The kindness of friends

Amid all the scary stuff that is going on at the moment, it is the kindness of friends that lifts our spirits.

Wendy did our supermarket shopping on Tuesday. I made cheese scones for her to take home to the family, and I did make sure David put the money in her account before he had a wine...

I know you are bored with pictures of cheese scones but too bad! 8 for the Bryant family, 2 for Kay, the rest for David and me - at the time of writing there are still 2 left waiting to be toasted!

Wendy and I spoke from a distance of about 3 or 4 metres, and it was lovely to see her. She brought chardonnay (of course), chippies (both those latter two were her suggestions), mushrooms, a bit of fruit, cans of coconut milk, tuna and chickpeas - separate cans of course. What a godawful combination that would be! Now a pause to hunt for the vomiting emoji ...😱😰👎 Can't find it on Blogger, so you will have to imagine it.

Jillian came to the window on Monday to say hello as she went out for a walk. And on Wednesday she came and sprayed our roses and our lemon tree and I also collected some lemons from her tree before she sprayed it. (Today I am going to go over and pick lots of her rhubarb - she said I could. It is huge!! Almost tree-like!)

Other younger neighbours - yes we do have a few around here but not many - have offered to do shopping for us oldies, and Corinne found the delivery service being offered by a fruit and vegetable place in Otaki, because she said she knew that a number of us usually rely on the Waikanae Saturday market. We do, and it will be missed.

David and I saw a fair few teddies in windows around the neighbourhood on our walk the other day.

Mel and the owls are watching out for passing children ...

Corinne and Dave's house cannot be seen from the street, so they have a painted bear!

Some are harder to see, but they are there!

Some are very little ...

Others are not bears but even so they cause a smile and excited laugh as we heard from a mum and her 3 kids out on their bikes and coming along behind us!

Amazing how many people have teddies! Maybe people are wrong when they say that my brother in law is strange; although he does have about 120 bears all up. Well, far fewer now as he has given some to his grandkids.

Reflections obscure this one, sorry, but there he is in his sunny yellow T-shirt!

This bear is in Rhys's ute - the sun was shining very brightly so the reflections were impossible to avoid - sorry about that!

This is not a bear. This is David by the Waikanae River when we were out walking the other day. About 500metres from our place is the river and farmland. We are so lucky to have it all so close!

I made a mask for us each and David has modelled his here for your pleasure:

Wearing his dad's Belgian bargeman's cap (I think) - I reckon he looks like the bank robber in the children's book When the Wind Changed. Tim thought he needed a dark shirt to be more authentically in that character - so clearly, Tim remembers that book either from his own childhood or from reading it to his boys.

A more seasonally appropriate look, don't you think?

We have been playing a lot of 5 Crowns with friends on FaceTime and WhatsApp:

We have played with

• Joy and Grahame (Waikanae), 
• Salvi and Ann (Stoke), 
• and latterly Salvi and Ann plus Chris and Ann (Stoke), 
• and also Mick and Julia in Desborough, UK.

Must have been up to Queens given there are 12 cards in their hands ... David is clever and took a screen shot.

I made this fabulous looking vege curry and got carried away with the amount of chilli flakes so it's too hot for me - even with lots of yoghurt! David did not appear at all concerned that he would have to eat all of it.

Yesterday's lunch - ciabatta with grilled cheese as the basis of a deconstructed BLAT - must make it again.

This morning, for breakfast he had homemade tomato soup and toasted cheese scones

In NZ it appears most people are being very good about staying home and staying safe - and saving lives by not being out and about. The Police Commissioner said in a briefing a couple of days ago that they had arrested 3 people and released two of them, one was still being held because of 'other matters'. A phrase that always raises my curiosity ...

We have, as always, been keeping an eye on (for that, read: watching obsessively) the situation in the US - what a sh*tshow it is there!

Here I am in articulately and formidably assertive mode giving some severe feedback to someone who had written that the dumpster didn't say the things that he has been recorded/videoed as saying and that the Democrats should stop picking on him... AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Mmm, I wonder who that could be about???

We are SO SO SO SO SO SO very very very lucky to have Jacinda and her team.

Here's a couple of other things that have come across my social media feeds:

That's it for the moment - but I have another post being written in my head already about bugs ...