Meetup and moving

Well that turned into a busy sort of day. It started with a breakfast meetup at Trattorie, attended by me, lytteltonwitch, awhina, Mr awhina, meerkitten and giraffe02, and angela7715. As always, London and the Bookcrossing World Tour were the main topics of conversation, plus the clean up of the database (who knew a simple question in the yahoo group about whether the Manawatu includes Wanganui would incite so much debate!), and the usual gossip and book chat. And this time it was awhina’s turn to flash her (disturbingly hairy) breast around. A fun morning, and lots of books changing hands, plus plenty left at the end to top up the OBCZ.

I passed on Christmas Carols for Cats by Julie and John Hope and Extreme Office Crafts by Jimmy Knight and Tom Chalmers, and added Clan Ground by Clare Bell to the OBCZ. And I acquired Stillriver by Andrew Rosenheim, The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons, and Can’t You Bastards Read? by Mark Lynch.

After the meetup, lytteltonwitch and I were discussing rarsberry‘s imminent arrival in Christchurch, and decided it would be fun to leave a book on her doorstep as a surprise welcome gift. I had just the book: Tales of Long Ago by Enid Blyton, which awhina had released into *my* letterbox a week or so ago – it seems destined to travel from letterbox to letterbox 🙂 Of course, we didn’t actually know what her address was, but we knew the name of the street, and had seen some photos, so thought we could probably find it. So we headed off to Woolston, and (after a bit of a false start when a street that looked like it would go exactly where we wanted turned out to have a river in the way) found the right street. We drove along slowly, looking for the house from the photos (which I remembered as white brick), but couldn’t see anything that looked familiar. There was a pathway along the river at the back of the houses, so we walked along that, peering through gaps in the fences to try and see something we recognised. I’m convinced one day our adventures are going to get us arrested!

In the end, we gave up and went back to lytteltonwitch’s to have another look at the photos on trademe. But because the auction was closed, they’d taken down the photos. We tried various things to extract archives of the photos, but no luck. So we decided to go over to lytteltonwitch’s ex’s place to pick up a log I wanted for a chopping block, and then go back to Woolston for one last cruise along the street.

On the way we ended up behind a car towing a covered trailer. “There’s furniture in that,” I commented, “Do you think… nah, it’s a Christchurch hire company, not Dunedin, it won’t be them.” Then we were distracted by a woman with a large dog having an argument with her imaginary friend, and lost sight of the trailer.

When we got to Woolston, and pulled into rarsberry’s street, we saw the trailer again. We didn’t recognise the people in the car, but we stopped anyway, and I asked the woman if she knew rarsberry and vivarichie (except I used their real names, of course!). She looked a bit shocked, but said yes, she was vivarichie’s mother. We introduced ourselves, and helped unload the trailer while we waited for rars and richie to arrive.

They were suitably surprised when they turned up and there we were sitting on their lounge suite in the middle of the lawn 🙂 (they had the keys, so we couldn’t move anything into the house until they arrived). We helped unload the rest of their stuff, and carry it all into the house. Once we were finished, it was late afternoon, so I suggested that rather than them trying to search out their kitchen stuff they should come back to my place for tea. So we all piled back into lyttletonwitch’s car (after spending a few minutes shifting enough books from the back seat to give everyone room to sit, and then another few minutes raiding the neighbours plum trees overhanging the drive), stopped off at the supermarket for some bits and pieces to supplement the kebabs I’d bought earlier for my and MrPloppy’s dinner, and managed to put together a reasonable meal before rarsberry could fall asleep on the couch.

Not entirely how I’d originally intended to spend the day, but fun anyway (we did release the books, by the way – we lined them up below the cat flap), and great to see rarsberry again. It’s going to be strange having her up here, but a great boost to our meetups. I wonder how Dunedin will cope without her, though?

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