A few weeks back Sarah mentioned to me to keep a weekend free, with no details as to why. I obviously thought lots about it because all I'd done was mark 5-5:30pm on Friday night as "Keep Free".
During the week I knew something was up because I was meant to take the car in to get the bumper repaired, but Sarah said maybe to wait because we'd need the car. When pressed for why, Sarah said it's because we might be getting chickens, maybe. A valid reason as far as I was concerned. Now before you all go "Whaaaa?", we've talked before about getting 2-3 chickens and keeping them in the backyard for our egg requirements and scrap food processing. So it wasn't such a strange cover story.
Maybe a little strange.
Friday night came around and we gave the house a tidy up, strange because as I recalled chickens lived outside. We then drove out to the airport so I knew we were picking up someone, but the arrivals hall was pretty much empty and the only flight coming in was from Rarotonga. And I didn't know anyone that'd be in Rarotonga.
As people were walking off Sarah kept saying "Do you know that person? What about that person?" - eventually Julian D walked off and I DID know him! Not far behind him where his parents too, which even Sarah wasn't expecting. They'd all been in Rarotonga for Julian's cousin's wedding. Great surprise though. We drove into town and dropped Julian's parents off at their hotel, then headed back home.
Saturday morning we did what we usually do with visitors on a Saturday, we went to the French Market. The French market is fantastic, tasty food and good coffee. It's not huge and it's not full of crap either. From there we headed up Mt Eden to get a nice view of the city, despite the fact it was supposed to be raining all day it was actually decent weather and we got a pretty good view. Still couldn't spot our house though, too small and too far away.
Saturday night we went out for a nice meal in Kingsland, then Sarah and I being the old couple we are went to bed while Julian went into town to checkout the nightlife. Might as well make the most of a visit to Auckland!
Sunday Julian and I drove out to Piha and climbed up Lion Rock. Just on the path, not some sort of crazy climbing. We zipped home to check on Sarah who was working on her bridesmaid dress still, so we left her at home and went down to Mission Bay for a couple of quiet beers at the Belgian Beer Cafe. And some muscles & pork ribs.
Sunday night my lovely wife had cooked up a big lamb leg, so we devoured that with yorkshires puds and gravy. Super tasty!
It's been really nice to catch up with Julian D, last time I saw him was in London for a couple of pints in the cold English sun. He's here until Sunday and I'm fairly sure he's going to cook up a famous Julian D dinner tonight! Looking forward to that!
Finally from the Tornado the other day, there was this video. When we watched it on TV the first time, both Sarah and I rolled around at his reply to the question "What was it like being thrown in the air?" (skip to about 1:20 in the video)
Tim
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