What will Sir Rod Stewart do in Napier for Easter?

Action at Mission Estate, where the stage is being set for Saturday night's Sir Rod Stewart concert. Photo / Paul Taylor

Parishioners heading for their services on Good Friday could think about praying for fine weather, given that the outlook for Hawke’s Bay is not the best, just when the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle screams out: “Give us a break.”

It’s otherwise a week of hope, seven weeks after the disaster, with crooning concert superstar Sir Rod Stewart back in town for his third Mission Estate vineyards concert on Saturday, the second of three concerts in New Zealand within four nights.

MetService has a forecast of northeasterlies and a 90 per cent chance of rain in Napier on Saturday night, but it wasn’t expected to be much better for the Wednesday night opener in Dunedin, nor Sunday night in Auckland, where there is a saving grace in that those performances will both be indoors.

Because, of the cramped schedule, Stewart - or “Roderick”, as his mother called him - may not be in the Bay long, possibly not long enough to relive the last visit in 2012, when he went fishing while wife number three Penelope, as her mother called her, sunbathed on the boat – according to usually reliable sources.

He might prefer some relaxation, but a saunter into Napier might provide just a taste of the Art Deco thing if he arrives early.

The berthing of the Grand Princess at the Port on Thursday morning, with up to 3100 passengers, is the last cruise ship stopping in Napier before the winter, so there will be a few Art Deco walks on offer.

The question is, what will Rod Stewart do in Napier while he’s in the city, given that his apparent love of Bunnings Warehouse – where opportunists snapped him browsing in both Melbourne and Sydney in recent days – might not be on the list? It’s closed on Good Friday.

If he’s looking for things to do that day, he could, as one option, go to watch the local rugby champion Taradale play Waipukurau side Central at Guppy Rd at 3pm, but, as most know his real footy penchant is for the round ball, the lad might have been inclined to take in Napier City Rovers’ 50th-anniversary weekend match against Miramar Rangers, if it weren’t for the fact he’d have to cut it fine to get to Auckland for his gig there a few hours later.

More practical, timewise, would be a night at Meeanee Speedway, which has the Friday/Saturday combo of the East Coast championships coming up, the gates opening at 3pm both days.

A member of the Hawke’s Bay Model Engineering Society confesses that if they’d thought about it earlier, Rod Stewart could have been the star attraction at its open weekend at Anderson Park, a stone’s throw or so from the Mission Estate, where Cyndi Lauper and Jon Stevens will prop up the first hour or so.

Its miniature trains will be running on both Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 4pm, and there will be traction engine rides amid some congestion as the concert punters look for parking spaces mid-afternoon before the walk to the famous slopes of the concert venue.

One hoped Rod Stewart might have read of the plight of the volunteer-run operation, which has steamer Maid of Kent back in running order after being salvaged last May from a park pond, where it had been ditched by thieves who’d taken it from its shed a few nights earlier.

Sir Rod likes trains, and if he were to happen the way of the miniature railway, where the tracks were also submerged in Cyclone Gabrielle on February 14, he might also take an interest in the Extravaganza Fair - an arts and crafts festival on at Anderson Park throughout Easter, from Friday to Monday - and maybe find some handbags and gladrags.