8th May: Lancaster Maguires

I was greeted by a cup of tea which delighted me as I am easily won by a decent cup of tea. We mostly hung out at home during the day, talking (surprise surprise) and eating. I found the computer in the hall surprisingly serviceable, and managed to establish an internet connection on it. I sent a text to Neil to ask him to email us, and he wished me luck with what he referred to as their ‘steam computer’. His father was not amused, but I thought it was a fair description. I picked up a bottle of wine to go with our dinner and was pleasantly surprised to see that the local dairy had a good assortment of booze. That’s more than our local dairy has, though I do live in west Auckland, which is a dry area (I’m not walking about the weather). I might mention this to our local dairy owner next time I see him to see what he thinks about getting in a bit of plonk. I was also impressed with their milk containers, which are made of glass. I think they are called bottles. I recall something similar from my youth, but it has sort of faded now – the memory that is, not my youth, which fortunately persists.

The Maguires (which is who they are) have quite a large garden and a free-standing house, unlike those I was seeing in the south, except my cousin’s house in Churchill, which was just enormous. They were finding the garden all a bit hard to manage and I tried to persuade them to build a fence and block out the bits they didn’t want to see. I tried this on my parents in Timaru too, but they didn’t like the idea either. I noticed they had a sitting out area which reminded me again of the changing weather patterns in England. Still, they probably wear woolly hats when they sit outside, and maybe carry an umbrella. I photographed a photo of George and Edith getting married, but it didn’t turn out very well (the photo, not the marriage, silly).