I’ve just been down at the last Together Tuesday for the Pop-up Parlour at a local church hall. They’ve been a great opportunity to catch up with people in the community who you don’t see often, or meet new people who live in the village. That is ‘new’ as in not having met them before, not ‘new’ as in newly arrived to live in the village.

We talked about raising money for the new Paekakariki Surf Club building — very difficult without a good combination of government grants and very generous, community-minded locals. One of these locals donated a lot of money at an auction last weekend for unusual reasons. He has two young men working for him who he really likes, and they are both in the surf club. He wanted to help them and did so by spending up large at the auction — and brought along some of his construction business friends to also spend some money for a good cause. The result for the night was a $56,000 profit. Not bad for a community auction!

Gay and I talked about how to introduce more permaculture principles into the community garden, which was the initial inspiration. I had given her a couple of books I had used when we designed the garden, and original plans we took to the council to explain what we wanted to do.

Then we went on to talk about handicrafts. Gillian was finished knitting the second of a pair of socks, Gay was knitting a traditional Shetland square for a blanket or shawl, and Sandra (who crochets rather than knits) showed us a video of the yarn swift she had built to transfer wool from a skein into a ball. Such clever and creative people. It’s a pleasure to be around them.

I don’t know what the others were talking about, but there was a real buzz in the room. All of this in just an hour.

As we were leaving, another friend arrived to talk to people about the social welfare benefits they might be entitled to. A lot of folks don’t know what they can get through WINZ or MSD, and miss out on payments that could make their lives much better. But Pat does and he can help them. Another neighbour, who had a stroke earlier this year and then was in ICU at the hospital with Covid, arrived to see whether there was any support he is entitled to that he hasn’t been getting.

It would be great to keep these Tuesday drop-in morning teas going, but it would require funding we might not have. But I reckon we could with a gold coin koha (donation) for each one to pay for the tea makings and ingredients for the scones. You’ve gotta have freshly baked scones!