My birthday...

This is the busiest day of my life so far...I may have no time to blog or even consider blogging. But yet here I am and it's after midnight, the first moment I have free in the day..

I think drugs are a problem but we certainly need them to be available...

New Zealand behind the eight-ball with drug companies holding them to ransom.

I am in the nice Salvation Café Newtown, for a change...

When will they legalise this weed?

Wales falls yet again....

This will reverberate throughout Brexit...

So today encapsulated what I am about in Wellington...I spend the morning preparing a hot soup to take to Flash Dog studios where we have a working bee for the upcoming ECK seminar. On the way I buy a passionfruit cake for the Danss group tonight as it is my birthday.

After the potluck lunch at the studios I go St David's church hall at Kelburn for an annual tea dance, for the Scottish Country Dancing mob, and a nice afternoon of exercise and fun it always is.

Then leaving early, I drop down to my favourite cinema haunt Cuba Lighthouse, to see the much awaited 'Amazing Nina Simone' documentary, which I missed during the recent Jazz festival. My friends from Flash Dog come also and Barbara, my new Americanhousemate decides to attend also. So the five of us sit enthralled by Nina Simone's absolute brilliance, both at the keyboeard and in voice. Her haunting voice and her haunted personality fills the screen as at age seventy, in France, shedies possibly from maladministration of medications. It was a worthy testimony to a great woman who suffered as most black people did in the US in the fifties and sixties. I was interested to see that one of her great influences, politically, was James Baldwin, or Jimmy, as she calls him, and she also knew well Richie Havens, jazz bass guitar legend. Both these men I had the good fortune to meet in my travels, Richie at party in Manhattan, and James in Paris along with my other writing idol, Jean Genet.

The link with Nina was in 1967 or 68 when I had the luck to find myself alone on the dance floor of a late night disco bar at Kings Cross in my home town of Sydney, and I found I was not only dancing with a handsome young black man but he was with Nina Simone herself, who joined us on the floor where we spent some time grooving to the disco dance music. Nina had just finished a gig somewhere and was coming down from a big night. At the time I had no idea of the breadth of her fame and talent but we sure had a nice time on the dance floor, the three of us.

So onto my Danss class after this great movie, where we had a piece of my birthday cake and practised for the big September fundraiser where we are doing a choreographed dance piece.

Then home to sleep after a very big day. Wellington gives you time to do these things, unlike most other cities.

There is no doubt I will miss this gorgeous city but there are other things for me to do next year in Oz.