Friday 9 February 24

First things first…today was my sister Sheila’s dum de dumth birthday, so Hearty Birthday Greetings from Whangarie😊🎉🥂

We next returned to the Hertz car hire rental saga, eventually managing to get to speak to someone on the same desk…from Avis!

“No worries mate, I’ll tell ’em… when they turn up” was the semi-reassuring reply, so we would try Hertz again later…🤞

Elaine was keen to show us 2 places in Whangarei sited in a former granite quarry that ceased operating in 1974.

This was the first…

…and I was very tempted by these 2 offerings in one of the craft shops…

… but decided I couldn’t get them within my weight limit…😉

The second place was even more stunning…

…and with so many plants we’d never seen before Julie couldn’t resist using her new “proper camera” to get some close ups..

The Airport was en route home, so we called in to see if anyone from Hertz was there….and there was!

To our relief our message had been passed on, our pick up time duly changed to 9 am and Mr Hertz confirmed he himself would be there in the morning for the handover – what could possibly go wrong …🤔

Also en route was another stadium I was keen to check out…

…for the following reason…

Parking up outside, it was clear that, whilst access was available, there was nobody about, at which Elaine adopted the “Let’s behave as though we belong here” strategy and boldly matched the 3 of us in😉

This stadium is quite unique in that 3/4 of it consists of grassy banks, in contrast to the main stand…

Stadium fetish sated we shortly arrived back at Elaine’s…🏉😉

After lunch I found myself browsing through the local property paper seeing what one million pounds would get you…and whether access to the beach would suit me😉😎

After buying my lottery ticket we took to the shade for a game of boules/petanque; despite my best efforts Elaine slid up the inside rail to win 10-8-7…

The Kiwis are a pragmatic nation, never more so when it comes to moving house, as this documentary film demonstrated…

…and, if said house is too big for the monster trailer, they simply saw it in half then bolt it back together on its new site – job done 😊🇳🇿….ah, the benefits of timber build…

At 9 pm (UK 8 am) we surprised my sister with a birthday video call; unconventionally, we sang her a Beatles song…”When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now..” duly recognising how sensitive she is about her real age😉🤪

Switching to Elton John mode we didn’t “let the sun go down..” without capturing it so doing…