Back to work

It is very early in the morning - just after 5am. After a month on holiday, I've forgotten how to get up before dawn, before the birds even. It's back to work today, and I have that back to school feeling. I've made great progress on the house painting, in large part thanks to Mum and Dad, who have been helping out with gardening, painting and household repairs so that I can spend the afternoons in 1841. Anyway, I still have to finish the final top-coat of paint, and do the window trims, but one side of the house looks vastly improved - so much so that I kind of want to keep going and finish the whole lot. If the weather stays like this for the next few weekends, I will see how much I can get done.

Yesterday was incredibly hot and humid. It was a relief to be indoors with the fan going - which some of the time was a gentle November breeze blowing on William and Sarah as they stood on the deck of the Gertrude and surveyed their new home. I can till taste the salt-laden air. This morning I'll be back there - a literal commute to Wellington, rather than 1841, although I see the city in layers - as it is now, as it has been over the almost 30 years that I've lived and worked there, as it was during the early days when William and Sarah were there. I walk past them in the street sometimes - every night when I walk to the railway station (which is on reclaimed land, in an area that was water in 1841), I walk right past the place where they lived, past the Thistle Inn where William might have had a beer after work, and I think about them.

But for now, breakfast and 2008 await!