bit of team building. It turned out that quite a few had actually not wanted to go and in fact Harriette was in tears over it. Anyway we started Saturday morning in the gym with some games. Firstly I got everyone into a time line by their age and then called people out one by one and got them to pick the person they knew least. I then sent them off in their pairs to find out about each other, including one bizarre fact about their partner, and then got everyone back and they introduced the other person to the group. This was hilarious and was followed by a game where they stood in a circle and threw a ball to someone in the circle at the same time saying that person’s name. The point being names were repeated frequently until everyone knew everyone else’s. Finally we played a game that could be loosely called netball but with no rules and no bibs so people weren’t quite sure who was on their team. It was chaos and the kids loved it!
Over the weekend we parents had 2 hours break each morning and afternoon as the band did their music stuff. They improved hugely and enjoyed the new music they had. We, ie committee members, had been quite disappointed at the lack of help from other parents and it ended up with just Robyn, Cathy (another Matamata mom and on our committee) and myself, along with Roger one of the girls uncles who came for a day. However, by the end of the w/e we decided that it was actually better with just a few of us as there was not 10 parents offering 10 different opinions on what should be done next of how a situation should be handled. We spent our spare time walking or reading. I spent one session with my book lying in a huge hammock on the cliffs overlooking the bay. On the Saturday morning Sarah and I walked at 6.15. We went down (everywhere was down!) to Manu bay and hoped to walk back along the beach but could not get from Manu to the long stretch of sand below our camp so walked back up the road we had just gone down (windy, surrounded by bush and almost no traffic). It was a 50 minute walk and very enjoyable, despite the serious climb. I loved listening to the birdsong which is so very different from that in the UK, or even from home. Some of the birds here, as I may have said before, have such bizarre song, haunting and almost how I imagine pre-historic birds would sound. About 20m from the camp entrance there was a 20 minute bush walk down to the beach. Robyn, Cathy and I did this during the afternoon and walked along the beach watching the surfers who, from the camp looked like seals in the sea!
Saturday evening the plan was for a talent quest but that was not very popular and only the boys did a few things. One of the Youth Band members, Josh, had joined us for the whole weekend to support the brass section. He was such good value and had the rest of the crowd in hysterics mist of the time. He and Darryn led some ‘theatre sports’ and had every single person (including the parents) up on stage acting out some bizarre things. It was hilarious and everyone had a ball. As the weekend progressed I was so pleased to see how everyone got on so well. There were no clicks or set groups and no-one seemed to be excluded from anything. The ‘popular’ boys did not just mix with the ‘prettiest’ girls and being a small camp we relaxed the rules hugely. In particular we didn’t ban the opposite sex from the dorms, which they thought was great. During daylight hours I mean!!! At one point lots of them were in, or draped round, Josh’s car with all the doors open and the CD blaring out, can you believe “My Dingaling” yes a re-run of the old Chuck Berry song. I came round the corner singing and dancing to this in front of them all and some of them thought me very cool knowing the words!! They obviously had no idea of its antecedence. It could have been a scene from the 1950’s!!
These photos were taken from the camp. Not the hammock!
I was rather stiff on Sunday so skipped walking that day! Sunday afternoon the camp culminated with a concert for the parents when they came to collect their offspring and lots of the group coming to me saying ‘When can we come on camp again?’! It was a fabulous weekend and we left feeling like one big happy family and everyone lamenting that there would be no practice for 3 weeks because of Easter!
A busy week preceded the Easter weekend when we went down to Rosie and Bryan to see their new New Plymouth home. We loved it. It is a 2 storey house that looks across paddocks to the Tasman Sea from the kitchen and back inland to Mount Taranaki, a volcano that dominates the region. The garden is seriously high maintenance with a huge excess of crazy paving which Rosie says has to go! It is divided into 10 –12 separate areas including a piggery and orchard and lots of lawn and grass and a stream and pond surrounded by bush. It is very over run and will need days of work to get on top of it and hours each week to keep it nice. Hence their intention to re-think it completely. They also have a 40’ polytunnel which I would die for and we have pleaded with them to give us first refusal if they sell it. We shopped, swam at the Aquatic Centre, went up the mountain and spent a gorgeous evening on the beach at Oakuru as the sun set on Saturday followed by an Indian takeaway. Late nights playing canasta and drinking and eating far too much made for a lovely relaxing weekend. Thank you The Moyes.
Well it’s coming up to 10am so I should get up. Yesterday I slept in until 11.10am! I don’t think I’ve slept that late for years. I think the good book I am reading is to blame, I have stayed up late reading every night. Maybe that’s why I am struggling to get up and walk in the morning!!
A few weeks ago it looked as if winter had hit us overnight, bypassing autumn altogether. We then had a bit of an Indian summer but this week has been definitely cooler (not cold) with lots of wind and rain. Balloons over the Waikato, a week long balloon festival, has been a write-off but the final day was moved from yesterday to today and looks like that will be OK. Today there are definitely blue skies out there and it looks fairly still. We are going to see it with Juliet and Kev, and both sets of parents. J+K’s rented house is fight by the university where it is all happening.
