Swallows yet again

It's very hard to get photos of these flighty little guys (presumably 1 guy and 1 girl). This is one of the pairs of Welcome Swallows that are building the nests you saw in yesterday's post. They perch on this skylight to preen, rest and look at us suspiciously. So very cute. In case you hadn't already guessed, I'm a bit of a bird nut (you can blame my mother for that) and it is truly exciting to me that they're building a nest where I can see it.

Today has been an absolutely fabulous day with no wind. The paraponters have been floating down over head all day, visitors to the gondola just lazing around in the car park and not so long ago, 3 young guys skateboarding in the gondola car park. Everyone is very relaxed. I haven't been so relaxed because I'm taking tomorrow off and we're going on a classic car tour so have been trying to clear the decks a bit. But I'm definitely starting to feel the weekend coming on now.

The tour starts in Maruia at the local primary school at lunchtime with the locals catering lunch for all of us (I think there's 60 cars) as a fundraiser for the school. Then we off to the West Coast for 2 nights in Greymouth with a fair bit of driving in between. Unfortunately the weather is likely to be fairly moist - if its fine here on the east coast then its usually wet on the west. Our car leaks a bit as well so it will be everything in large plastic bags and hope for the best. These classic car events are always a lot of fun because they're very social and we've made many good friends over the years - its a great opportunity to catch up with everyone. One of the best things about them is that it forces you to take a weekend off from the daily grind of just living. Here's to holidays.