The husband person took this photo with his phone, while riding on the Britomart escalators. Exciting things are happening there: as well as the train station, there is a new covered walkway that will soon have a Jo Malone (that one’s open already), a MAC store, a L’Occitane, and a Lululemon. The Pilates community is quivering in anticipation. There’s also a sushi place.
But it is entirely possible that the escalators will still be the best bit.
Today’s lunch was from Tasca in Vulcan Lane, on a drizzly afternoon.
The husband person had a BLT, and Betty had carrot and coriander soup. The food was yummy, the decor quirky and delightful, and there was peppermint tea. Betty should remember to have peppermint tea more often: it’s really good. It’s also good to know there’s another nice place to hide away from the rain on Vulcan Lane!
Despite the best efforts of her most excellent mother, Betty has the tendency to be badly brought up: she is messy, forgetful, easily distracted, and too often content to let things lie where they have landed. She also leaves for work early, gets home late, and lives in a tiny (Teeny-Tiny, according to Apartment Therapy) apartment.
While the actual rooms are quite spacious, there isn’t room in the wardrobes for everything that should really be put away. The kitchen is built into a cupboard, the tiny scullery into another; the pantry is smaller than the average bar-fridge, the fridge is a bar-fridge, and the freezer doesn’t. The dining table doubles as a counter, which works well since the bed doubles as a dining table. The bathroom, oddly, is huge – but the clothes rack that lives in it is almost permanently up, both as a storage device and to cope with the laundry, which has to be done upstairs in the landlord’s house. The landlady skinny-dips at all hours, so the husband person refuses to do the laundry any more; the landlady is in her late eighties, and the husband person has led a relatively sheltered life.
Betty is not trying to insinuate that there is anything wrong with this living arrangement, though: far from it. The apartment is lakeside in one of Auckland’s nicest beach suburbs, and when local people hear the name of the street they raise their brows and become jealously subdued. In less than ten minutes Betty can walk to work, to the lake, to the sea, to a little forested gully, or to any number of beautiful sitting-spots; she can shop at the supermarket, the organic supermarket, the bakery, the even nicer handmade bakery, or the French bakery; she can buy fresh vegetables and fruits on the way home from work without any trouble.
The point Betty is trying to make is that the time has come for some serious homemaking. To this end, she has acquired a copy of Hidden Art. Over the next several weeks, and also the rest of her life, she will attempt to transform the apartment into a haven of homely goodness and stop putting rubbish in the breakfast-nook. Stay tuned.
Auckland’s bus service has been slightly upgraded – instead of the old bus card, which you poked into a slot, there is a new Hop card, which you wave in front of a robot. It’s significantly cuter, though it makes annoying noises. However, there is another benefit – the old bus tickets were long strips of advertising, but the new ones are deliciously old-school.
The Sentinel Kitchen, like the Sentinel Diner before it, is no more. Betty is greatly disappointed, because the Kitchen is about forty seconds’ walk from work, open early, run by two lovely chaps who are happy to whip up a mushroom salad wrap or a lemon toddy by request any time. Also it has booths. Word is that it will reopen soon: here’s hoping…
Nothing perks Betty up like a soy mocha with a Whittaker’s chocolate stick in it. This one was from the gorgeous Shaky Isles cafe in Britomart.
It made the afternoon much more enjoyable. The vintage teaspoon was an especially nice touch.
On the way home from church one day. I like these ones.
Betty’s new favourite cafe is Hum – in a near-derelict house at the hospital end of the Grafton bridge, shared by an artists’ collective, and with plans to include a deli and food in the future. Just now Hum serves excellent Kokako organic coffee, and keeps oat milk on hand as well as soy. Proceeds from the coffee go to restoring the house, which is beautiful and cosy, and in the meantime there is always a spot on one of the sofas whenever Betty wants to have a post-lecture mocha or shelter from the rain.
Betty especially likes the coloured lanterns that hang everywhere – along the verandah, in the fireplace, from the ceiling – and the genial, friendly staff.
