Art and music

Our last day of delights with the McCullochs. We picked up Emily who had been to a brunch and Liz watched a busker from the world buskers festival she talked a lot and her main trick was balancing on a large wheel and falling into the wheel. I enjoyed Christchurch art gallery which is splendid. Best bits for me were the landscapes and NZ photography. Beasts and bad hair day exploited the theme with a huge sea lion and cow. Lovely horse paintings. The modern stuff about energies left me baffled. We then walked to the Canterbury museum and did floor 3 brilliant Antarctic stuff, geology, birds, Asian art rather poorly labelled. We had lunch in the cafe and had another look at the Air NZ display the 90 minute turnaround is impressive. Malc picked us up at 3 and Ursula and Aidan had arrived back from the Jazz school in Wellington. Malcolm played his lovely cor anglais then Emily and Malc played Lully flute and oboe duets. Aidan excelled on tenor sax all the while I tried to sketch them. Malc took us to 6.30 mass at St Peter's the priest had his own variations and in the creed we said for all! We sang Mass of St Francis by Paul Taylor which we had encountered in Lewisham and it is certainly easy to sing. I checked with the pianist and we had a good chat. We also sang 3 hymns Christ be our light, I will raise him up and they will know we are Christians one verse. Overheads. After a delicious dinner of lamb, champagne and red wine Emily played us some very good school choir videos and we gathered round the piano to sing Purcell Music for a while and song from the Fairy queen and Caro mi Ben. Then packing our washing was dry and bed. Woke in the night and up at 7.45. We were early at the airport 9.10 and checked in with ease. We face a long journey 12 hours to Singapore.