Super Busy Saturday in the Tomkinsons' New Hood

Saturday 6 December

Such a busy Saturday! As usual at Phar Lap we woke to the pounding of hooves as the horses had their daily gallops. I sat out in the morning sun with a cup of tea and my long lens Canon waiting for them to pass me on each lap and decorated my mini Christmas tree 🎄 One of the horses was quite interested and galloped past, watching me all the way! It was cute when they brought two of the young ones out behind us and did some training on the starting gates - he wasn't super keen!

Jez & Abby swung by and whizzed us off to Geraldine - coffee & delicious fruity preserves at Barkers (where even we lowered the average age with our arrival), cheese shopping (3 chunks of homemade haloumi for $10 - bargain), markets to browse (no money changed hands, but good chat with the jewellery seller lady), a Christmas store (again, no money changed hands) and gin tasting at Humdinger (money was spent)!

Had to swing by and check out the swamp car which is now out of WOF (strangely) but still sitting on the roadside gradually accumulating more mould & lichen! Was tempted to get the "Will show knickers for chocolate" plate for sister Linus for Christmas, but resisted...

Came away from this pitstop in Geraldine with sloe gin for us, 2 bottles of other gins for them, and a free lettuce from the community garden for me!

We circled back to Timaru to buy pies from the fabulous U-Bake bakery (and a few sweet treats) and had lunch in Banjo, before heading back inland to visit a couple of open homes as the search for a new Tomkinson residence begins in earnest!

First house was a bit small with too much land, the second was the perfect location and land but a dark and rather dated house. The search continues…

Reconvened at Caroline Bay in the evening for Beats & Eats which was sadly poorly attended but Automatic 80s put on a pumping show of upbeat 80s classics that had many of us dancing & screeching along for an hour or two! The food truck we chose was a little disappointing but Louis' "Asian Burger & double cooked chips" was amazing (burger with brie & coleslaw is apparently "Asian"?!?)

The song list was awesome - classic 80s hits including Billy Idol, Soft Cell, Tears for Fears, Pat Benetar and so many more - can't wait to see these guys again at Selwyn Sounds - though sadly without their "special guest backing dancer" - an extremely drunk & stoned woman in jeans and a white T who was hysterical - leading people in dances, staring lustily at Pearl Runga and falling over quite a bit!

So much fun -and my Fitbit hit 20k steps for the day thanks to 9k of boogie steps!!