Having a lazy-ish weekend as I have been away for the last 2. The first was with Waikato Schools Band (which you may recall I am managing) on a music camp which I organised. I felt it had been thrown together and was quite apprehensive about it. Come Friday evening, after a busy week and with a headache the last thing I wanted to do was take 22 hormonal teenagers (12-17years) off to camp! However, it was fabulous and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The camp is on top of the cliffs overlooking Raglan and it’s bay, on the North Island’s west coast about an hour from Hamilton. The views are to die for and, if I can get photobucket to do what I want I’ll try and post some piccies later. The band is quite new and the point of the weekend was getting them to know each other and a bit of team building. It turned out that quite a few had actually not wanted to go and in fact Harriette was in tears over it. Anyway we started Saturday morning in the gym with some games. Firstly I got everyone into a time line by their age and then called people out one by one and got them to pick the person they knew least. I then sent them off in their pairs to find out about each other, including one bizarre fact about their partner, and then got everyone back and they introduced the other person to the group. This was hilarious and was followed by a game where they stood in a circle and threw a ball to someone in the circle at the same time saying that person’s name. The point being names were repeated frequently until everyone knew everyone else’s. Finally we played a game that could be loosely called netball but with no rules and no bibs so people weren’t quite sure who was on their team. It was chaos and the kids loved it!
Over the weekend we parents had 2 hours break each morning and afternoon as the band did their music stuff. They improved hugely and enjoyed the new music they had. We, ie committee members, had been quite disappointed at the lack of help from other parents and it ended up with just Robyn, Cathy (another Matamata mom and on our committee) and myself, along with Roger one of the girls uncles who came for a day. However, by the end of the w/e we decided that it was actually better with just a few of us as there was not 10 parents offering 10 different opinions on what should be done next of how a situation should be handled. We spent our spare time walking or reading. I spent one session with my book lying in a huge hammock on the cliffs overlooking the bay. On the Saturday morning Sarah and I walked at 6.15. We went down (everywhere was down!) to Manu bay and hoped to walk back along the beach but could not get from Manu to the long stretch of sand below our camp so walked back up the road we had just gone down (windy, surrounded by bush and almost no traffic). It was a 50 minute walk and very enjoyable, despite the serious climb. I loved listening to the birdsong which is so very different from that in the UK, or even from home. Some of the birds here, as I may have said before, have such bizarre song, haunting and almost how I imagine pre-historic birds would sound. About 20m from the camp entrance there was a 20 minute bush walk down to the beach. Robyn, Cathy and I did this during the afternoon and walked along the beach watching the surfers who, from the camp looked like seals in the sea!
Saturday evening the plan was for a talent quest but that was not very popular and only the boys did a few things. One of the Youth Band members, Josh, had joined us for the whole weekend to support the brass section. He was such good value and had the rest of the crowd in hysterics mist of the time. He and Darryn led some ‘theatre sports’ and had every single person (including the parents) up on stage acting out some bizarre things. It was hilarious and everyone had a ball. As the weekend progressed I was so pleased to see how everyone got on so well. There were no clicks or set groups and no-one seemed to be excluded from anything. The ‘popular’ boys did not just mix with the ‘prettiest’ girls and being a small camp we relaxed the rules hugely. In particular we didn’t ban the opposite sex from the dorms, which they thought was great. During daylight hours I mean!!! At one point lots of them were in, or draped round, Josh’s car with all the doors open and the CD blaring out, can you believe “My Dingaling” yes a re-run of the old Chuck Berry song. I came round the corner singing and dancing to this in front of them all and some of them thought me very cool knowing the words!! They obviously had no idea of its antecedence. It could have been a scene from the 1950’s!!
These photos were taken from the camp. Not the hammock!
I was rather stiff on Sunday so skipped walking that day! Sunday afternoon the camp culminated with a concert for the parents when they came to collect their offspring and lots of the group coming to me saying ‘When can we come on camp again?’! It was a fabulous weekend and we left feeling like one big happy family and everyone lamenting that there would be no practice for 3 weeks because of Easter!
A busy week preceded the Easter weekend when we went down to Rosie and Bryan to see their new New Plymouth home. We loved it. It is a 2 storey house that looks across paddocks to the Tasman Sea from the kitchen and back inland to Mount Taranaki, a volcano that dominates the region. The garden is seriously high maintenance with a huge excess of crazy paving which Rosie says has to go! It is divided into 10 –12 separate areas including a piggery and orchard and lots of lawn and grass and a stream and pond surrounded by bush. It is very over run and will need days of work to get on top of it and hours each week to keep it nice. Hence their intention to re-think it completely. They also have a 40’ polytunnel which I would die for and we have pleaded with them to give us first refusal if they sell it. We shopped, swam at the Aquatic Centre, went up the mountain and spent a gorgeous evening on the beach at Oakuru as the sun set on Saturday followed by an Indian takeaway. Late nights playing canasta and drinking and eating far too much made for a lovely relaxing weekend. Thank you The Moyes.
Well it’s coming up to 10am so I should get up. Yesterday I slept in until 11.10am! I don’t think I’ve slept that late for years. I think the good book I am reading is to blame, I have stayed up late reading every night. Maybe that’s why I am struggling to get up and walk in the morning!!
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