Coffee at Gotham

Still no sign of summer so I may just as well be resigned to the fact that the odd good day is all that we'll get in Wellington. As they say, when it's a good day, it's fantastic and has to be worth a hundred bad ones, or a dozen anyway. 

Gotham full at ten a.m.

William and Kate decorating NYC for their first visit...

Sir Richard Branson flying high with his alliance with Air NZ

Ladies who lunch at Gotham

Things are slowing down now with the holiday season imminent although newspapers are talking up Christmas sales figures just to get people spending. It is a time of ridiculous overspending I believe, and I am not buying into this myth that Christmas has to be the time to give everyone presents. It's not, it's just the end of the year and a good time for recollection and preparation for the New Year, not over-eating and over-spending to make the merchants happy with their bottom line.

 It will be interesting, my visit to Auckland this weekend for the BP Boad meeting, to see the Christmas effect in that commercial centre. Probably lit up like Sydney which it so acutely wishes to emulate I'm afraid.

Headline news

News in the Dom Post is never that uplifting but when Monday greets you with pictures of a bereaved family and killers on the loose you wonder where the priorities of the editors lie. Do Kiwis delight in bad news stories, or is that these stories constitute the majority of the news items?..I start to wonder.

Man loses home to fire and now wife to cancer...

Killers on prison leave roaming streets....??

Kiwis protesting climate change with heads in the sand...

More houses burnt down!

For a small country like New Zealand which punches well above its weight in so many creative areas, does it also have a higher percentage of crime and crime lords, albeit simple homegrown ones, than other countries? However they don't seem to import too many drug lords as they have enough here to keep their territory all to themselves. 

I have discovered that everyone knows someone who knows someone else, so that is what is strange, and interesting, about this far-flung antipodean civilisation. I find refuge today in the cool music and Batmemorabilia in the Gotham Cafe which serves good ham-scrams and always a nice to middling coffee. It is also interesting to gaze at the business types who frequent the cafe, all enjoying their coffee and good tucker.

Today I am thinking I may have to announce my eventual leaving plans to some intimates, as it is starting to feel a bit burdensome, this decision to leave in eight months, the hiding of it, that is. Or should I wait till my seventieth birthday in June and make an announcement then, perhaps that is best as it is on a happy occasion and will be on my return from Oz to boot. They will understand better then I hope. Now we have lost the bid on the Roseneath Cafe that load is gone, only a Neighbourhood meeting in March to organise which will be not too difficult I'm sure, with J's help and all her friends. She may well take it over, well so be it.

The fabulous Joan Armatrading is singing at the Opera House in two weeks and I think I will blow my budget and go to hear her, I love her voice and songs. It may be my farewell to this old Opera House. 

Sunday at Zaida's

I managed to get away from a wet household to have an early coffee in Zaida's and also get some photos printed, in the old fashioned way. I send them in my Christmas cards to personalise them, I suppose I will stop doing it one day, but not yet. 

More news of corrupt cops in NZ. It is no doubt time they had a complete cleanup of the policing profession in NZ as these stories come up evey week. It's just a cozy little boys club, reminiscent of Queensland in the seventies before the Police Corruption Commission cleaned it up, albeit somewhat. There'll always be a corrupt cop somewhere.

Below, a fashion icon in Dunedin...am sending this article to friend H in Melbourne who is the fashion icon transplant there. Am sure she knows these people. Am now off to the market to buy some fresh stuff for the week, K is off again to the Solomons this week, such a quick trip home.

Lindsay the milliner at home

At the Paramount to see Interstellar with Matthew  McConnaghy, hoping it is OK....

It was very long, self indulgent, with a good intergalactic story premise ruined by American schmalz, pity.

The Fifties Foyer at The Paramount

Picnic in the Wind at Island Bay

EToday is the big day for all BP to come together and be happy..in the windswept area that is Island Bay Park. Needless to say it lives up to its reputation, cold and windy, but the good spirit is there and we all have a good time with great barbeque food prepared by catering supremo Noel. We are spoiled.See photos of the day below. Home to recover after a long day, as the morning was spent also at a workshop for Eckankar at Flashdog Studios, where I had to leave prematurely to go to the picnic unfortunately.

Vintage ute in Tory Street

Lesley with friend 

Heta is the friend

Me with Lesley

Wellington a 'super' city?

Well if you've been reading this blog you would already know what a super city Wellington is, but this Dom Post headline just means one council to overide all the others - amazing how a headline can obfuscate the real facts. A super city, one dictated to by one council, will never happen just like the Wellington airport runway extension won't happen in the foreseeable future either.

More news about Aussie Cricketer Hughes' funeral, the Australian nation stood still in homage to it's little brother, and on page three in New Zealand more scavengers interested in the Christchurch Cathedral detruitus than ever. Such is the morbid interest of Joe Kiwi Public.

At Gotham cafe I have just had brekkie with K explaining to him the possibilities if he wants to take over my lease next August.  It was simple to explain, but may difficult to realise at long distance because everything depends on K's wife and what she wants. I told him the future is in his hands, and she will know that the future for his children is his only abiding interest.

I am hoping he will be brave enough to take the plunge, but first he has to fast-track his application for PR, Permanent Residency in NZ. That done, the future is set for him as Roseneath would be an ideal starting place for the education of his four kids, which is his ideal, naturally. Let's hope it happens.

Christchurch Cathedral being 'explored'..

Hughies' farewell at Macksville

Toi Whakaari and The Drop

Before catching the latest Tom Hardy movie I have a complimentary ticket to see the students of Wellington  Drama school Toi Whakaari, present their end of year production. It is quite a moving and excellent production directed  by my Ti Whanawhana friend JB who is very modest with his achievements.

Themes of young people fighting with their body image and emerging sexual identity, it covered a broad range of youth problems and displayed them with artistic flair and sensitivity really worth seeing again -  five stars for this production. It also makes a great polticial comment on trans-people and their   sometimes sad fate in this backward society.

On to the Lighthouse Cinema...

The Drop at the Cuba Lighthouse

This crime thriller, set in Brooklyn, was a neat and well tuned movie with not a dull moment. The script was good, the cinematography excellent,and the   performances from the main three actors, and indeed all the supports, were top of the scale. I would dare say there will be Oscar nominations here. Tom Hardy is such a great actor, and he plays the not so simple bartender with such skill you would swear he was a Brooklyner. James Gandolfini in his very last role was also the full quid.

A Five star movie in my humble opinion and a good finish to an otherwise very quiet day spent writing Christmas cards. Tomorrow I am having breakfast with K at the Gotham, much awaited.

Tyrannosaurs at Te Papa

Early phone call from Tom changes my plans so I meet with him at Chaffers cafe for an early coffee. Always good to have a chat and get my bearings. I am now rethinking my Christmas travel plans in view of his ideas on traffic etc over the holiday period. May put off the Dargaville visit to another time when I have more time on my hands.

Blissful day

..but a chilly wind, as always

Visiting the family...

With the fairy grandchild...

After coffee I decide to brave the wintry summer's day and hide for a while in Te Papa, with the kids. It is always a nice place to ruminate and also perhaps do a few Christmas cards, which I have to start getting rid of now with the Kiwi mail being as probably as slow as you could get anywhere in the western world.

Friendship with Tom is steadily progressing and he is such a nice man and always gives me sane Kiwi advice, something which I often need! Just decided to forego the Waikanae birthday party in lieu of a ballroom dance with Heta on December 20. Less driving more fun. Must learn to limit my new endeavours in NZ.