Parental advisory

Actually, parental visit, but when have I ever bothered about accurate diary titles? :-p

Dad and Stepmother came up yesterday for a visit (well, Dad came up, Stepmother was actually on her way back from watching the Rugby 7s in Wellington, so decided to stop off here for the night instead of carrying on down to Alex). Dad’s looking a lot healthier already, and of course was determinedly ignoring his doctor’s advice to take things easy – an oft repeated conversation this weekend has been “You’re supposed to be resting” “I am, but I’ll just do this…”

I’d told him we didn’t want him to do anything around the house, but when he got here, he noticed there’s a couple of slats missing from the fence, so he suggested he take us to the hardware shop to get some wood to replace them. I agreed (on condition that he just get the wood, and leave fixing the fence to us), but of course, as soon as we got back (after detours to the supermarket, and a stationery shop, and a department store, and… basically, any errand that came up in conversation as something I was planning to do “sometime”, would become “We might as well do that now while I’m here with the car”), he was off into the garage rummaging through the tools and had the fence fixed before we had a chance to argue… and then of course he went on to fix a dripping tap, improve our temporary fix on that weird gushing pipe in the back yard, fix a split hose in the irrigation system, and was making a start on pruning the roses before I finally managed to stop him. When Stepmother showed up, she said she’s had equal lack of success in getting him to slow down – what Dad calls “taking it easy”, anyone else would call “working incredibly hard”…

We went out for dinner last night, to Alva Rados, a nice mexican place in town. A very nice meal, and I released a couple of books on a bookshelf (which is used for displaying pottery, not books – what sacrilege!!!) in the restaurant’s foyer. I didn’t have any suitably South American or Spanish books for a real themed release, so I just released The Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin (who spent a lot of time in South America), and Aelred’s Sin by Lawrence Scott (which has a picture of a Catholic-looking priest on the cover (and the restaurant has several large wooden crosses as part of the decorative scheme)). Dad was disappointed that they hadn’t been caught yet when I checked my email this morning – he’s quite fascinated by the concept of Bookcrossing, although not interested in taking part himself.

Dad and Stepmother left this morning, planning to take the drive back down to Alexandra slowly, but as they were leaving, Dad was already overruling Stepmother’s suggestion that she drive so that he could rest – “I’ll just drive until we get out of town, and then you can take over”… What’s the bet he actually drives the whole way?

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