What it itches the most?

Is it my sun burn or my all new mosquito bites hmmmm, let me think about that one while I laugh at Martyn - he came back from the shower this morning and mentioned that his nose was peeling. Being the good wife I am I felt duty bound to tell him it wasn't just his nose but his whole face. Its okay though as I think my back will probably look worse in a day or two !

I am very worried about him though - yesterday he said that he felt he should try list writing as it seems to be a good way to get things done and then this morning he said he likes having plans of what to do during the day. Please help - aliens must have kidnapped my husband and done a brain transplant overnight...

After I recovered from Martyns obvious mental lapse we left (with him driving just in case his plan/list statements were a result of delayed trauma due to my driving yesterday)

Having done Kauri shop yesterday morning (did I forget to mention that?) and Kauri forest yesterday afternoon this morning we went to the Kauri museum in Matakohe it was massive - bit like the trees it was all about. Lots of gumdigging photos and history ad some great machinery for chopping up wood - if it chopped wood it was there, axes, hand saws, band saws, chain saws- you name it. I even managed to enthuse over the automated steam driven cutting table as Martyn explained the actuators ...... There were some thigh high leather boots that apparently the gum diggers wore. The boots were quite nice if you were into that sort of thing but I do not think I would have made a food gum digger. It looks like a very hard life.

There were some cool models of the dams they used to rig up to enable them to shift the giant kauri trees when they had been chopped down.

There was also a school house with rules for teachers but no rules for students - I wonder what today's trainee teachers would make of these Ts and Cs. I think I might have been okay but only if they were prepared to negotiate on the cleaning and ice cream clauses!

The post office and telephone exchange were a blast from the past - loads of old telephones and of course we had to point out the ones we had had ( oh dear) and it was a manual exchange until 1987 wow!

After the museum we went on to the East coast again to Goat Island Marine Reserve up and down lots of windy tracks past lots of flooded land and land slips. The best one was when there was a sign on a hairpin bend saying 'one lane only' this was because the other lane no longer existed - well it did but literally only the Tarmac, every bit of sub soil and land supporting the road had disappeared. Martyn couldn't decide whether to drive slowly and carefully so as not to disturb or, quickly to get it over with!

The marine reserve would have been a beautiful place teeming with fishes and great snorkelling/diving which was the plan but we had managed to forget about the cyclone there for a moment and of course the lovely crystal clear blue waters were a kind of sludgy brown stirred up run off colour. We remembered just before we thought about hiring some snorkel gear so that was good - we went splogging in rock pools instead. This was even funnier when Martyn stood on some solid looking seaweed only to end up nearly knee deep in a hidden rock pool!

Then on to current campsite for trip to supermarket and sleep. After funny conversation about our friends two boys. They are called Aston and Morgan. Martyn commented they are both named after cars. I got the Aston but had to ask what a Morgan looked like. I was told 'a sort of curvy square box with big wheel arches' poor man was quite indignantly upset when I started laughing. It took me while to explain that to a female he had just described every car in existence and could he please be a bit more specific about the Morgan. So 'they have big radiator grills on the front' okay...., we've narrowed it to anything from a Monster truck to a Jag. It went on. I think I have it now.

Better go- Martyn has found someone who has left their Android phone wireless open so we might be able to post this (unless a guilt complex as to the size of the bill they might get wins out!)

Oh and if anyone knows where I have put my (paper) notebook could you let me know. Had it in supermarket, can't find it in van anywhere, walked back to supermarket and it hasn't been handed in.... It takes a special person to loose something in a 5m by 2m space don't you think......