Another day at the office...

Visiting Body Positive on Courtenay Place, hereafter known as BP, I am, as always, treated to a cuppa and biscuit by the very worthies who run this excellent establishment. My good friend L, just arrived back from a brief home visit to PNG, is their great front-of-house man. They do a great job educating the public about HIV and also being a general support system for those who are living with HIV, now certified as a manageable, if chronic, disease. The centre in Wellington also looks after the various remote country areas where people as well as being isolated, live in an impoverished social  environment which is often alien to their well-being. It is situated at the hub of action on the corner of Courtenay Place and Tory Street, near to where the best food store, Moore Wilson, caters for the many Wellington  gourmets, and where many excellent restaurants also hang their shingle.

As I have an hour before my choral rehearsal begins this evening at Correctional Services ( the regular church venue is previously booked!) I decide to pass it in a building of some architectural heritage, but long since gone to the fate of a fast food outlet whose I name I will refrain from mentioning. Suffice to say it will be my first and last visit to this establishment.

After my conversation with the people at BP I am now offering my services at a Palmerston North get-together in a couple of weeks, possibly also a visit to Wanganui, a coastal town of note on my return trip. I am really keen to see New Zealand's country areas, which is where the essence of the country lives and breathes, the rural life being the historical bread and butter, i. e. sheep and dairy, which was the basis of the Kiwi economy.

 

In this above photo the building on the right is where I am now sitting, on the corner of Cuba and Manners Streets. The early trams are now replaced very efficiently with trolley buses, alleviating the need for rail tracks in the sometimes narrow streets. The hills where the first University, called Victoria, was established, and still exists, rise up at the rear of this historic photo decorating the walls of this dubious eating house but which validates my visit.