This is an old chateau at the foot of a skiing area on the north island of New Zealand. It was once predominately advertised as a guest house for hikers in the summer months.
However, with fertile imaginations, we can come up with a whole different scenario.
Like, for instance, a haunted house, owned by an old and some might say creepy family, a place where few are invited, and those that are, approach the front door with trepidation.
It could be the family estate, the sort of place grandparents live, and their children consider themselves lucky to have escaped and their children, in turn, hate going there.
Of course, the opposite to that is that everyone loves going there for the holidays when the whole family gets together.
Then, a murder occurs…
It might also be a hotel in an unusual backdrop, where fugitives come to hide, or just one person from the city, trying to get away from a bad partner, or someone working there seeking a fresh start.
The truth is, there are any number of possibilities.
There’s nothing like being a few days early or a few days late for a major festival.
We have the dubious honor of being able to both without thinking. I guess this is why you should try to plan your holiday around events, if possible.
We love Italy.
We’ve been a number of times, but the last visit was the best. Of course, it was not without a lot of hiccups just getting there, but in the end, later than we expected, actually about five minutes before they closed Florence airport, we made it.
So, little did we know there was such a thing as Calcio Fiorentino an early form of football and rugby that originated in 16th-century Italy and thought to have started in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. But we were in Florence, at the right time, and even got to see the procession through the streets of Florence.
We were not so lucky in Siena where we were about a week early for the Palio di Siena which was to take place on 2nd July.
Nor were we in Arezzo at the right time for the Saracen Joust which was held on the penultimate Saturday in June. It is held at the Piazza Grande in the heart of Arezzo and is one of the most beautiful piazzas in Tuscany.
The Piazza Della Liberta and the Town Hall tower
The Piazza Grande, also known as Piazza Vasari, is said to be situated on the site of the ancient Roman Forum. Here, it is being set up for the coming Joust.
A different view of Arezzo Cathedral | Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Donato
We ate at the wharves, and a place called Mures, which has sit-down eating.
Originally we were going to get lunch at Flippers, or one of three choices along the wharf.
The only problem was nowhere to sit and eat.
This means you have to hope the food at Mures tastes any good.
So, we order a curried scallop pie with chips and potato salad, a serving of battered flathead, and crumbed prawns.
While we were waiting I got a bottle of Tasmanian champagne.
Then it arrives. The battered flathead also has a mountain of chips and we are going to be struggling to eat all of them.
The battered flathead was, as the saying goes, to die for. It’s the best-battered fish I’ve had in a long time.
The curried scallop pie brought back a lot of bad memories of my mother’s curried sausages. It’s the same curry taste, and I used to hate it
It was also similar to the four and twenty curried meat pies I used to have 50 years ago as a teen, with exactly the same taste.
Sadly it was not a pleasant experience, but the flathead more than made up for it. The potato salad was delicious too, but for something so simple, so many people manage to stuff it up. This was exactly how I like it.
The champagne was very good too, so the whole experience was above average. Pity about the scallop pie. More scallops and less curry would make it a more pleasant experience.
There’s nothing like being a few days early or a few days late for a major festival.
We have the dubious honor of being able to both without thinking. I guess this is why you should try to plan your holiday around events, if possible.
We love Italy.
We’ve been a number of times, but the last visit was the best. Of course, it was not without a lot of hiccups just getting there, but in the end, later than we expected, actually about five minutes before they closed Florence airport, we made it.
So, little did we know there was such a thing as Calcio Fiorentino an early form of football and rugby that originated in 16th-century Italy and thought to have started in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. But we were in Florence, at the right time, and even got to see the procession through the streets of Florence.
We were not so lucky in Siena where we were about a week early for the Palio di Siena which was to take place on 2nd July.
Nor were we in Arezzo at the right time for the Saracen Joust which was held on the penultimate Saturday in June. It is held at the Piazza Grande in the heart of Arezzo and is one of the most beautiful piazzas in Tuscany.
The Piazza Della Liberta and the Town Hall tower
The Piazza Grande, also known as Piazza Vasari, is said to be situated on the site of the ancient Roman Forum. Here, it is being set up for the coming Joust.
A different view of Arezzo Cathedral | Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Donato
We ate at the wharves, and a place called Mures, which has sit-down eating.
Originally we were going to get lunch at Flippers, or one of three choices along the wharf.
The only problem was nowhere to sit and eat.
This means you have to hope the food at Mures tastes any good.
So, we order a curried scallop pie with chips and potato salad, a serving of battered flathead, and crumbed prawns.
While we were waiting I got a bottle of Tasmanian champagne.
Then it arrives. The battered flathead also has a mountain of chips and we are going to be struggling to eat all of them.
The battered flathead was, as the saying goes, to die for. It’s the best-battered fish I’ve had in a long time.
