For their first wedding anniversary, Betty and the husband person went to the Coromandel Peninsula. The first major leg of the adventures was to Cathedral Cove, one of the most renowned beaches in this part of the country.
It’s very beautiful. One walks.
For other parts of the trip, gentle readers will have to wait. But isn’t this a lovely spot?
It was the Queen’s birthday last weekend, and Betty, the husband person, and three friends spent four days in a cottage at the beach.
The weather was perfect — blustery, misty, salty, and chilly. There was hot apple cider and soup at the cottage, coffee at the shops, and plenty of time for walking on the beach: the husband person found a puffer fish just chillin’ on the sand, and some people splashed in the water.
Betty also finished her book, Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence, which she liked. It was a lovely holiday. Long live the Queen — and hurrah for the seaside!
On the way home from church one day. I like these ones.
Last weekend Betty’s niece, a formidable child, celebrated her third birthday. As Betty and the husband person were both on the invitation list, they tootled down to Hamilton and went slightly out of town to the Taitua Arboretum, a pleasant arrangement of ponds, fields, forest walks and gazebos. There they met the niece (who is variously known as the Snortlepig, Pig, the Dude, and sometimes by her actual name), the niece’s parents (Smokey the Magnificent and Information Highwayman), two sets of grandparents, a small array of aunts and uncles, and the Pig’s dearest friends, who – apart from the occasional baby – happen to be quite grown up. They gathered next to the pond to share a delightful picnic.
There was cake, made by Smokey the Magnificent and prodigiously up to snuff.
It was nommy. The Pig chased chickens and had a grand old time.
Hipy papy, Pig.
Just a few days ago, the ubiquitous chain bookstore Whitcoulls went into voluntary administration, possibly never to be seen again. Terrible things have also been happening to Borders, both in New Zealand and in the USA, and the Queen Street one now devotes more of its real estate to picture-frames and terrible coffee* than to stocking the finest in print.
This means that, in the central city, there are only a tiny few bookshops left that are still inspiring places to pop into. Chief of these is Unity Books. It is in High Street, one of Betty’s favourite places; it’s close to the Chancery, where one can find lovely things like extravagant mochaccinos and perfume for one’s wedding and upscale Korean cosmetics and expensive shoes (one generally doesn’t, but the Chancery is still a lovely place to wander around).
Betty has been in there once or twice recently, and finds any excuse to go again. They have the full collection of Penguin Great Ideas, walls full of poetry and philosophy, almost an entire shelf of Umberto Eco, a confessional memoir about an ex-Mennonite that Betty has her eye on, and a selection that Betty is considering as part of her medical humanities course, which starts in a fortnight. Last time she was there Betty picked up The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves, and she is enjoying it immensely.
*Terrible, terrible coffee. Worse than you can imagine. Betty could tell some stories, by golly.
This is one of the reasons that it’s nice to walk to the supermarket after work. Pretty, no? The husband person has been digitally disguised for privacy reasons.
And how! That’s the boy person friend with a lamppost in his head.
The other day, Betty and the boy person friend had almost an entirely free day together, and so they scurried into Ponsonby to have some brunch.
This proved to be kind of a bad idea, because it was almost completely impossible to park the car, and the Society for the Improvement of the Streets of This Our City, or some such people, had blocked off one side of the road, and roads in Auckland run forever in one direction, which makes it difficult to turn around. Betty, however, kept a cool head, and parked the car an extremely long way away in a quiet residential street. It was leafy and pleasant.
Then Betty and the boy person walked along more quiet residential streets until they found the cafes, and they sat down and ate in a leisurely fashion. Betty had peppermint tea and amused herself with a wedge of lemon.
But then! When they went back to the car, the boy person friend spied the water from the end of the street, and so they went down some steps and found a nice little beach sitting right there.
