Chores of various kinds this morning. We’re definitely winding down to leaving now, with a good chance of catching a ride down to Auckland with one of the tour buses on Thursday or Friday. I strolled up to Twin Pines to see Tom, who sharpened our clasp knife + mended our leaking paraffin bottle. Eventually (we really are sluggish at getting ourselves moving nowadays) we headed in to Paihia again, our main purpose to post home another box of goodies, our secondary one to go out on the catamarans. There was a bit of wind picking up by the time we got along to the boats, so the bloke wouldn’t let us go out on one – fair enough, since we weren’t experienced. Seems funny tho’, don’t it – we sailed across the Pacific, but can’t sail round Paihia bay.
Home then, showers + change, + off on our treat to ourselves, a drink + a meal at Twin Pines. We’d hoped to have Tom + Robert come up with us, but for various reasons, they didn’t. Which turned out even better, since the meal was intimate, excellent. The details are unimportant (except for the orange pancakes for dessert) but the atmosphere + vegetables were perfect. Two unexpected bonuses were a complimentary Irish coffee each, because things were a bit slow in the kitchen, + 25% off the bill, courtesy of Mamie, who spotted us eating there. A lovely gesture. Afterwards, we had a drink with Mamie. I thought she was a cold woman, but she’s nice + sweet + vulnerable. An excellent evening.
Ironic that we were not experienced enough sailors to take a Hobie out, but quite right too, since neither of us can sail, not one of our captains feeling like teaching us anything (and again, probably quite right too.) We were more or less passengers on small boats across the Pacific (Val’s navigating aside).
An interesting tale about Mamie, which might explain her friendliness towards us. We had been in Paihia, and had spotted Mamie in town doing some shopping, thought we did notice a strange expression. The next day we were summoned to thje office, and she demanded to know why we had been in town when we ought to have been working. When we pointed out that actually it was our day off, she was mortified.
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