The curried scallop pie brought back a lot of bad memories of my mother’s curried sausages. It’s the same curry taste, and I used to hate it
It was also similar to the four and twenty curried meat pies I used to have 50 years ago as a teen, with exactly the same taste.
Sadly it was not a pleasant experience, but the flathead more than made up for it. The potato salad was delicious too, but for something so simple, so many people manage to stuff it up. This was exactly how I like it.
The champagne was very good too, so the whole experience was above average. Pity about the scallop pie. More scallops and less curry would make it a more pleasant experience.
When I first saw it I thought it was an old country estate, converted and expanded into a golf clubhouse.
It wasn’t. It is a purpose-built clubhouse and function center for corporate seminars and wedding receptions, as well as catering to the golfer, and golf tournaments.
It also has a very good outlook over the golf course.
But, in my writer’s mind, this will provide inspiration for a story that could be set in a large country house, with the central tower and lookout featuring in what might be a grisly death, and a group of guests who have gathered together to enact a mock murder that turns out to be very real.
Yes, the idea has been done to death over many many years, but I have a few new twists in mind.
How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.
In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.
I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.
Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.
There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.
Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.
It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.
For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.
It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!
We agreed not to plan what we were going to do today, but I had this idea we should go north or the opposite direction to yesterday.
That meant our destination, following the hop on hop off bus route was to head towards the Botanic Gardens.
Bur first, Rosemary had expressed a desire to go down to the water’s edge to have a look, giving an excellent view of the coastline at what was called Battery Point.
I tried to get there, but there were no roads that specifically went down to the water’s edge, but we did eventually drive-up Salamanca place, where we had walked a few days before.
It was not the same, but it did give us time to look at the line of sandstone buildings that had been there a long time and had been repurposed as Sn arts precinct.
Of course, there was only one flaw in the plan, Rosemary was not able to walk any great distance, so we were limited to what could be seen from the car.
But…
There was really nothing to see, just cars parked haphazardly on the side of the road near an entrance that led down some steps, or a few cars in a proper car park too far away from the entrance.
I was not sure what to make of it other than it was an exercise-intensive effort just to get from the car park to the gate, and then you had to walk around the gardens.
It was all too much.
Government House was on the same road, but it was not open to the public, nor was it in sight of the road, do no photographic moment there, so we were doubly disappointed.
The next phase of our unplanned tour was to go over the Tasman Bridge, perhaps to see the other side of the bay that we could see from our apartment.
Except…
When we got over the other side we veered left to follow the Derwent towards Lindisfarne where there was a yacht basin and several yacht clubs, one of which promised a view while you drank coffee.
Only problem, no parking spaces.
A good idea, unable to be acted on.
Instead, we drove around the esplanade, and continued on our way to Glenorchy, after not being able to get that coffee with a view.
Back on the main road, we take the Glenorchy exit and doesn’t take long to get there, though, by the time we’ve driven through the suburban area, we’re back on the main Hobart Road.
It was a case of don’t blink or you’ll miss it. We missed Glenorchy.
Change of plans, looking for that elusive coffee, we head for the center of Hobart shopping, Centrepoint, hoping in that center there will be a coffee shop. Of course, it’s Queen’s Birthday holiday so it’s possible nothing is open.
In the end, we found a parking space nearby. And a Hudson’s. Coffee and a toasted sandwich went down very well.
So, once again, we didn’t get to the places we were hoping to get to. This is what tomorrow, we’re not going to state a place to visit.
What I found was the moon out in the late afternoon, a phenomenon that might happen on a regular basis, but this one of the few times I’ve seen it.
And it reminds me of something I was told a long time ago. Shoot for the moon. I never quite understood what the person meant, not until a long time later when I realised that I was being told nothing was impossible.
Had I ever achieved the impossible?
The thing is, each of us define what is possible and what is impossible ourselves, and is therefore different for every person. If you tell yourself it is impossible, then it requires a mind shift to get past that barrier.
But, the question still remains the same, did I achieve the impossible?
I never thought I’d write a book, or have it published. Some would say I still haven’t achieved that goal because I self published it on Amazon.
I think I achieved what I set out to do.
I never thought I’d get a university degree, but people had faith in me, and yes, I got it in the end.
I never thought, when I was younger, I would be a father, and sometimes I wonder whether it was worth it, but having grandchildren dispelled any perceived disappointment.
And what is on the impossible list now?
Not a lot. At my age, I don’t think it’s possible I will travel to the moon, nor afford to skirt the edge of space, as much as it would be amazing to look back at the planet.
I don’t think I’ll ever become a CEO, but then I don’t want to. Too much responsibility.
What’s left that is achievable?
Tracing my family history, and going back to where my ancestors came from, and, hopefully finding someone who was ‘famous’.
