by It’s another beautiful day – mid to high teens, without a cloud in the sky. I can have no complaints about the weather since I arrived here. I’ve been getting a load of extra sleep – I’m sure I have the more benign temperatures to thank for that; my much reduced screen time must be a big help too.
This afternoon we went to the cemetery in Temuka – the fifth cemetery I’ve been to so far on this trip – where many members of Mum’s family are buried. She put flowers on her parents’ grave, and then she searched for her other relatives. Her aunt Rene, who died in 2000, was famous for her extremely tall sponge cakes which I remember well. There was also her uncle William, known as Wormy Bill. Finally she found her great-grandfather who arrived on the boat from Ireland at the age of 50, in 1874. In the meantime I saw surnames of classmates and teachers I remembered from my (short, hard) time at the local school. Unlike what you see in the UK (and Romania, for that matter), modern New Zealand gravestones often provide information beyond dates of birth and death. You’ll see an engraved trout perhaps, or a handsaw. One lady had clearly won Lotto: the six coloured balls appeared above her name. You could see the changing styles of the different stonemasons over time, as well as the transition to machine engraving in about 2000. From the cemetery we went to Milford Lagoon – the mouth of the Opihi River – where people have huts (some live there permanently) and Dad used to catch brown trout.
Yesterday – another fantastic day – we went to Tekapo. I hadn’t been there for 15-plus years. The drive there is lovely, and the lake and surrounding mountains are as picturesque as ever, but Tekapo (which was a slice of paradise when I first saw it as a kid) is gradually morphing into a full-on resort like Queenstown or Wanaka. Somewhere to avoid, in other words. Busloads of Asian tourists had arrived there, and it was as if they’d landed on the moon. The small church, devoid of people as I remember it, now had queues. From Tekapo we drove to Lake Alexandrina. My late uncle had a bach there – he’d pretty much built it – and 30 years ago (probably to the day, just about) I stayed there with Mum and Dad while my brother stayed at our other uncle’s farm on the West Coast. My uncle sadly lost the bach after his second divorce.
After we got home, we went to uncle and aunt’s place in Woodbury – they’re the ones who had the farm on the West Coast until 1996 – and had a big slap-up meal of roast beef and plenty of vegetables, followed by lemon meringue pie. With all the crisps and nuts and crackers beforehand, it was a veritable feast.
On Thursday I played tennis with Mum for the first time in absolutely ages. The brand spanking new courts, also used for netball, are just around the corner from here. We played for a very enjoyable hour and a quarter. She can still move around the court impressively, although her backhand isn’t quite what it was, and her loss of muscle mass means she’s lost some power. Balls don’t bounce very high on the astro surface – points are shorter on average than on the concrete I normally play on. While we were playing, we tried to remember the names of some of the players at the club in England. Was it Barbara? No, Brenda. I hope we can play once or twice more before I go back to Romania.
I forgot to mention in my recent posts that one of the flyers at Dad’s club is illiterate. Seriously, he makes and flies model planes, and works as a car mechanic, without being able to read or write. I mentioned him in my Romanian lesson on Tuesday and they were amazed.
Last week was quite a big one for news, with the Wagner leader Yegveny Prigozhin killed in that plane crash. Donald Trump’s mugshot will go into the annals of history – and he’s already trying to use it to his advantage. And India became the fourth country to land on the moon.
The Skip-Bo scores are now 4-1-1, with Dad the big winner so far. The probability of one specific player winning four games (or more) out of six is almost exactly 10%, assuming all players have an equal chance in each game. That assumption might not hold here – Mum’s competitive edge surely boosts her chances, making Dad’s four wins even more of an outlier.
