Four-Day Match

We've been a bit boring recently, due to ill weather and illness, so haven't been out much...but on Sunday, we were all set for a day out.

Wellington Firebirds, our local cricket team, have been involved in a monumental tussle with Auckland Aces in a four-day match at the Basin Reserve. After three days, the Aces were on 238/7, and the fourth day looked like it would be a cracker.

We headed down to the Basin Reserve in time to catch the last hour of the morning session. Auckland reached 277 in 13 overs in the morning before declaring, setting Wellington a target of 276 with 77 overs to score them in. When we arrived they’d already dropped a wicket and were drifting along at 17/1.

As we approached the ground, there didn’t seem to be much activity. As you walk along Cambridge Terrace you can see the scoreboard from outside the ground, but we couldn’t see anyone on the bank, which is usually crowded with people. When we got to the gate, there was no-one there to sell us a ticket. It appears that entrance to four-day games is completely free. Despite this, very few had actually turned up. We’d been expecting the same deal as when we’d gone to the Twenty20 series at the end of last year, and in January when I’d headed down to watch the penultimate day of the second test.

Of course, one of the downsides to this is that none of the concessions were open, and when the teams marched off to lunch, there was no Hell On Wheels for us to do likewise. So we left the ground and retraced our steps along Kent Terrace, to have lunch at the Capitol Restaurant. As we were on our way there, we spotted Strawberry Fare, a place which had been recommended to us by various people…so we resolved to visit it on our way back to the ground. Strawberry Fare is noted for its puddings – whilst they do have main courses on offer, most folk give those a miss and head straight for the desserts. We did likewise, and very good they were too! After an enjoyable lunch we headed back to the ground, to find Wellington had dropped another wicket, and weren’t really keeping up with the RRR.

Silly fielding positions

Gloom and despondency set in, despite the warm sunshine and almost cloudless sky. However, the new batsman was Neal Parlane, a stalwart of the Wellington batting, and he soon played himself in. He made a fifty stand with the opener Brodie, then lost his next partner fairly quickly. But then he was joined by Joe Smellie and, with the help of a couple of big overs along the way, they managed to stay on top of the run rate, and they batted out the innings; making a century whilst Smellie made a fifty, with a couple of overs to spare.

View from the grassy bank

We pondered on the economics of this. All the players were being paid to be there, as were the ground staff. There were, perhaps, a total of fifty spectators. We kept thinking that new people were turning up, until we realised that they were using the cricket ground as a shortcut between two streets. We’d turned up fully expecting to pay admittance – the usual exorbitant fee of $15! How does this work? Who benefits? Answers, as usual, in the comments, please!

Name And Shame

We’ve been out for dinner at quite a few restaurants in Wellington. Some of these purport to be top-class dining...they certainly seem to be charging for it. And yet, they seem to get a few things wrong. Sometimes quite minor, sometimes fairly major.

Tonight, we went out for dinner at the White House Restaurant, on Oriental Parade. This is reputed to be one of the best restaurants in Wellington, and if you read their reviews and customer comments on Dineout you’d certainly think so. And, to be fair, it really should be one of the best restaurants in Wellington.

You can tell already, can’t you? Right, let’s get on with it: To begin with, we were seated and offered drinks. These came after about 10 minutes – an orange juice and a vodka & tonic…with plastic straws in them. Classy, eh?

Next up, we were served with amuses bouches in the form of snapper ceviche and cucumber jelly. Really quite nice. The waitress cleared the plates away:

“Did you enjoy your amuses bouches?”

“Yes” replied Nicola, “my bouche was very amused.”

“Never heard that one before” was the sarky comeback from the waitress.

The starters, when they arrived, were competently-seared scallops and a crab raviolo (described on the menu as ravioli, but we can’t all be experts in Italian, can we?...well, actually, if you’re running a top-class restaurant, you really should know this).

When the main courses arrived, they were tepid. They had clearly been sitting on the pass (get me with my restaurant terminology! A sure sign of spending too much time watching Masterchef) for a while as the purée had developed a crust. Things improved with the cheeseboard – we shared a plate of one English, one Spanish and three New Zealand cheeses, served with home-made (apparently) raisins and half a poached pear.

After tea and coffee, we found that it was gone eleven o’clock. So, over three and a half hours to serve a three-course meal. They must be watching the snails and tortoises whizz past in the kitchen. Thank god we didn’t go for the degustation menu – we’d still be sitting there come breakfast time at that rate.

So far, of four top-class restaurants that we’ve sampled, three have been found wanting in some respect. The only place we’ve been to so far that hasn’t cocked it up in some way is Matterhorn.

Chocolate Ice Cream

So, I thought I’d make some chocolate ice cream. I looked up a few recipes on the internet, and eventually settle on one. Then I adapted it, because when I was making the custard, I thought it didn’t look dark enough brown...so instead of adding 150g of dark chocolate, I chucked the whole 250g bar in.

500 ml cream

250 ml milk

250 g chocolate

110 g caster sugar

4 egg yolks

Usual method to make the custard – heat the cream and milk gently, and add the chocolate, and stir until completely melted and almost boiling. Whisk the egg yolks together with the sugar (I now have a handy rotary whisk to do this with), and add a bit of the chocolate cream at a time, mixing as you go. Then return the whole lot to the saucepan and heat gently until it thickens (the proverbial “coats the back of a wooden spoon” test).

Tasted it tonight – it was yummy! Nicola didn’t like it though, so I’ll just have to eat it all myself.

