July has been a month of visitors and guests.
It is the month when nature photography diminishes to nothing as the wet season
and usually the forest-fire haze approaches.
First John and Carolyn Grey came to stay with
us for several days. Their son’s wife is the newly appointed deputy High Commissioner
to Singapore. They visited them then on to us and then by bus back to KL then return to Singapore. John was a year ahead of me at Pharmacy School and bombed his exams
so we ended up there in the same year. We both did our apprenticeship in
Dunedin. John had a successful pharmacy in Hokitika and we stayed with then for
2 nights after Nikki’s graduation. John has retired and has an apartment in
Wellington and a house in Wanaka. While they were here they were shown some of
the culture. John joined us in the pub quiz while the girls explored a lesser
cultural event. We had an interesting morning in an art garden in the hills
where a glass artist has tried to blend his craft in a natural setting.
I took John, who is a keen photographer, to see the Bee-eaters. There were some still feeding nests but you have to be quite discriminatory as the adults all look a bit ragged from many trips into the hole.
I was tickled to see a recent fledgling...flying (and perching) freely (they have mainly green heads where the adults have a brown (chestnut) colour. Also has not grown the long tail feathers.
Several days after the Greys left David and Lyn
arrived for several nights. They skilfully avoided the pub quiz but the
brothers did get to criticize some referees while the girls got as far away as
possible. We had one outing where we crossed to the mainland on the ferry and witnessed
the silent auction as the fishermen brought in their catch for the day. D and L
had a very early start on a Saturday morning to resume their tour of Southeast
Asia.
We have continued our good run in the pub quiz.
We have had three firsts and two seconds in July. We had accumulated enough money in a
pool derived from the jackpot questions to have a dinner out. We chose to go to
the elegant Suffolk House where John and Baby, Helen and I and Mike had a nice
evening.
We had a jealous dog for a day. On my way to
the supermarket I noticed a fledgling crow was by the side of the road. I
escorted him to a better shady place and hoped the two adults squawking above
would take care of him. I thought he may have dropped prematurely from a nest
but he was well developed. The second theory was he had been hit by a car. He
was still there in danger of being a cat’s dinner….so I picked it up and
placed it in the empty glass aquarium at home. Coco gave a rumbling growl for
about 4 hours. The fledgling flapped around after an hour or two and escaped
the glass confine. He fluttered to a shrub and on later examination, like
Elvis, had left the building.
A week or two after the film Dunkirk was
released …the quiz team went to Gurney, had lunch then watched the film. It was
shot in film on an Imax camera and the recommendation is to watch it in an Imax
cinema. We managed to do this and were all most impressed. The film has been
getting rave reviews from around the world. Directed by Christopher Nolan who
claims it is not a war film but a story of survival. It has a PG13 rating which
means there is not a lot of blood and guts. There are no lead actors or
actresses and very little dialogue. There are three points of view taken….from
the land, the sea and the air. Overall it is a masterpiece of cinematography
with 13,000 extra being used on the beaches of Dunkirk. In reality there were close to
400,000 men evacuated in less than a week in 1940…..which meant the war did not end in
1940 (the first image is from a painting which give an impression of the chaos and numbers).
The boat 'Moonstone' actually took part in the evacuation.
Helen has had quite a few or her students away
so has had a light teaching month. We have had a number of AirBnB guests in
between. The one that stands out was a bubbly Chinese female who called herself
Woody. Not named after the woodpecker but the lead character in Toy Story. She
left us a very nice note. Currently we have Elizabeth from the US, who is a journalist and has a PhD in Educational Psychology. She
is looking to rent here and move to Penang....she also joined us for the pub quiz.
