For twenty years we had an ordinary three-bedroom house in an outer suburb of Auckland. Ten years ago we bought a property in the country, about an hour north of Auckland, and spent the next few years slowly getting a house built there. In 2002 we sold the house in the suburbs and bought a one-bedroom apartment in an inner suburb. We now have the advantages of city and country living.Today we're in the city, and this is how I passed my morning.
Breakfast with Mr Kimi. Mr Kimi's doing a project at the moment that means he has to spend weekdays at a client's office a ten-minute walk from here. So he heads off to earn some money, while I swan around the place (okay, I do work sometimes. Not this morning).
As morning tea time approaches I wander up to Ponsonby Road. This takes me past some lovely Victorian villas, some with pretty gardens. I'm friends with several cats along this route:
- The ginger brothers, one long-haired and one short-haired
- Hugo, an elderly ginger long-haired cat who resembles a slightly worn hearth-rug but who's very friendly
- Little black-and-white, a half-grown cat who greets me rapturously
- Beware-of, a handsome, foreign-looking cat who lives at a very fancy house, complete with a "Beware of the Dog" sign
On Ponsonby Road, I walk past the excellent wine shop (I stocked up yesterday) and the also-excellent greengrocer's. The first stop is Atomic Café.This place is great. We go there every day when we're in town. Ponsonby Road is lined with cafés, and we tried quite a few before we settled on Atomic as our regular.
What's so good about it? The coffee's great. The food is delicious (their chocolate-and-blueberry brioches are a special favourite). It's old and tatty in a welcoming way. Vaguely well-known people hang out there, but it's not
intimidatingly trendy. And it has two large, friendly tabby cats. Spiro is friendly in a tolerant way; Ronin occasionally jumps on my lap, lies on his back and demands to be fussed over.
I loiter there and read the paper over a coffee and an almond croissant. Then I amble across the road to our DVD rental place. Yet another gem, this place has hundreds of foreign-language videos and DVDs in its catalogue, a good and
ever-growing range of classics, and lots of better-known movies. The weather forecast for Easter is not inviting, so we should have plenty of time to watch:
- Very Annie Mary
- Les enfants du Paradis
- Gigi
I get chatting to a man at the front desk about transferring videotape to DVD. We had this done to some irreplaceable old family movies last year, and I recommended the place we used.Time to move on. Past the Trade Aid shop where we buy our coffee and chocolate. Past the Kitchen Shop where I sometimes go in to goggle at the latest gadgets. Past the wonderful butcher, who as well as "ordinary" meats has kangaroo, crocodile, ostrich, pheasant, quail, rabbit, wild venison, wild pork... you get the idea.
I collect our mail at the Post Shop (one downside of moving from the leafy suburbs: mail gets stolen here. Hence the PO Box). One bill, one magazine.
On the home run now. Into the deli where I'm a familiar face. Buy lunch and dinner. In the country we have a spacious, well-equipped kitchen, and I cook. In the apartment, we have a tiny kitchen and I don't.
Back down the hill, time to blob. Put away the shopping, start up the laptop and write my very first "real" online diary entry. I'm an erratic writer. Let's see if I keep up this diary thing.
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