Friday 10th August –
Bingo!
A normal day’s tramping in the
Hunua’s on Wednesday had been followed by a routine Thursday and Friday (apart
from the MASSIVE news that I managed to finally get my tax return for 2017-2018
done which I have been procrastinating over since April! What a relief…).
Then we had a local night out
that we’d been looking forward to for ages. Even though Bingo has never been
high on the list of Friday night activities for us, this one was just up the
road in Bombay and was in support of the Junior Rugby club that Angie is
involved in. This meant that a crowd from Si’s work were coming along, along
with other local friends and our neighbours too. It was fairly crowded in the rugby club,
which was a good thing as it was freezing! We tucked into some drinks and
purchased our twelve bingo cards for the night along with a dabber that,
predictably, became an inky weapon by the end of the night. The bingo caller was an American called Mike
(Mike on the Mike) who we may have seen in such programmes as ‘Shortland
Street’ on our televisions. I’m not sure if he’d done bingo calling before,
possibly because I didn’t recognise some of his more extreme patter such as ’69
– a meal for two with a hairy view!’ But it livened things up a bit!
After a shaky start, two of Simon’s
colleagues got a full house at exactly the same time and our table started
getting evils thrown our way by the bitter players on their loser tables
around! The prizes were pretty good –
high quality rugby boots, car care kits, vouchers for plumbing and hunting gear
and bags of M&Ms! Trish and I were
holding out to try and win some champagne but sadly our luck never came
through.
The games had been going very
slowly, so they sped the whole thing up by letting us win with a single line
rather than waiting for someone to get a full house. That meant that the night
was over at the scheduled time of 11pm rather than going on through the night
as we had all feared at one point! But we had a good laugh and it was a
different night out for a good cause.
Saturday 11th to Sunday 12th August
The rest of the weekend was a relaxed affair (apart from
me climbing the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower on the Stairmaster at the gym a
couple of times – right, though the fact that someone can climb over twice that
amount in 20-minutes without dying makes me want to cry a little).
Confirmation from home that both of our ex-Police dogs
have made it onto the coveted pages of the Essex Retired Police Dogs Calendar
for 2019 – 2020. What a couple of stunners!
Monday 13th August –
Off to Hamilton
A busy day commenced at Bird
rescue before returning to get the house spick and span for visitors. Nick is
coming to stay whilst working at Continuous with Simon for the next couple of
weeks and instead of him heading home for the middle weekend his wife, Chris, will be joining
us. A bonus as we haven’t seen Chris for a few months now and it is also an
excellent opportunity for them to catch up with some friends and neighbours
from when they lived in the area, before shunning the North Island to cross
over to Nelson in the South. A little
like the north/south divide in the UK, it has become apparent that there is
healthy competition and banter between the North and South Islands here.
Having tidied up and got some
half decent grub in it was time for me to pack for a few days away. Nothing
personal to Nick… it was pure coincidence! I am off to stay in Hamilton for
three nights where I am very kindly being put up by a fellow Hunua volunteer,
Keith, and his wife, Jeanette. I managed
to secure myself a sponsored place (thank you Auckland Council!) on a three-day
conference hosted by Sanctuaries of New Zealand at the Hamilton Gardens. The workshop was for anyone with an interest
in conservation and the ongoing battle against pests in this country. There
were a few of us going from Hunua, including our organiser, Willow, who had
offered me a lift down to Keith’s as he was also staying there. I’ve done well,
haven’t I? – free transport, accommodation AND the conference.
I had made dinner for Simon,
Nick and I so that I would at least spend some time with them after work before
my lift arrived. Willow has a reputation for being late regularly. Well, let’s
just say he surpassed himself tonight! I was sitting with my bags all packed
and ready to go for 620pm as agreed. Willow rang to say he’d been delayed at
work and ended up being TWO HOURS late! No problem for me, I relaxed with the
others and we still made it down to Keith’s by 10pm for a cup of hot chocolate
before bed.
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