Out doing stuff

We had less than an hour of school before heading into town this morning – novel! I love the flexibility of homeschooling. Nick met with a private contractor at the manse to get quotes on the repairs, but the contractor said he would have to come back another time as the job is bigger than he had imagined. I gathered a few more things from the manse, and then did a bit of shopping in town while Nick had a meeting at the hospital with the HIV/AIDS training lady, who wants to interview him for the radio. Without cellphones it was a bit tricky to meet up again – Nick said he would find me in town, but by the time I had finished my shopping and even had coffee with Elza, whose car had broken down in town, he hadn’t appeared, so we drove up to the hospital and found him at the clinic. I followed my ears, actually, as he was playing bits of his CD for Abdia and Wendy. Then we went back into town for lunch at Sally’s, after which we visited Printech, St Helena’s only printing establishment, for Nick to initiate the printing of his CD sleeve and labels as well as a book about the beginnings of the Baptist church on the island, which he is also hoping to sell to raise funds for the building repairs. They will have to quote him.
Nick spotted this plaque a week or two ago on a buttress on the Ladder Hill Road, so while driving up there today we stopped briefly so I could see it too – dedicated to those who were killed in an 1890 rockfall which dumped 1500 tons of rock on the town.

Steve and Maureen arrived at 6 pm for dinner as arranged, and everything was ready except the peas, so once those were cooked we could eat. I had made garlic bread and rice to go with the Javanese Chicken I prepared yesterday, and it was all very good and tasty. For pudding I made a self-saucing jaffa cake – basically an orange flavoured vanilla cake with chocolate chips, over which you sprinkle castor sugar and cocoa powder and then pour boiling water before baking…it was delicious and successful but would have been better with ice-cream! We played dominoes after coffee for at least an hour – apparently dominoes are making a come-back amongst the young and fashionable (Alan and Kate play with their friends, and so do our own Harry and Jenny…we thought we’d give it a go!). Who would have thought that such an old and simple game could be such fun!