Late nights and early mornings

What am I like…setting the alarm for a 4am start one day and a 2am start the next! I thought I was retired, no need for alarms surely. Yes, it’s that time folks, time for lots of netball watching as the World Netball Champs are on in South Africa. The Silver Ferns (NZ’s netball team) are promising lots, let’s hope that they can deliver on said promises. But it’s not just the Silver Ferns that I follow, no, I like to watch all the teams and see how they are tracking.

It seems that world netball has come a long way in the past few years, it’s not just the usual nations that get to the play offs and semi finals, but with many players playing in other countries for local teams then the standard obviously rises across many teams.

The Caribbean and African teams are always a delight to watch with their flair and aerial play, their athleticism is a delight to watch. Of course there is always the very “competitive” Aussies to watch and up and coming nations, I enjoy watching them all.

But these early morning games are a killer especially when it’s basically an all nighter with earlier games on at 7pm and 9pm, I sometimes get a couple of hours sleep before waking up to the alarm going off at 2am but at least I don’t have to get up early in the mornings for work or anything silly like that!!

We won’t discuss play or results 🫤 but needless to say I do enjoy watching all the games even if I’m not getting much sleep.

A week in Erith

We returned to Alex, Ian and Callum in Erith settling in for a quiet week. There’s always bits to be done in the garden as well as the usual cooking, washing, cleaning, and cuddling Callum of course.

Callum asleep practicing his meditation hand gestures!!

And of course it was a week to watch netball on the tele. Regular readers will know that we are huge netball fans with Alex and I attending three previous world champs and although Alex had tickets for us for this world championships, a certain wee man meant we made the choice to watch the games from the comfort of the couch with tickets instead going to netball friends.

It’s also been a week of doing a bit of baking and experimenting as Alex is off all dairy foods as they seem to upset Callum (just as they did for his mum). So it was out with the very old recipe for a chocolate cake that I used to make years ago, I think it’s based on a recipe from either the war rationing years or the depression years as it contains no butter or eggs. And what is even better is that it’s all mixed together in the cake pan so no washing up either. It is a very tender cake crumb as well and very moist too so everyone enjoys it. From there it was a look for some recipes online for vegan baking as they contain neither butter, milk or eggs, as we are not sure if Callum may also have an intolerance to eggs as well (again, just like his mum did). Some very successful cupcakes were made, made so much easier today with the proliferation of alternatives to dairy available in the shops. The baking was so successful that an afternoon of baking lessons were done by me with Ian’s mum Chris. She now has a few very easy and successful bakes under her belt which she can bake with her other grandchildren for a bit of fun.

Roy and Ian’s Dad Barry had a day out together for a visit to the Science Museum in London, for an exhibition called Top Secret: From ciphers to cyber security. Expect a blog entry on this exhibition once I have nagged him into doing it!!!

Alex had a return to her first game of netball since falling pregnant so I went along as spectator and babysitter.

Callum cheering on Mum.

Later that day he helped cheer the Silver Ferns onto their semi final win over England.

Then of course we spent Sunday watching the semi finals and then the epic final. One of Alex’s friends came round to help us cheer on the kiwi girls, the blood pressure pills were taken, the location of the nearest defibrillator was established, and we settled down to cheer, yell, scream at the tv all the while getting messages from the girls hi were at the stadium watching. The England supporters became Kiwi supporters for the final and the noise was apparently deafening. I have to admit to tears being shed from sheer joy at the result, go girls, you are amazing athletes and ambassadors for the game, women and New Zealand in general. We hope you get to party hard.

Alex had placed a cheeky bet on the NZers winning the tournament well before the tournament started so she was especially happy with the result with a very nice return on her investment.

Winners!

Farewells and other bits

Our farewell dinner with Ian’s family was held at a local Vietnamese Restaurant. We have been warmly enveloped by the Denny family and we were looking forward to getting together with them again. There were Ian’s parents Barry & Christine, his two brothers Matt and Mike, and his cousin Julie & Brian. They are all so easy going and fun to get along with, we were assured of a great evening.

