This letter was meant to be written at the start of the month, but somehow a couple of weeks have managed to slip by, while I was preoccupied with other stuff. Life just kind of got in the way, as it does sometimes.
We've come back from our Christmas break to a pleasantly busy restaurant, which naturally we're hoping is something that gets to continue for awhile. Fortunetly most of the large outcatering jobs that we have this summer are happening a bit later, which given the recent weather is something I'm very grateful for.
Trust me! - catering for large groups in a tent in the wet, proffers a whole new meaning to the word 'stress',and its one that we would prefer to avoid if we could. However I'm only too well aware that regretfully you can't preorder the weather, and have to make do with what is on offer on the particular day, becos I've noticed that unfortunetly people aren't predisposed to reschedule their weddings just becos its raining on the day, and is going to make life a little hairy for the caterers!
Ah well - we have all that ahead, and a great team around us, with whom we share a number of epic stories of major events during cyclones, and other never forgotten occasions. It all adds to the rich tapestry...
Last night was quieter in the restaurant and Rick and I took advantage of that to slip away so that we could be seated in front of the TV at 8.30pm to watch Sky Sport coverage of the 4 day Elite National Road Cycling Champs, which were held in Christchurch over the weekend just gone. Our youngest daughter had got silver in the Womens Road Race, which meant we got to see something of her in the televised coverage this year, and of course had the somewhat chest swelling experience of watching her on the podium at the end of the race. Very cool!
( You would think that the daughter of restaurateurs would know how to open a bottle of bubbly! - but no!, Courteney was the last to get her bottle open. Something she needs to practise obviously!!)
And since I'm always very quick to critique the media coverage of female sport relative to male, becos its invariably tokenism at best, I should perhaps mention in passing, that the 3 of us commented from our perch on the couch, that the balance in the coverage last night had been much more evenly maintained than we'd seen previously. So, genuinely meant kudos to Sky Sport! ( And what a marked contrast to the strange decision that I read about in the Herald the next day somewhat increduously, of some idiot in an A&P Show down South deciding to ban a female beer brewer from competing against her male counterparts, simply becos she was a woman. Umm..excuse me? What exactly does that have to do with it?!)
Courteney is back in Tauranga now for a few short weeks before she leaves for America, where she's got into one of the top Pro female teams, and will spend the next 7 months racing that circuit. A huge experience for her, and all very exciting, for both her, and her father, who will be following every developement with intense interest.
That will leave us pretty much home alone with the dogs for most of the year, becos Hannah is firmly ensconsed in Auckland these days, and has committements that don't leave her much free time to get down to Tauranga for any extended time. She finishes her postgrad diploma in the middle of the year, and the current plan is that she and Andrew will join us in Italy for our cookschools there, before heading onto the UK for a couple of months. She's then intending heading back to Varsity at the start of 2013 for yet more study, as you do!
I've always subscribed pretty intensely to the theory that girls can do anything, and it would be fair to say that I therefore love to see the opportunities that are out there in todays world for our daughters to embrace. There aren't too many A&P officials in their orbit, I'm pleased to note!
And so we roll into yet another trading year, mapping out what lies ahead - and over the next couple of months we get to catch up with people that we see this time every year when they come to this area on holiday, and watch families that we've known for ages come together for a meal out, before they disperse back to places of study or lifes in other towns and countries. It has a familar rythmn to it that I've come to cherish over the years, as I've watched people grow up, and move on from being preschoolers to adults themselves, some with children of their own. Apart from the unfortunate aspect of making me feel somewhat ancient in the process, it is rather a privilege to be a bystander in peoples lifes, I have decided.
Of course I'm only too well aware that the intervening year can hold all sorts of surprises, some wonderful and some utterly crushing, and it is therefore important that we take nothing for granted, becos we have no way of knowing what exactly is round the corner. Instead we have much that we should be thankful for - and we are.
The cookschool year starts in February, with the dates for that first series now listed on the website. Due to our trip to Italy in the middle of the year, we've had to shorten the first 2 series a little just so as to be able to fit them in on a reduced time frame. There are also plans afoot to introduce some specialist one off classes on top of our normal schedule, but more on that at a later date.
I can see my husband through the window - he's on his spinner out on the deck, and I've just been musing that I wish this was how all my family did their exercise, safely away from the roads and the traffic. But I know that isn't ever going to happen, so I just have to be grateful for the occasions when I don't have to worry about them, being out there on the roads.
We are heading out to a funeral soon though - a celebration of the life of a 100 year old very special man - and we both need to get ourselves organised.
Take care, look after yourselves and those you love, and we look forward to catching up soon.
