This was my second bout of SVP volunteering this week – I also pitched in at my conference’s fortnightly food bank on Thursday morning. That was an eye-opener.

There was a pretty big crowd in, which was cool. People here are still riding the happy wave after winning the Rugby World Cup last year. And the good people responsible for sorting out these things have struck gold with their ticketing policy: general admission tickets for adults were only $20 a pop. We took Katie and Nigel, and Tom, our nice neighbour’s nice teenaged son.

Sadly, the Blues lost by one point. Piri Weepu tried to kick a last-minute droppie and snatch the victory, but he didn’t quite manage to get the necessary height. Oh well.

Earlier in the day I taught the two of them how to play gin rummy. In the first game I won with 38 points – Nigel was second with 312 and Katie was whupped and finished on 473. In the second game they had their revenge: Katie won with 182, Nigel was second with 191, and I was taught a lesson in manners and ended up on 358. I hate it when that happens.

I think she was blowing a raspberry.

This, gentle reader, is my first piece of work for a national publication.  It’s an article for NZ Business, a business magazine, and it discusses the ways in which smaller businesses can incorporate sustainability principles into their operations, to benefit both them and their communities.  I’ve agreed to write a series of articles on this topic for NZ Business, so I’m working on the second article right now.  I hope that this will be the first in a long line of freelance writing projects that I can tackle!

And – as an extra treat – here she is with her equally lovely father Geoff:

I really like triathlon as a spectator – you can’t see what’s going on during the swim, but the other two parts of the race usually involve laps of a course, so you can find a good vantage point and see a lot of action.

And jeez, these women are impressive athletes. It’s awesome to see.

We regularly go to the kitchen and find that she’s eaten exactly one half of her food, or a third of it. And often she’ll refuse to eat anything until she’s been for a walk. We sometimes wonder whether she’s developed a weird canine form of anorexia athletica.

It’s an enormous Union Jack, which I’m embroidering on very finely woven fabric. I think there’s something like 18 stitches to every inch, so if I go blind one day it will probably be because of this project! I’m making it with faded reds and blues, and ecru instead of white – I’m going for a vintage effect. When it’s finally finished (at some very distant point in the future) I intend to get it framed and keep it. It will be the first piece of embroidery that I’ve created just for me!

Of course, most of the time I occupy myself with practical, unexciting tasks – taking out the rubbish, hanging out the washing, that kind of thing.  However, this afternoon I was suddenly struck by the urge to whip up something pointless and yummy.  So I made this:

It’s hokey pokey, party people (or ‘honeycomb’, if you’re not from around these parts – in other words, it’s the stuff that you find in the middle of a Crunchie bar).  It might be one of the first things that I can remember making as a young girl, and I don’t imagine that I’m the only one who used her early culinary talents in this way: hokey pokey is cool fun to make because it fizzes up excitedly when you add the baking soda towards the end of the process.

And it’s very sugary, but quite delicious.