The Boys Are Back In Town

This weekend, the NZI Rugby Sevens come to town. The tournament is played over Friday and Saturday at the Westpac Stadium. Today there was a parade of all the teams through the centre of Wellington, with their cheerleaders. I didn’t manage to see the whole parade in my lunch break, but from what I saw the Argentinians definitely had the best cheerleaders!

The England team went through on their float.

Tickets for the tournament sell out very quickly, and many people rely on getting them through corporate allocations. We were too late this year, but I think we’ll go and do it one year sometime in the near future. It’s traditional for Wellingtonians to wear fancy dress for the tournament, so we look forward to seeing those over Friday and Saturday – and possibly posted on here over the weekend. On Saturday night, Courtenay Place is closed to traffic and it turns into one giant party venue once the tournament is over.

New Terms

Dancing restarted a couple of weeks ago – this term we’re learning the rumba, samba, and improving our other dances – in particular (so far) our foxtrotting. And the quiz at the Backbencher started again on Tuesday – we started the season off with a creditable 2^nd place – would’ve won if we’d got the connection round right!

The Soundshell

It’s summer time in Wellington, and one part of the city’s programme of events is the ASB Gardens Magic concert series, which is, as the name suggests, a series of concerts. In a garden. The Botanical Gardens, to be precise, which has an area known as the Soundshell, built precisely for this purpose.

The concerts stretch over 3 weeks, and we’ve been meaning to go to one for a while now…but the weather has either been inclement or there’s been something else happening on the night we wanted to go. Finally, however, we made it on Wednesday.

Many moons ago, we won the quiz at the Shepherd’s Arms in Tinakori Road. Due to the fact that I rarely go to Tinakori Road, we hadn’t in fact been back there (although Nicola visits it every Monday, to rehearse with the choir), we hadn’t used out winnings, which came in the form of a bar tab for $50. Tinakori Road is, however, extremely adjacent to the Founder's Entrance to the Botanical Gardens, where the Soundshell is. This, we decided, was the perfect opportunity to use our winnings, so we went and had dinner there of Thai beef salad and blue cod ‘n’ chips, washed down with some Speight’s beer in my case and a glass of the inevitable sauvignon blanc in Nicola’s.

We’d brought along some of our picnic equipment – blanket, glasses and glass holders, to hold our bubbly. The concert proved to be a popular one, and all the flat area in the Soundshell was occupied when we got there, so we were in the reduced-visibility section on the surrounding slopes. 

Picnickers and pizza-eaters

We could see and hear what was going on, as Jesse James and the Outlaws gave of their best. The musical style was folk, and they played a couple of waltzes as well; they invited people to come up to the front and dance in competition for one of their CDs, but I think we were too far away to take the trip to the area in front of the stage. Looking on, no-one was really waltzing that well, so had we gone down I’m sure we would have swept the board with our well-honed waltzing chops. Another opportunity missed.

Jesse James and the Outlaws 

As the evening progressed the sky darkened, and the lights under the trees added to the atmosphere. 

Spookily-lit trees

The band continued to play until about 9:30pm, then we wended our way home over the crest of the hill in the Botanical Gardens, and downhill to The Terrace.

Blackcaps

Having lost the test series (of 2) 1-0, the Blackcaps are now taking on Pakistan in a 6 match ODI series. The first match was played at Wellington’s Cake Tin stadium, so we wandered down after lunch, as the game was scheduled to be a day-night affair under floodlights.

We were a bit late setting out, and when we got there the match had already been underway for three quarters of an hour. In that time, Pakistan had advanced to 30/3 – hardly an impressive start, and scoring at under 3 an over. The Blackcaps continued to chip away at them and Pakistan never really looked like getting going – despite the efforts of Misbah who managed a 50 off 89 balls, he eventually ran out of partners and Pakistan finished on a dismal 124 after 37.3 overs.

So, New Zealand came in to bat. Unfortunately, it was my turn to go and get the drinks and due to the huge queue at the coffee stall, I missed the first six overs. As I returned to my seat, they had advanced to 50 for no loss. For those of you doing the maths, this is more of a Twenty20 type score. Ryder had been doing the damage throwing his bat around. For the first over back in my seat (the seventh), NZ added 19 runs. Clearly, we thought, there must be something on the telly that they’re desperate not to miss!

After knocking out 50 in 29 deliveries, Ryder eventually succumbed for 55. That slowed the Blackcaps down a little, but not much. The scoring rate dropped down to single figures per over, but in the 18^th over they cracked the target with no further loss of wickets. A resounding win for New Zealand, hopefully setting them up for a better result in the ODI series.

Sponsorship

Isn’t corporate sponsorship wonderful?

There’s a company here that is the team sponsor of the Black Caps, as New Zealand’s cricket team are known (nearly all the sports teams are “the Black xxx” – notable exceptions are the All Whites and the Silver Ferns). And one of the things they do is hand out freebies to their staff. One such freebie is a voucher for 2 tickets to a test match, or a one-day international.

Today is the third day of the Second Test against Pakistan, being played at the Basin Reserve here in Wellington. And so it was that we found ourselves taking the final hour off work, and heading down to watch the final session after tea, and New Zealand taking 6 wickets to get Pakistan out for 376 (having themselves posted a total of 356). New Zealand then batted 5 overs for 9 runs and no loss.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast isn’t favourable – it looks like rain tomorrow, and showers the day after, so it will probably end in a draw. But weather forecasters have been wrong before, so we’ll keep an eye out, and fingers crossed.