We have liftoff

Peter Gibbs

Oct 25, 2025

It’s the Saturday of Labour Weekend. The deck is looking pretty good, although the permanent railing has yet to arrive. The view is pretty good too. We’ve had breakfast, morning tea and lunch out there so far today.

But things haven’t been all that peaceful in the last few days.

We’ve been working hard on our new workshop, but the mother nature added unwanted complications.

On Thursday, the wild weather struck. Up here, sheltered in the bush, we’re spared the worst of it, so we were surprised when the power went off before 8am. We hadn’t even had our first coffee - scandalous.

We weren’t alone. Half the South Island was out. There was a certain camaraderie in sharing our travails with several hundreds of thousands of households.

During the morning, we were working downstairs on the new display shelves, so the lack of electricity didn’t affect us much. The lack of paint was something else, but we reasoned that a scenic drive to Picton would sort out that problem. The power came back on at about 11am, so all seemed back to normal.

Sadly, at about noon, the power went off again.

Our resourceful residents’ association was busy with update emails and we soon learned that a tree or trees on Anakiwa Rd, between here and Queen Charlotte Drive had taken out the power lines and our access to the wide world.

So much for drives to Picton and paint jobs.

The sea looked spectacular, so we took a walk down the hill to soak up a bit of spray.

We met a man in a van labelled ‘Marlborough Lines’ and had a chat.

He gave us the full update, including the news that conditions made it too dangerous for workmen to try to restore power that day, but they’d start the restoration work at 8am on Friday.

A couple of locals were down watching the sea explode and we got into a conversation with Sara and Marcel, who live at the bottom of the hill. We’d smiled and waved at them before, but never met them properly.

In chatting to them we found that, like most people, they had a store of tins of opened and decaying paint and invited us to come and find some.

We went on for a short walk, but the rain was coming back, so we turned and visited our new friends, who invited us in for coffee, something our bodies had lacked so far that day.

By then, the rain had settled in, so Sara loaded us up with paint and drove us home.

She became our first customer, and possibly our first student. Although we tried to talk her out of it, she took home a large pot and promised to come back soon for a shot at throwing one of her own.

The barbecue and a small camping stove became our friends that night. I recall the song ‘Putting on the Ritz’ by Fred Astaire with the line:

“Though he knows quite well his dash.

“Means six days on warmed up hash”

The leftover corned beef from a couple of nights earlier was just right. Cooked on the camp stove, it was perfect and made us feel very pioneering as we ate in the dark.

We were fretting a little about the contents of the packed freezer, but about the middle of the day a couple of lights sprang into life and we rediscovered the luxury of electricity.

Since then, we’ve laboured mightily, cutting, sawing, hammering and painting.

And lo - a workshop is born.

Wheels and workbench.

Pugmill and kiln.

Display shelves, beautifully painted and arranged by my dearly beloved (seems we need some more pots - time to start work).

Glaze area.

Glaze mixing bench.

There’s been huge satisfaction from this project.

Our old deck stretched about seven metres across the front of the house and protruded about 1.8m.

We kept all that decking timber and now there’s scarcely a millimetre left. All of our shelves and benches have been nailed together from this treasure trove of recycled timber.

Inside, we have 4m x 7m and outside, a 4m square apron. It will be sheltered by a roof suspended under the new deck, so the perfect all-weather glazing area.

I can’t wait to start work.

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