TheBanyanTree: What I do on a Saturday

[dale.m.parish at gmail.com]

Peter;
Just read _When We Believed In Mermaids_, set mostly on South Island.  Interesting read and intro to Kiwi culture for me.

Hugs,
Dale

-----Original Message-----
From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com> On Behalf Of Peter Macinnis
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2020 15:27
To: thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: What I do on a Saturday

For us, exciting things happen at times. Our Kiwi grandchildren went home three weeks ago after Christmas. ("Kiwi" means they come from New Zealand).

Anyhow, now we are over here to be their child minders until school goes back, then we take a train down the North Island, a ferry to the South Island, walk around some nice bits and then a train to Christchurch, from which we fly home, possibly via a glacier or three.

The North Island gets the volcanoes, the south has earthquakes, especially Christchurch. We'll wait and see. The South was largely populated by Scots, so they have weird vowels: when they say "better bitter batter", it comes out as "bitter butter better" to Australian ears.  I'm almost ready for that.

Ere we head off in the first train, we will go to movies, consume hot chocolate, swim in the chilly South Pacific, take the kids to 'Much Ado About Nothing', and play a lot of Uno. I have just taught Alastair how to tune his guitar (the extent of my surviving accomplishments with that
instrument) and I am getting Brianna working on playing piano by ear, taking out her Suzuki violin pieces. Given the season, we tried 'Summertime' (almost all on the black keys) last night.

She and I have a regular summer project of co-writing the story of the Ninja Tooth Fairy. We talk about it lots, but a few weeks back, when I suggested a horse, named after René Descartes (so he could claim to have been Descartes before the horse), we branched off into Cartesian doubt and cogito ergo sum and all that stuff. At almost 13, she just takes it all in.

I seem to have brought over far more books than I thought, so I suppose I will have to do lots of reading.  It's a filthy job, but somebody has to do it...

On 19/1/20 13:41, tobie at shpilchas.net wrote:
> On the other  hand, some exciting things do happen.

--
Peter Macinnis petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au On the Mac, somewhere in New Zealand; Anapest exterminator to select members of the gentry.
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com.au/


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