Sunday 15^th July

Very wintry weather, with sleety squalls blasting across the foothills of Mount Wellington.  A very nice day to stay inside and do…nothing much at all, really.  Pete is working on his accounts and I am…cooking beef, onion and Guinness pies.  In between following the (Masterchef…) recipe, I am sitting comfortably on a recliner, reading.  Life is good!

This time last year Pete was also working on his accounts, on board 2XS, in the marina in Noumea.  I spent my days very happily pootling around on my bike, sitting in the Café au Bout du Monde writing emails and battling with the very temperamental WiFi, and foraging for food.

I have been the cause of much unholy merriment in my work place. 

If I had made a list of Eleven Things I felt the world needed to know about me, I might have put: I am very obliging and am not a particularly forceful person.  Not always an advantage, in life or in the workplace, but them’s the breaks.  Over the last few weeks I have been working through old files which are sitting patiently in my filing cabinet waiting for whatever comes next.  I have come up with a polite but formal letter, requesting a status update so that I can set matters down for further hearing, or close them down for good and all.  Off go these letters, mostly by email, to various individuals and organisations.  It has been very satisfying, in a mild way, to get prompt responses and to be able to finalise this and that longstanding matter.

Last week we were told that my formal little requests have caused consternation and panic amongst…well amongst people who don’t know me… One of the union officials who does know me came in for a visit and made both Tim and Allan laugh very heartily when she told them that one of her colleagues in another union had said he had received communications from the ball-breaking associate at my workplace.  They stared at her, uncomprehending, for a few minutes, then said, “Marguerite??  Really?” before bursting into unseemly fits of laughter.