Last
Thursday we heard from a friend that her daughter, my friend Karen, had an
infected toe and was in hospital. Because Karen is diabetic everyone naturally
wanted to make sure that she had nothing major going on with her feet. So, even
though we didn’t want to leave Rangi this holiday, we decided that it would be
a good idea to head to the city to visit Karen at Auckland Hospital (would you
believe Ward 75!?) and stock up on things like bread that were likely to go off
by Friday.
We’d
been in email contact with Karen’s mum over the past few days and her message
yesterday was that it would be better to wait until Wednesday as the
specialists would be seeing her today and that she wasn’t expected to be
released from hospital until Tuesday or Wednesday next week. As the family were
hoping to leave for a holiday in Oz at Easter, this wasn’t good news.
This
morning, before we headed around to the boat, I checked our emails and discovered
an email from Aunty Sally. She’d received a phone call from Karen to say that she
was being released from hospital today!
Fantastic!
Of
course this meant that we didn’t have to spend longer in the big smoke and
could get our shopping done and catch the 12.15 boat back to Rangi. (We’ll be
seeing the family on Friday.) So we set off for Auckland on the unofficial 10am
boat. We weren’t alone on the ferry and we helped a young mum who lives on
Motutapu Island with her bags as she struggled with her daughter (who’s only been
walking a couple of months and will have the pleasure of being able to say that
she’s walked from Rangitoto to Auckland – with mum in tow – before she was
two).
After
a stop off at the bank to stock up on cash, we went to the New World Metro
supermarket, which is in the grand old BNZ building – or at least behind the façade
of the grand old BNZ building. It’s only a small underground store, doesn’t
have a lot of variety, and has a confusing layout, but at least it’s Kiwi
owned.
But
we managed to forget the tea. So we went to the Aussie-owned Countdown that, I
hate to say, is bigger, better, and easier to use. I bought the Lotto ticket
that’s going to win at some point in the next ten weeks and a couple of $2.00
Instant Kiwis, while D.C. got the tea – liquorice, and berry. That is two
separate flavoured teas, not an ‘interesting’ combination.
Next
stop was to find some lunch. We were stopped on our walk by a couple of men
trying to sign us up for to give regular donations for the Fred Hollows
Foundation. For those of you who don’t know, Fred Hollows was a New Zealander
who, for $25 per operation, has helped restore the sight of many people in
poorer countries by giving them much needed cataract operations. (And when you
consider that in New Zealand you either have to wait years the public service or
pay thousands to go private for the same operation, that’s remarkable.) It’s
undeniably a worthwhile cause, and if when we win Lotto we will donate
to it, but in the meantime I stuck to my rule that I give to conservation and
rescue organisations.
We
wound up at the food hall in the Atrium on Elliot. I’ll admit that I’m not very
adventurous when it comes to food so I had chicken strips with salad and Manuka
honey mustard sauce. After that it was back down to the Ferry Buildings (seen
in that background of that photo they kept on showing on the news of the pilot of
the Malaysian Flight 370 that has disappeared – he must have taking a “selfie”
on a Fullers Ferry). I bought us a spare $80 ten ride Rangitoto ticket and a gelato
each, and then we caught the Ferry back to paradise.
And
read for the rest of the afternoon.
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