Hail and well met
We were woken last night at around midnight by a very dramatic thunderstorm, with almost continuous thunder and lightning, and incredibly heavy hail (they said on the news today that there were marble-sized hailstones – I wasn’t going outside to check!) In the morning, there were still patches of unmelted hail on the ground – I think winter has just arrived.
Our usual last-Sunday-of-the-month breakfast this morning – the usual crowd (lytteltonwitch, awhina and meerkitten, natecull, and non-fiction) were there, plus freesia, a British bookcrosser on a one-year working holiday in New Zealand. She’s been living in Wanaka for the last few months, but came up to Christchurch for the weekend, so came along to breakfast to meet us all. The rain and hail came back while we were in the cafe, but we had a very pleasant morning sharing books and stories, so that our “breakfast” actually went on well into the afternoon. I took the m-bag books (listed in yesterday’s diary entry, so I won’t repeat them here), and quite a few of them got picked up, so my bag theoretically was a lot lighter coming home. “Theoretically” because of course I picked up a few more books (yes, I know, my TBR pile is already tottering, but they all looked so interesting!):
Gardens of Fire by Stevan Eldred-Grigg
Coral Island by RM Ballantyne
Sun Dog by Monique Roffey
The Savage Girl by Alex Shakar
The Actresses by Barbara Ewing
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling
The rest of the afternoon and this evening were spent on the knight and lady embroider. It’s getting there slowly – if I can spend a few hours on it tomorrow, I should get it pretty much finished. I hope…
Got another catch from the convention: The Cat on the Doverfell by Tomie De Paola was picked up in the Arts Centre, and is now in Australia.