Well the last couple of weekends have seen me heading up and down SH1 to Auckland and back, I don't go there for months on end and then totally over do it! I'm shattered but it has been great to catch up with folk, and to retrieve my stuff out of storage!
The first trip was timed so I could see Alice, another (Quaker) Summer Schooler to make it out to visit here. She's marrying a Kiwi (sensible girl) so came over for a few weeks to meet the prospective inlaws and fell in love (as one does) with the country too, so hopefully she'll be back for a few years at some point =) There is something about the Summer School/NYFSG connection that squidges up time between meetings in that it never really feels like all that long since I last saw whoever I see from there regardless of whether it has been a couple of weeks, months or years (I haven't quite had to put decades to the test yet but that'll no doubt happen when Rachel from Holiday School moves out here!). Maybe it's because so many of us are used to seeing each other just once a year anyway that anything less is considered a bonus.
I stayed with Margaret & Robert and children that trip, first time I'd seen them in over 6 mths so there was much catching up and exchanging of news and gossip to be had (although the juiciest bit I knew I was then still sworn to secrecy about, most frustrating...). Much to my delight Benjamin remembered me still and Lucy only took a couple of hours to get used to me instead of a couple of days. As Margaret is a 'playcentre mum' we spent time talking shop too - learning stories and other forms of documentation of early years learning.
A colleague gave me a lift down and back and as he has a truck (translation: 4x4 thing, not a ute or a lorry!) we managed to squeeze almost all my stuff from storage into the back - the remaining cabinet went off to be restored and collected the following weekend. The cabinet was my grandparents American wireless cabinet and had suffered from being used by the infamous 'landlord's father' at Croydon Rd to sit a bucket of plaster on. Okay so it's taken me over 15yrs to get it fixed but now it is back to it's former glory (and probably in better nick than when I inherited it). The next step is to shift it north from Sarah & Karl's shed...
We couldn't bring it back with us this weekend as it wouldn't fit with 4 of us in the car - Ryan joined us to go down for Kerehoma's 1st birthday party (well actually it was at least his 2nd birthday party having had one the weekend before in Invercargill, but still to celebrate his first birthday!). It was removals in the opposite direction this time as we had a car-load of Mim's stuff following her down for the new uni year. Thankfully it was cool enough on the way down for Ryan and I to be quite glad we were snuggled up all squidged together, somewhat different from the much hotter (and far less cramped) journey back. Having been sick at Christmas when they were up home it was great to spend time with them all whilst feeling up to being sociable!
There were so many other people I'd hoped to see in these trips down but other than popping in to see Faith & Margaret, the current Auckland Resident Friends soon to be heading back to Sheffield, it just didn't happen. Probably just as well though, I'm worn out enough as it is! Hopefully it'll be a quiet week at work - yeah right....
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