Rosemary's Ramblings

Ramblings in August

I found Nicola's July Blog on her visit to Ljubljana particularly interesting. It is 57 years since Ray and I were there. No wonder there was only one of her photos to which I could even remotely relate. Ljubljana was a war-weary and impoverished-looking city in 1953.

Margaret, we did the “Impossibles” jigsaw puzzle! It just about lived up to its name. Nicola, that was a puzzle with no borders, that is the edges did not have flat sides. The picture was not all there on the cover of the box. In fact it was not a picture as such, but a whole lot of plates and cups against a background of lace. Some overlapped, some were repeated. There were five extra pieces, just to make things difficult, but Margaret mercifully isolated them before she gave me the puzzle.

The big event in August was the last visit of the Chadderton family, on their way to their big adventure. Vaughan is definitely the tallest of all our family, and also of the Chadderton side. As he is not yet 15, we hope he stops growing soon. Little Lauren is within a centimetre of being as tall as I am – so who am I calling little? Caleb is fast catching up. They had been on the road for awhile, so Cerian had a couple of loads of laundry to do. While that was doing we took lots of photos in the garden, then we took them to The Crazy Cow for lunch. In the afternoon we all went to Jones Landing in their smooth-driving rental van. We climbed to the look-out. Lauren and Vaughan were not ecstatic about that, but Caleb was all over the place, paying no heed to 'stay on the track' signs. I wish I had his energy! Back at the Landing, Caleb climbed a tree. TC followed and then Cerian. They made it to a low-level fork, but Caleb went scrambling up higher. I could not even get off the ground! All too soon they had to be on their way to have dinner with TC's parents at Kihikihi before returning to their motel in Auckland. Two days later they were off to the USA. The day they left, Friday 13th, was the twins' 13th birthday. So David and Laurie now have three teen-aged daughters.

Ray visits a man in Arapuni once a week. Sometimes I go with him and he takes me to Jones Landing. I have time to walk from there down two sections of the Waikato River Trail to Arapuni. It is a great walk. It takes me 1¼ hours. As Ray always stays visiting longer than the allotted hour, and as he drops me off 15 minutes before he is due to arrive at John's, I realize I do not need to rush the way I have been doing. Though the weather being cool, not to mention wet, it is no hardship to walk quickly at this time of year.

Ray has told of the houses we looked at, but did not mention the best one. It was the best one as a house in itself, but the setting is not what I would wish. We were coming home from church along Golf St, the street at the edge of our side of town, and saw the Open House sign. We went along the long chestnut-tree lined driveway to the pleasant little house we had often wondered about. Ray calls it Cape Cod style. To me it is reminiscent of an English cottage, with bedrooms upstairs under the sloping roof, having 'dormer' windows at the front as well as gable end windows. It was as pleasant a house as I could wish. The grounds were private, and had been, and could be again, charming. There were even paddocks behind the house. So what was against this paragon of a home? It was on low ground. After our 2002 flood I said I would never live in a flood prone place. It had no views. Even if it had not been surrounded by trees – in itself a plus, there was nothing to look at except the town on one side and farmland on the other. I want at least a few hills to look at. So it was just as well we were not captivated, because no way could we afford the price. The best thing is, we now know what it is like, the place we often wondered about.

I forget whether Ray mentioned the houses in Tirau we looked at from the outside, including looking in the windows. They have tremendous views of the Kaimais down to Mt Te Aroha. One we really liked. It was at the end of a private lane, it had trees and still had the view. It also had a lovely carpet and wallpaper and plenty of space in the living areas. It was on the hillside above Tirau. No danger of being flooded there, but as I write, after the earthquakes in Christchurch, I feel being on a steep hillside is not the best place to be!

One more thing in August. We bought a new set of china. We did not need it. It was an impulse purchase at the Trading place, whatever it is called, in Tokoroa. So we retired our other set to the garage, there being a space there as we had at long last got rid of David's boxes, thanks to Cerian.

Love you all, The Rambler.