friends

i had lunch with buzz yonks ago and part of his tooth fell out.

here’s eugene and cathy eating lasagne in wellington

i had breakfast with my good mate big nosed ugly guy last week.  it was great. here he is in his office.

it’s big nosed ugly guy

i had a rather nice lunch with buzz last week.  and again today.  making plans and stuff.  good

here’s some of the fantastical goodies brought to us from great england by our good friend ian who is visiting on business.  lovely chap.  lovely chocs.  lovely bic biros.  lovely memory card.  lovely greetings card.  lovely hamma beads.  all lovely.  lovely.

i’ve got lots of chums in this new town and that’s a great thing.  here’s buzz, my oldest (in terms of know-age) NZ chum.

i’m not sure who my eldest friend in NZ is.  i’ll have to think about that one.

we had lovely friends round for tea last night.  the grown ups spent most of the evening doing this devilish jigsaw whilst the various kids entertained themselves elsewhere.  lovely.

i still don’t think i quite ‘get’ jigsaws, although i threw myself in to the challenge on this one.  it’s just a broken picture.  surely it would have been better not to cut it in to small pieces to begin with if you wanted to see the ‘finished’ version ?

and the internet’s big nosed ugly guy

despite it’s name, some people were incredibly pleased with their unlucky dip items.

some long lost friends phoned us up out of the blue and invited us for breakfast (at Asda) yesterday morning.  so we went and it was lovely to catch up with them before they zoomed off to legoland (hence their visit to these parts)

monday night we went round to ruth and steve’s for another last supper.  they are old family friends who knew both jane and i seperately even before we were going out (in fact ruth may have been partly responsible for us meeting as she ran the church music band where we met, and i think i remember a match-making lunch where she invited us both over …).

they are also one set of esther and kezia’s godparents, and Ruth is a proper northerner.  we’ll miss them heaps.

here is my mum with jane’s parents and kezia. 

we got photos of everyone before they left (well all except one family who did a runner before I had a chance to photo them).  not sure if i’ll post them on here, but it was great to see so many friends.  although the nature of a 10am to midnight party with friends throughout the day is that you don’t get a huge amount of time to talk to people. 

the house was busy during the core party hours of 11am to 11pm.  everyone is now tired and speechless.  and a litle sad.

we went out for a last supper with our lovely friends tony and tanya last night.  it was a bit of a last supper, although we’re expecting to see them again before we go.  everything we do at the moment seems to end with ‘oh i wish we’d done more of this’. 

T&T are among our closest friends and we will miss them.

the picture below is the picture above shown on the back of my camera then photoed by tony’s camera then photoed again on the back of his camera by me.  interesting how his camera has turned in to a big eye.

our lovely friends andy and gill invited us round for dinner last night.  not quite a last supper, but was great to spend time with them before we go.  gill cooked us some top nosh.  sorry you missed it.

i went out for a drink, a catchup and a bag of monster munch with my bestest mate paul last evening. 

driving back home after, it struck me that although we probably only meet up once or twice a year, it’s the fact that we could do it more often which means we don’t need to.  but i’ll miss it when we’re on the other side of the planet.

on the way back we saw this snail.

grahame was one of the early encouragers of funkypancake and is a purveyor of good quality comedy banter.