At last the sun is shining. I was beginning to feel like Noah, cooped up for days on end with my Manet jig saw (now completed)

and have almost finished the Degas. This does not help with making the most of my short time here, but what to do?  I also feel very piano, lack-lustre and vaguely melancholic… could be the season, and could be the ‘new country’ syndrome, which I know will pass. I was so disappointed that the fishing charter trip was cancelled due to weather. I had been really looking forward to it, for ‘they’ say that snapper are just hurling themselves on to the hooks at the moment. Let’s hope we get another chance.

We did venture forth at the weekend and drove west to Muriwai Beach. Had to smile at all the instructions!

The sea was wild, the intrepid surfers were braving the waves but we just marvelled at the coast line and the angry skies.

The bottle brush trees are in their full glory, and are so much more sumptuous here than in Australia. They must be the equivalent of holly or poinsettia at this time of year, as all the Christmas cards feature them.

We went to visit gannet bay, and I came as close to a David Attenborough experience than I ever had before.

There were thousands of these birds, all nesting in neat precision, many nursing bundles of fluff which looked at first like dirty bits of old wool.

The parent birds went off for a soar, for the sheer joy of it, and I snapped, feeling like I did in Macau with the racing cars, that I would be lucky to catch one.

The wing spans were huge, I had no idea.

Actually I had no idea what a gannet was apart from a seagull. Well it is, with a yellow head and they have such a strange life pattern. Imagine…you are born on a rock in New Zealand, then for your first flying lesson you take off for the 2000km flight to Australia where you hang about and grow up and see the world. Then you have a notion that you may want to marry and have a family, so you head back to the rock, find a bird, and start again. I suppose not so different from our own ‘youth of today’!

We headed south to Bethell beach, on the edge of the Waitakere Range, and by now the storm clouds were gathering.

We did wander out across the black volcanic sand, and see the dunes that apparently nurture baby penguins. It was bleak, beautiful and desolate. Driving over I thought of the stories I had read about the numerous graves in the bush clad foothills, where only handcarved slabs of kauri mark the spot where a loved one lay. Many died from ship wrecks and were buried by local people. I heard of three seamen found near Huia in 1863, their graves marked by a simple cross. They were later moved to a simple little bush grave, ‘Laid to rest,’ their epitaph reads, ‘in this quiet place.’

We ventured out on Sunday evening, and met a throng of others all under their umbrellas scurrying into St Mary’s Cathedral. We looked like a scene from Renoir’s Parapluies.

We were treated to amazing music, carols and readings and I came out hoarse. All the great worthies from Auckland had graced us with their presence, and we had mayors, MP’s, bishops and what not…it was all very uplifting. We ran home through the puddles, sharing the umbrella and went to bed humming ‘God rest you merry gentlemen!’

One carol featured the red bottle brush I mentioned earlier,

‘Pohutukawa’s crimson bloom,

Gold wayside flowers, lupin, broom,

Glow round our coasts, across the land:

A canvas painted by God’s hand.’

It was all good, but the hymn writer forgot to mention these blooms which were growing like weeds everywhere we went…so beautiful, and I just wanted to snap them whenever I could. Wouldn’t have minded a bunch, to take home!

So Christmas is ahead, we are going to see the sights, and have a long list of ‘things to see’ so hope this weather improves. Land slips in Nelson, rivers and campsites flooded in Taranaki gloom and rain filled skies does not bode well, but hopefully the sun will come out. I shall think of Natasha and Leo in China (having a wonderful time, according to her text) Nick and Kathryn in Sydney, and Gerry and Cathal in Ireland. I sent Gerry her birthday card and thought as I wrote, how this would be the last birthday card I address as Miss Geraldine Harrison!

Christmas greetings to all, and when I write again, let’s hope I can include a picture of a hand caught snapper! (or a marlin or a  hammer head????? Ha Ha!)