Dining Out

On the same Wednesday we, (Ian, Sally, Mum and me) were invited out to dinner. Karen, who is Sally's child minder had told her parents about us and they were keen to meet us. Ted Worthington was an ex-pom. He has lived here for 50 years, having left the ship on which he was serving at the age of 23. He had worked hard on various jobs such as fruit picking and eventually bought a small fleet of fork lift trucks at the height of the building boom in NZ. His wife was a blond Kiwi named Dianne.

Ian drove us to quite a 'normal' home in Mission Bay. It had the usual steep drive. It ended at a car porch containing a BMW car and a Mercedes pickup (neither brand new). We were shown into a small room at the end of which appeared to be an illuminated beer pump. We were offered a complicated array of beers or wines and nibbles. It became obvious that we were in a small bar room. It had imitation black oak beams. Around the edge were genuine horse shoes. There was hunting horn, a stack of old vinyls. Pictures of boats, airoplanes and trains. Ted knew the writer of the ancient railway magazine. There was an old picture of a mansion in Colney with an old Bentley out side the door. Ted now has an old Bentley in the garage. I did not quite catch whether it was the same Bentley that was his father's one outside the house in the picture.

Before we left we were asked what we would like to drink and Ted busily loaded up a bottle bag. Ian drove Sally, Mum, Karen and I down into Mission Bay we parked and made our way into a fish restuarant where we were seated at table for 7.

Ted arrived and there was a load pop as the champagne cork accidentally flew out of the bottle in the bag that he was carrying. He plonked down the wine and asked the waitress for glasses. They said that they did not have enough. Ted refused one of the glasses as it was dirty; was annoyed that there were not enough glasses and strangely enough a whole batch of clean wine glasses appeared. The restuarant did sell its own wine, but in NZ it is quite normal for customers to have their own wine and use glasses from the restuarant.

We had a good meal of snapper, chips and salad and having had good time and arranged to sail with Ted on Thursday we went back home arriving about 9. All was quiet and we went to bed.