2/4/2026 not a good day

Another shitty old night, the anxiety about returning home is increasing and I'm struggling to get a grip on it. Which is having a knock on effect on my sleep and just about everything else. I had some breakfast, and cleaned the apartment before walking down to the village for an hour on the beach followed by a nice coffee at the bakery. People were actually queuing up to collect their hot cross buns for the weekend and the ones who had already collected and decided to stop for a brew were guarding their hot cross buns ferociously as they drank their coffee. I've never seen the shelves so empty, I'm used to seeing ques but nothing like this today.  Josh and Ros were run off their feet. Obviously I had a coffee there but at 1300 hours the display cabinets were bare and there were two quiches and a couple of cookies left. 

After finishing my coffee I went to the four square for a few things I'd run low on. The few things turned into a  jam packed rucksack full and was pretty bloody heavy to carry back. I got Morg some goodies for the easter weekend, chocolate and hot cross buns. The hot cross buns turned out to be a huge disappointment a tad on the dry side, and not a patch on the ones from the bakery, underwhelming to say the least.

Our initial plan was to head over to Waiheke Island tomorrow, Good Friday, but unfortunately the ferry and hop on and hop off buses were all booked out on the site I tried to get them. Obviously everyone has the same idea but I had left too late. As a result I've now booked us tickets for Saturday instead. You can get ferry tickets at the ticket office but that still meant the hop on hop off buses wouldn't be available although there is a really good public transport system over there.  

Because the Waiheke trip is postponed till saturday I checked in with Liz to see what time they were back in Auckland before their flight out. They were just going into the glow worm caves when I messaged and once they'd come out we tried to sort out a plan to meet up for some dinner. They are staying near the airport in a hotel, so we searched for somewhere in the middle for all of us. Being Good Friday that proved to be slightly problematic, a lot of places shut down and the public transport, whilst still running, is on a greatly reduced basis. I came up with Sylvia park Mall as it has a fantastic eating place and lots of different establishments to choose from. When I checked them out, unfortunately a lot were closed. In the end we sadly decided it was just the wrong day to try and get together. A shame but I will catch up with her when I'm home.

Morg came for dinner, and I'm really enjoying cooking for him, I will miss that when I move back to the lodge next week, we watched a film, and did the laugh out loud season 2 on amazon which we both found hilarious and laughed till we cried. A better end to the day

Much love 

Mrs Leonard

X