I have woken this morning with a terrible cramp and restless dreams about my mother’s china, unused for fifty years and perhaps now unusuable.
There has been a heatwave in New Zealand for the past few days and Nelson is bearing the brunt of it. The landscape is parched yellow, very beautiful with the sea and the hills in the background. The heat itself is not too bad at all and though all the locals are complaining about the wind, it certainly gives relief if one is in the shade. No, the real difficulty is from the sun, which cuts like a knife here.
On Sunday we were taken for a drive into the hills and stopped at a pretty little river running through a narrow valley for a brief swim. Well, I waded. Then Monday was a return to work, with a break for lunch down on the Mapua wharf. Then at dinner a friend of our hosts arrived, a well known local artist.
Work is very hectic indeed at the moment. All the students are turning in their dissertations and a report I’d been working on, that had been due to be submitted a month ago, is still lingering.