A cyclone grazed the country and cold southerlies began to blow. The temperature dropped 10 degrees or more, the skies turned steel grey and it poured with rain all day long. We went out with the Doyenne to get some groceries from a magnificient city centre warehousey sort of place and then drove a bit […]
Uptown
Dinner was an immense success. I baked the side of salmon after marinating for a bit under a paste of minced garlic, mustard, lemon and tarragon, and it turned out flavourful and tender. With it I cooked one of my usual things, courgettes on high heat with sliced chilli and garlic, then tossed with mint […]
Bad toe
We went to the high street for lunch again yesterday and on the way back stopped at the greengrocer/ fishmonger to collect some supplies as we are preparing dinner tonight. We came back with a truly massive side of salmon, far more than strictly required, but it should do nicely for lunch the following day. […]
Stage set
Not much to report, but as usual work has flared up like eczema; more welcome than that, but no more pleasant. I would like to be a person of leisure. We went into Blenheim’s high street for lunch yesterday. It was a very nice walk; down a quiet street then through a park through which […]
Bad blogging
I made a failed attempt to change the theme of this blog yesterday. I use Suffusion at the moment, which is excellent and super customisable without needing too much faffing around with CSS etc. Unfortunately it’s no longer supported or updated and has been getting slower and slower load times. Looking for an equally simple […]
Into the hive
In the morning we went to the farmer’s market which was very good indeed, the best we’ve seen in this country by far. It had a very rural air to it, being held in the A&P ground with a fiddle player but the produce was very good and our haul included delicacies such as pine […]
Not as bad as it looked
We are in Blenheim. This morning the Gentleman Friend’s cousin Bloddeuwydd and her husband the Winemaker, picked us up from Picton and drove us the 20 minutes to their house. We had passed through Blenheim but it had all been warehouses then; now we went off the motorway (so to speak) into quite a pleasant […]
Unicorn sky
After a day’s work we went to the Victoria Domain for a walk. This is a smallish natural reserve around the coast (or at least the bit we walked around). We elected to walk to Bob’s Bay, up through a wooded hill along a path cut by hand by one Doug (or so said a […]
Sweet noodles
For lunch we went down to the main road in Picton where we had been told there was a noodle bar that made surprisingly good noodles. I had a tom yum with noodles, which was decent, though much too sweet. The Gentleman Friend had a pad thai which was surprisingly good though also too sweet. […]
House by the hill
After a morning of packing, cleaning and tidying, we packed our bags into the dinghy. I was quite wrong, they fit. Though I had to hold on to one bag, belonging to the Gentleman Friend, very expensive and not waterproof, and balanced on the prow. We arrived in Picton and five minutes later we were […]