by I had a good Christmas with Mum and Dad and nobody else. It was far less stressful, particularly for Mum, than anything involving extended family would have been.
On Christmas Eve we went to the church across the way. We had the same priest as two years ago. He’s fluent in at least three languages, including Maori and Spanish, but I bet he knows more. We sang carols (well you could hardly call what I did singing) including some in Maori and a lovely one in Samoan that I hadn’t heard before. Unlike in Geraldine or Temuka (or our local church in the UK for that matter), the congregation was a real melting pot and the service was an interesting and uplifting one.
The weather could hardly have been better the whole time my parents were here. Island Bay on Christmas Day was simply beautiful. Our Christmas dinner included turkey and ham (as all six of my subsequent dinners have done). I got a new camera for Christmas and will put up some more photos when I get the right sort of adapter.
On Boxing Day we went to Palmerston North to see Mum’s younger brother and his kids and grandkids; one day of that kind of thing is enough. I was able to pop out and see a friend who has just moved there from Wellington. He was busking in the middle of town. I was slightly envious of him for being able to (a) play the guitar, and (b) do so in front of people. He said he gets a better hourly rate from his busking than from his job, and I imagine on a 27-degree Boxing Day it was better still. His repertoire is currently only twelve songs; he’ll need to expand that. I hadn’t been to Palmy since 2004 and it was good to have a look around. The Regent Theatre stood out as a very attractive building amongst some rather ugly ones.
On the 27th we went back to Island Bay so that Dad could take some photos (his batteries were flat the first time); I’d like it if he could do more paintings of Wellington. We all agreed that Island Bay would be a good place for my parents’ hypothetical fifth house. (I say hypothetical. I wouldn’t totally put it past them.) As well as being very picturesque, I think it would be an invigorating place to live. That evening Dad and I saw the latest Star Wars film at the Embassy. Dad hadn’t seen any of the previous films; I had but I’m not exactly fanatical. This one was great though. You didn’t need to have seen any of the others to enjoy it, and it was a whole heap of fun.
The next day went to Peter Jackson’s incredibly lifelike Great War Exhibition just across the road. I’d been there before and will definitely go there again. After lunch we went to Makara. I’d been wanting to go there for ages but I’d never really had anyone to go with. It was a lovely spot, and on yet another perfect day it was very popular. Someone had just bought a futon and transported it by (barely big enough) boat to their home. There are some good walking tracks there, which I’ll keep in mind should I ever get back there. My car had a good workout getting to Makara and back. Its clutch is slipping, and the cost of a new clutch (if I need one) might be prohibitive. I might have to get by without a car for a while, just like I plan to in Sibiu or Timișoara or wherever I end up. (I’m too far down the track now to let anything in my control stop me from going to Romania. Of course plenty of things could happen between now and September that are out of my hands, but otherwise if I don’t go through with this I’ll regret it. Mum and Dad are very supportive of my plans, and for that I’m grateful.)
After dinner that evening the three of us played Scrabble. Big mistake. Scrabble really brings Mum’s competitiveness to the fore. This time it made me more competitive too. Mum played very well and both she and I made big scores. I won in the end but that hardly mattered; the game really wasn’t fun. This morning I tried making a Romanian Scrabble crossword without a board and removing the K, Q, W’s and Y’s. I started with ten letters and then added another five whenever I had a completed crossword or got stuck. I tried to do as little rearranging as possible along the way.
My parents left on the 29th. It was almost a stress-free Christmas. We were able to appreciate the simpler things like the pohutukawas which are wonderful at this time of year, and the baby seagulls which hatched on the roof of the apartment block opposite, as they have done every early December since I moved in here. This year there are three, and they’ll fly the nest any day now.
We almost certainly had our last earthquake of 2015 this morning (there’s just half an hour left), and for once I’m optimistic about the year ahead.
