The Day That The Rains Came

Photo by Olivia Basile via unsplash

We have had no rain here in Wellington for the past couple of weeks we have been enjoying long hot summer days sitting outside with a glass of cold wine or a G&T well into the evening

But on Friday morning, Mother Nature decided to let us know who was in charge and the skies opened and the rain poured down.  And all that day and the next it continued. The gardens all appreciated the rain but not so those still on holiday. You may have seen on your local television the floods that have been hitting the upper North Island. Chris told me she saw it on her news.  So, what we’ve had in Wellington is the tail end of that storm.

Today has been mainly dry and hopefully, that will give those people who have been flooded out of their homes time to sort themselves out before the next onslaught which we are advised will happen in the next day or so.

But for me, this was a full-on weekend. On Friday evening with a friend, I went to see Ottolenghi the Israeli chef who has taken the world by storm.  Before the show, we had dinner at a newly opened restaurant.  This restaurant really lived up to all that was promised on its website.  The show itself was a little disappointing.  I’m not sure what I expected. Obviously, he couldn’t prepare and cook food on the stage in front of us. In fact, he did prepare one cold dish made-up of a variety of items that he had on hand and of course, we could all see this on the large screen that was up above the stage. 

Then Saturday dawned and it was still raining.  it was a friend’s birthday and so we had planned to all meet for lunch. We went to a favourite cafe set in the beautiful Botanic Gardens here in Wellington. It’s a very pleasant place to be particularly when the sun shines but yesterday everybody and everything was drenched, but the weather couldn’t dampen the spirits of the “birthday girl” and her three close friends.

It was decided that it was such a terrible day that we would go to the movies in the evening.  The birthday girl’s husband would join us and once again he would be the only man with four women three of whom are widows.

We went to see the Lost King. This tells the story of Phillipa Langley and Michael Jones’ hunt for the resting place of King Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of Britain.    It certainly was a fascinating tale of this woman, Phillipa Langley, MBE, who got engrossed thinking about Richard III and from there she spent all her time searching until eventually, with the help of Michael Jones and others, and against the advice of most other people they discovered the resting place under a car park in Leicester. I n 2012 the body of Richard III was exhumed and laid to rest finally in Leicester Cathedral.  

And once again, it shows what a single person with a purpose can achieve.

Note – According to the BBC ” Richard III, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, was reburied at Leicester Cathedral. He was originally interred at the church of the Greyfriars, a 13th-Century monastic friary. The church appears to have been demolished during the reign of Henry VIII.“

JB Wellington, NZ – January 29, 2023