Normal service will be resumed

Seem's that summer's here

The Paihia to Russel ferry (or is it Little Toot).

I haven’t written much lately - it seems like forever, but it’s only over the last couple of months.

Life has become so overwhelming that there’s too much to digest and not enough time to deal with it all.

However, we may be coming through it.

Today has been a very good day. That alarm beeped at 5.30am, which was an improvement on yesterday’s 4.45am.

Yesterday’s was hard to take. Bedtime had been 11.30pm the night before, after the third race in the Nelson Sea Swim Series. I have a love/hate relationship with that series. I’ve been heavily involved with it for about 40 years and still sort photos, figure out points and write up a story every week, mostly before bedtime.

As you’d imagine, I feel a sort of ownership, but it’s time to let it go.

That’ll be hard to do and I’m still committed to continue for this summer, but things are changing in our lives - age for a start.

After Friday’s early start, it was a taxi to the airport, a flight to Auckland and a rental car drive to Paihia.

Along the way, we stopped for lunch in Whangarei with my old school mate John.

We left school at about this time of year in 1965 and since then I’ve only seen John once. That was when we were both asked to be pall bearers at our friend Graham’s funeral.

We’ve discovered since that we both write columns with an elderly slant for our local newspapers - John’s in Whangarei and mine in Nelson - so that’s a kind of bond.

This was our second meeting in close to 60 years. John and his wife Marg lead busy lives. Among other things, they have more than 200 avocado trees on their rural property.

It was a great catchup and we came away with many memories about old friends - and a big bag of avocados.

Today we had other priorities. After the 5.30am wakeup, we had toast and avocados for breakfast - the perfect base for a physical hour or so.

An hour later, fully dressed in wetsuits, we headed for the nearby beach eyeing up the distant shores of historic Russell, 3.3km away.

We met up with our old friend Lorraine, once from Nelson, but now a Paihia resident, running boat tours. That’s her on the left, looking (and feeling) nervous. Also Kathy, a frequent swimmer on our trips and always volunteering at the national ocean swim series, even though she has to travel from Christchurch. Also in the photo (of course) is Cathie, without whom there is no show.

The conditions were great.

All too soon we were on the start line and we cruised across to the other side.

For all her nerves, and without any training, Lorraine had a great swim in just over an hour.

The only other Nelson swimmer, our friend Derek, was the next of our friends and Cathie, Kathy and I finished a bit further back. Bishop Derek has a special place in our lives, having married us just over three years ago.

Derek is smiling and waving on the podium as he takes gold in M80-84, the only swimmer in that age group and the oldest person in the race (there were about 320 competitors).

I can modestly add that I was about the fifth oldest and Cathie occupied about the same spot in the female field.

After the prize giving, we jumped on the ferry back to Paihia. I was writing a race report on my phone and finished it off back in our motel room (here it is), before we dashed back to the ferry and headed for drunkenness and debauchery in a nice pub.

There we met up with more friends - Ed and Deb, who are soon to be married and Peggy from Arizona, who loves to travel to New Zealand and do a few swims.

We discovered that if we are to attend the big wedding in February, we are going to have to swim from Takapuna Beach to Rangitoto, where the wedding will be held on the beach, making it a fairly exclusive event, although Uncle Tom Cobley and all will be at the party that night.

I have to mention the kindness of friends, as I had more than one large beer (Cathie was more modest) and we both ate huge meals. When we came to pay, we found that the very kind Peggy had picked up the tab.

She’ll be in Nelson next week, so we’ll see if we can return the favour.

As you can tell from my raving, the beer has loosened my fingers, but more than that, the end of a stressful period has been responsible for my effusiveness.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we head back to Auckland for a few nice visits and more beer, then back to Nelson on Monday.

We’re putting pots to one side for a few weeks while we catch up with events. We’ve had a couple of really nice firings recently.

You can see we’ve taken the frog and turtle stamps to heart.

There’s an exhibition at the Suter Gallery to contribute to and we’ll top up supplies at our other outlets. Cathie’s online shop has gone a bit crazy lately too (see gibbspottery.com).

Most importantly, we take possession of the new bach in Anakiwa in two weeks.

Just imagine us sitting on that deck on Christmas Day.

Summer’s here.

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