Barbie Time

We were up with the lark as we had a lot to do in one day. To start with, I checked that I had received my first pay from the job…and yes, the credit was there on our bank account. We had already made a plan to celebrate this event – breakfast at Matterhorn, so off we toddled, down to Cuba Street. When we got there we found that it wasn’t open yet, so we got a weekend paper and went to a café for a coffee, whilst we waited for 10 o’clock.

Shortly after 10 we returned to Matterhorn, found them open, and ordered breakfast. Very good it was too, and I’m sure we’ll be back to check out the rest of the menu at a later date.

Next on the agenda was shopping. We have two events over this weekend – a barbecue on Saturday evening, and a lunch tomorrow, so we went down to the butcher’s, the fish shop, and the supermarket to stock up on everything we needed for these.

For the barbie, we had decided on hamburgers in wraps, rather than the more prosaic white buns. So, back home to make the burger mixture. Early in the evening we prepared ourselves with swimming gear, loaded up the picnic bags with beverages, burgers, sausages, salad and wraps, and headed down to Thorndon Pool, where the barbie was being held. The raison d’être was that two of Nicola’s Treasury colleagues were leaving to return to the UK after 2 years in Wellington…so there were a lot of Treasury folk about, some of whom I’d met before, so we were able to be sociable! The pool is heated, so there were no problems with the water, but the wind had picked up (those of you following the New Zealand test match against Pakistan probably know all about this) and it was a little chilly outside, particularly in the shade. Nicola braved the pool, but as I’d already started on the beer, and it was cooling down, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They had an inflatable floating assault-course type thing on the pool, like they use in Wipeout! Which Nicola had a go on. Unfortunately I didn’t get my camera out in time to get a shot of her wiping out, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Two guys took over the barbecue management and started cooking everything that had been piled on the side:

Afterwards we straggled home up the hill, in the teeth of the oncoming gale, for a quiet night in. Tomorrow – further adventures in the kitchen!