Steps down

Spent the morning sorting the paperwork for becoming an employee again after nearly ten years. Being a locum seems much easier all of a sudden.

After lunch I got to work on sweeping the deck and putting things away that should not have been left out. The stimulus was a request by daughter J that she could borrow our space for a meeting she was hosting.  S and I left them to it, and went and visited C and the boys. Active lads, they decided to go down the bank to the creek (a tidal stream to the upper Waitemata runs past the edge of their property, down a steep bank). C asked Mr H to be sure and look for the shovel that had been left down there some time before.

He found a spade and a shovel. As the boys prepared to head back, he asked me (I had gone down with them) if I would carry the spade, which was mud covered and probably rusting. I agreed and followed them. Seeing the overgrown steps, I thought it would be good if I could uncover them and make the path simpler and safer. Today's photo shows reasonable success in my aim, despite the mud covered spade which actually felt quite unpleasant to use until I got used to it..

Later S and I went to see an Australian movie, "Lion", which was very good and emotionally quite powerful. At the end, there was a message that every year in India 80,000 children go missing, and there was a plea to support them in their attempts to help these children.

So much pain in the world.