Back row: Matt, Ian, Antony, Alex, Mike

Front row: Chris, Bernice, Julie, Barry, Brian, Roy

Let’s just say that the food was great, the drinks flowed and the Sambucca shots that seemed to keep coming at the end of the evening made for a fun end to the night!

Matt channeling his inner Vietnamese.

They all decided that Christmas 2019 would definitely be celebrated in New Zealand with all wanting to experience a totally different type of climate for the festive season. They are all saving madly in anticipation of their big adventure to the antipodes.

We didn’t always go out together as a family, Ants and Alex met up in town on a few occasions and then we would get some random collection of photos to let us know they were having a good time.

these two out for cocktails and silly indoor golf!

or I get random photos of…guess what we are having for dinner?

And it’s not all gourmet food…..check out this one that Antony and Ian sent to us when they were left home alone after having been at the football all day!

who knew that there was such a thing as “chicken dinosaurs”? Let’s just say that boys will be boys and will do anything to get a reaction out of Mum!

A lot of cooking was done at home over the time we spent in London with Alex doing a bit of baking as well. One day she decided to make Neenish Tarts, just like Grandma used to make. For those of you who don’t know what these are they are a sweet pastry base with a creamy lemony filling and iced with half chocolate and half white icing. They are an antipodean delight and one of my favourites. I can attest that Alex’s version were fabulous and every bit as good as her Grandmas.

Alex channeling her inner grandma!

We also went along to watch Alex play netball on numerous occasions, wrapping up against the biting cold and at times it was not at all pleasant and I hankered for NZ summer weather…..but now we are back and in the searing heat wave and humidity we are experiencing I can now confess that I am hankering for those chilly days where we can rug up against the cold, enjoy a hot toddy or two and cheer from the side lines. Her team mates made us feel very welcome and we even enjoyed the odd night out with them too. Oh and yes, you guessed it, I didn’t take one picture at the netball!

Our last few days were all a bit of a whirl, with us all pretending that our departure date was not imminent.

Then comes those dreaded goodbyes, they don’t come any easier and even though we have plans for future meet ups to look forward to, it does not make it any the less emotional. All in all, we have all had a great time creating lots of wonderful memories.

Trains and netball

Wellington is a one and a half hour train trip from Masterton, earlier in the week Natalie had mentioned that netball was on in Wellington on Monday evening and would I like to go with her? Of course I said yes, so Natalie organised the tickets 

 

and I sorted out the train trip.  

The train left Masterton and 3.45pm arriving in Wellington at 5.15pm which meant we could meet, get a bite to eat, before getting to theTSB bank Arena on the Wellington waterfront for a 7.30pm start.  My return train left Wellington at 10.25pm getting back to Masterton around midnight….or so I thought!

I got on the train in Masterton and when the conductor came along to issue my ticket, I asked for a return ticket, oh no she says, that late train only runs on a Friday!!  Hmmmm, someone must read the timetable better!   OK, plan B then.  I quickly contact Natalie and say that I will now be staying the night with her, and then contacted Roy to tell him he will be home alone tonight! 

I duly arrived in Wellington rail station to be met by Natalie, we headed to the event centre to park and then went off looking for a bite to eat – Wagamama it was to be.  Funnily enough, Monday 4th April was 5 years ago to the day that we met up with Natalie before we crossed over to the South Island just after we bought the van. Read about it here

Then it was time to head to the game.  Neither Natalie no myself have ever taken a “selfie” before so after I tried and failed, Natalie had a go…. 

 this was the result!   We decided selfies were a silly idea.

  The teams warming up.
No more photos were taken as we were too busy watching and cheering.  A very good game of netball that went right down to the final whistle.

Then it was back to Natalie’s house for a few hours sleep before it was an early start the next morning to first catch the train into Wellington then the train to Masterton.  By 10am I was back at the van, where we quickly packed up and were on our way to Woodville to meet up with friends Brian & Marj.