We have returned  home from a well earned holiday.  We stayed in the sweetest batch on the shores of Lake Taupo.  From the minute I saw the rack of mint green crockery in the kitchen, I knew I would love the place.  The batch bore the patina of years of getting away from it all - a TV that gets "both" channels, radios with no working aerial to speak of a wall decorated with traveller's maps from 1958 and the motherload of board games.

Little did we know the days we arrived and left would have the best weather.  In between times we played numerous games, and made the most of the hot pools.  Grandma turned up with her childhood box of card games, relatives visited from the other end of the island and we worked our way through boxes of Christmas sampler biscuits.  We discovered Ludo can be the longest game in the world and that Donkey requires no strategy at all.  Sometimes we just sat and watched the rain come in from one side of the lake and drift off again.