Sunday, July 20, 2008

A Day in our new life at Picton

The old Historical Whaling Harpoon. And some boats in the Marina with the Oxleys Appartments Building behind.

Living the Dream.

We woke up to a lovely sunshiny day, with no wind; we guess it would be about 15 C, quite pleasant temperature, lovely after several days of frosts, didn't feel like Winter at all, more like a nice Spring morning, bell birds were singing in the native bush on the nearby hillside, the water in the harbour had the sun sparkling on the ripples, oh so pretty.

We quickly ate up our breakfast of muesli with stewed peaches (from our old fruit trees) and yoghurt, fed the cats, then grabbed our green reusable shopping bag and walked into town, just as we do when on holiday. We decided to return some library books, they had been checked out in Blenheim but the Picton library was only too happy to receive them, and charge Erle for having an overdue book! We browsed the library for a while and both checked out some really good books, that we have big plans to sit on the deck in the sun reading. Actually, we will be sitting on our very nice wooden garden seat that we only bought yesterday. It is second-hand but its in excellent condition, Erle polished up the little brass plaque with the logo on and some strange words, you would never guess where the little plaque said the chair had been made ……In Denmark! For Goodness sake its made of timber, we have loads of timber growing here in New Zealand without importing Danish timber products, but we are pleased to have a quite unique garden seat, Erle will keep that little brass plaque polished up so all can see where it came from!
Next stop was the small supermarket to buy some nice buns for lunch, then we strolled merrily down the main street, window shopping, till we came to a shop with a big sale on for jeans and trousers, women’s mainly, so I just had to try some on, at only $15 a pair I could hardly go wrong. Yes, I did buy a nice pair, it has some lovely embroidery down one side and near the ankles, really quite classy, in fact I wore them home and had my old pair put into the reusable green bag.
We wandered on down to the Foreshore, where we looked around the boats at the wharfs, and the old Whaling Harpoon on display, before we stopped off at a Waterfront Café for coffee then walked on home. This is almost exactly what we do when on holiday, so it just reinforces the idea of living in a holiday environment, we are going to just love living here!
After lunch, and an hour or so sitting reading our books on the garden seat in the sun with the cats, we loaded the trailer onto the car and headed into Grovetown to our old home, to do the last of the clearing up and tidying of the small garage. Most remaining stuff went straight to the rubbish dump. Now we think we have removed everything except the caravan, which is still parked in its special parking place, it can stay a little longer.
With time to spare; we spent some time looking in Blenheim’s Furnishing shops for a table we liked, as we wished to have an oval table that was very small but that could be extended if we wanted, it was not an easy mission, but finally we found a very nice Pine veneer table that was exactly what we wanted; and ordered it immediately. It shall arrive in three weeks time, about the time the new bed head and the new maroon leather lazy boy chair will arrive; that is going to be an exciting time!
Since we were in Blenheim, we decided to meet up with a couple of old friends and fellow taxi drivers, for dinner and a few drinks at the Club, we will not be here very often from now on so it was nice to spend some time there together.
We drove on towards Picton, but decided on the spur of the moment, to stop off at our old home to have coffee with Jonathan. Good idea, but a bit embarrassing because he had cooked up a big feast on the BBQ, and had sat there waiting patiently waiting for us to come visit him and share the feast! Sadly he hadn’t mentioned this to us, so we were very late arriving, but we manfully attempted to enjoy another meal straight on top of the one we had just bought on town! We couldn’t really do justice to such a nice feast as Jonathan had prepared, but we did eat some of it, he will have plenty of leftovers for tomorrow. We are just glad we did stop off to visit him at all. He made us so welcome in our old home, it’s a strange feeling going back to the nice home we loved and finding a great deal of our old furniture and things there, almost feels like home still. So now we almost have two homes! Might not feel like this once the new boarding guests start arriving, but presently there is only Jonathan plus his Sister and Brother-in-law who arrive tomorrow. He is so happy to have his Family joining him.
We were rather later arriving home than intended, two starving cats greeted us with temper tantrums at the door, but soon settled down when the cat meat was put out for them.
A pretty good and interesting day, not every day will be so full of interesting things to do and see, but some will, we look forward to a lovely life here.

1 comment:

merike said...

A very good story! Glad your garden furniture is Danish. Danish furniture is world famous:) Nice you visited your own home and can do so in the future, too. Our temperature is not much higher than yours and it is supposed to be summer! Only around 20 C. Greetings!