February 25
Hutt City
In the middle of the night the wind started to blow with considerable vigour, making me remember one of the reasons for my return to the UK. It woke me for a while but, in the much cooler temperatures down here I slept well for the rest of the night.
I hung out the washing. If the wind carries on blowing, it should be dry within a couple of hours, unless it ends up in next door's garden.
Sue drove me into work through reasonably heavy traffic and abandoned me on the main road outside her office. I proceeded to walk into Wellington along a busy but boring main road.
The five kilometres took an hour, good speed by my standards. The cloud was lifting and it was warm and humid. By the time I reached the station, I needed a shower.
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I was going to visit Jo to arrange a coach trip in Darwin but decided that a rest and a coffee would be a better use of my time.
The train took me through the tunnel and out the other side, instantly revealing that it was much cloudier on that side of the hill.
I disembarked at Porirua, walked into the mall and into the area formerly covered by the canopies.
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It is much brighter now but the shops looked tired - many were empty - and the car park was nowhere near as full as it used to be. Not a good sign.
At Pataka, the Museum and Gallery, I met Michael and we had coffee and a bun. In my case, this amounted to breakfast. We chatted for over an hour and then he left and I had a quick look round the gallery. There was a good exhibition of Indonesian shadow puppets but the rest left me cold - or bored.
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I caught the train back into the city, where the sun was bright again. I did a little shopping and then set off in search of the Bruhaus for lunch. It took a while to find, is nothing to look at, but does have a good range of craft beers. I reacquainted myself with a pint of Emerson's Bookbinder and awaited the arrival of a large lamb sandwich. It was good, with lots of lamb, lots of vegetables and lots of flavour.
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I stopped at the travel agents to sort out my coach trip then called at the bank to obtain some cash to spend while I was there.
I walked back to the station via the other side of the Supreme Court and found a train back to Wingate. This was nearly a disaster as I left the train at Wingate Station and only realised that my wallet wasn't in my pocket as the doors were closing. I shrieked at the nice lady conductor, who stuck her foot in the door.
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I leapt aboard, retrieved my wallet from off the seat I had been occupying and all was well. I completed the ten minute walk back to the house, brought in the beautifully dry washing and sent some emails.
Sue fed me well and we drank lots of wine. The evening was enlivened when Lucy, the house pussy cat, appearing with a cicada, which she promptly released. It flew round the kitchen out of her reach until I zapped it with a bug spray and ushered it out of the back door. A few minutes later, Lucy brought it back in again. It eventually expired, either from shock or from the spray and I ejected for good.
We completed the evening without any further excitements.