Photos of a destruction, excuses, excuses, and the sewing machine from Hell.

Nice shops in an old wool store building, still standing by the skin of their teeth. Not that they are open.

Many years ago as a department store it had the best cafe in town

This once was a fabulous Country style store.

I've been in here hundreds of times.

This is the Catholic Cathedral, they will be removing the dome in a few weeks .

To be honest I've been a bit tardy with posting, as for last 2 weeks I've had, a hard to shake bout of asthma. But I think it's under control, I don't have it often but since the "you know what" so many have people been having asthma attacks, it's all the dirt, silt and dust. Every little shake brings dust down to coat everything at work.A funny thing happened on Tuesday,  while 2 co-workers were telling one of our darling men, who has returned from a 9 week holiday in the North Island, while their house was being repaired, not to worry if a aftershock happens to go under the table, know matter how small it is, and low and behold we got a 4.1 kindly sent from down the road at Aj's (the son's) workplace before the words had left their mouths. So that joins the long list of things not to do to avoid bringing down another quake upon us, like don't buy clocks of Trademe, don't take Paul E. out for dinner, don't say "we haven't had one for awhile",and most definitely say " gosh it's really calm and still, perfect earthquake weather".
I was going to tell about my sewing machine , I bought it from a Aussie company with many shops in NZ, it was the most expensive machine I have owned but not expensive in the way of things. It wouldn't let me machine quilt anything,( I'm useless at machine quilting anyway) all though it's called a Quiltmaster. So I took it in to ******* shop (insert) name of popular brand of machine, and said it wasn't sewing well. The lady who served me looked vaguely familiar, said " Dear, when I sold these at ********* we had many returned because they had  the wrong walking foot with them, they aren't a good make". Yes is that's right lady I thought it was you who sold it to me. She was very disparging about the machine and said they are no longer sold by ********* as the were so bad..............lovely. Tried to get me to buy a second ex school machine for $1,300 or a $3,000 machine with all the bells and whistles. I smiled through my teeth, but silently made the decision never to buy one of their machines because if she sold me a machine which she knew to be **** once, I'm ****** sure I wont be trusting her again with even more of my money.
I know I'm sorry it's Mother's Day and  I'm moaning, and I did  get some shoes and gorgeous socks, of course I'm cooking dinner while the men watch the boxing, at least I'm at the kitchen table sewing without interruption. Now that's a real present. Happy Mother's Day to all Mother's, those who have children whether they are human, feline or canine.Love to all Aunt Bee.