up the creek

So L knocks on my door about 11am and demands sympathy as he has fallen off his bike. I go one better and offer tea and. Then he goes. Then he returns and we drive up a country road that has some hideous suburban houses lording it up as country manors .... one even has a sign a blah blah manor hanging from its over rosed up gate. The road narrows and we go into the hills and then it becomes gravel and the road a river are the bottom of a slim valley. Halfway up we pass cyclists in lycra ... cos it makes them faster or look professional or sexy maybe and then we have to stop cos a car is coming towards us ... it is K we stop and wind down the window. She says she's off to get Doug (they came to my badminton party) so we well Ltells them which part of the river we are goiing to be swimming in. (I am actually a bit huffy cos I haven't eaten and genius L says you are grumpy cos you haven't eaten. I turned 38 last week and still people seem to want to give me advice which just smacks of obviousness. Perhaps I give off a 'look after me' pheremone.)
Then we get out and walk. It is quite beautiful; a remnant of native bush hemmed in by farmland and pine plantations. Plenty or treeferns (ponga) and Shavingbrush palms (nikau) among the more jungly vegetation. We walk past the 'swimminghole' which looks to tame and walk for another 15 minutes to Argyll Rocks which rhymes with Argyll socks doesn't it. There we saw C with her four boys and T, R's son and some other hangers on and so we swam and hung with them. I was so huffy on the way ... okay acting like an adolescent that I decided that I would refuse to swim so hence left my togs in the car. Locky shred his lunch with me and then we splashed about with the kids. It was awesome but I feel a bit sunburnt now.

Locky and I left and met D + K on the track. We went and had coffee which was too depressing to tell ... It is a public holiday Wellington day ... the town is so awesome it has its own public holiday .... well all the other major towns have them too .... but they totally don't deserve them. The upshot being htat we had to go to the inexplicably popular so eighties cafe which always makes me mad.

Went back to mine and had a beer except there was only one so I had bubbles. We txted C cos she forgot her chairs at the bubbles and badminton and she and the boys came round for the young person's version of the above.

Here's one of the gang shooting the river rapids