Last week, Wel­ling­tonista’s ace lit­er­ary team was lucky enough to get invited along to the pre-launch Writers’ Week Wel­come, held with­in the Museum Art Hotel’s very swanky Bil­liards Room.

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Fol­low­ing on from last year’s sale of the Cour­tenay-dis­trict land­mark (let’s not go bust­ing out the dreaded “icon­ic” just yet) to Sydney-based EVT (Event, Hos­pit­al­ity and Enter­tain­ment Lim­ited), the hotel’s in the pro­cess of rebrand­ing. The QT Museum Wel­ling­ton Hotel will join EVT’s lineup of six QT-branded lux­ury hotels across Aus­tralia; though the art col­lec­tion that’s put the hotel on the map will con­tin­ue to adorn the interi­or.

Every room in the Museum tells a story, the Bil­liards Room being no excep­tion. Like the Hok­u­sai cast-offs that found their way to France as wrap­ping-paper and kick­star­ted 19th-cen­tury Japon­isme, the room’s walls have been plastered with pack­aging mani­fests from oth­er acquis­i­tions. It’s like munch­ing canapes inside a warm, very roomy ship­ping con­tain­er – though per­haps a more invit­ing exper­i­ence than that descrip­tion might imply.

So, there we were, shoulder-rub­bing with some of the liter­ati world’s finest. Not that we could tell. The prob­lem with lit­er­ary stars is that, unless you’re a spe­cif­ic fan of an author, you gen­er­ally have no idea who they are. Sue’s lit-crush Jasper Fforde was­n’t there, so ran­dom ming­ling was the order of the day. And thus is was that our esteemed pub­lish­er James found him­self play­ing some 8‑ball with two of Israel’s lead­ing cul­tur­al lights: author Etgar Ker­et and his equally acclaimed wife, film-maker Shira Gef­fen.

(An aside: it does seem slightly incon­gru­ous that the Bil­liards Room tables are set up to play 8‑ball. Pre­sum­ably this is because (a) nobody really knows the rules to bil­liards, and (b) the tables are prop­er, massive bil­liard tables; it could take you weeks to fin­ish off a game of bil­liards or snook­er, so 8‑ball is a way of ensur­ing a game can actu­ally be com­pleted over the course of a one-hour event. If only just. Pre­sum­ably bil­liard or snook­er sets can be pulled out on request.) (Anoth­er aside: nice straight cues.)

_Museum-Art-Hotel_Billiards-Room_March-2016-(5)James and Etgar won over Etgar’s wife and son, James’s ridicu­lously long arms giv­ing him some­thing of an advant­age on the tables that – as men­tioned above and as Etgar would com­ment on later – “you just about needed to hitch-hike around to get from one side to the oth­er”. Most sat­is­fy­ing of all was shoo­ing ex-may­or Kerry Pren­der­gast away from the side of the table as Etgar lined up the win­ning shot. 8‑ball etiquette was­n’t high on the list of our erstwhile lead­er­’s pri­or­ity lists, it would seem.

A good time had, then. The canapes (pork belly, aran­cini balls and Laurent’s Loudeac sig­na­ture dish ‘Sal­mon sashimi my way’) were deli­cious. The wine flowed, as did some very con­vivi­al dis­cus­sions on writ­ing, read­ing and skate­board­ing. It was the sort of place where it would be very easy to spend a good part of the even­ing (and early morn­ing) dis­cuss­ing the finer things in life, sur­roun­ded as one is, by a good pro­por­tion of those things. But the whole thing wrapped up in the blink-of-an-eye as the vast major­ity of the attendees wandered down the road to the Mir­anda July con­cert (review of that, poten­tia­ly forth­com­ing here as well).

The hotel man­age­ment’s desire is for the rebranded QT Museum to be seen as more than just a night-stay, as the ven­ue’s sta­ging of this gath­er­ing sug­gests. Stuck down Kent Ter­race end with some emails to catch up on in between engage­ments? No fool­ing, the Museum would simply love for you to pop in for a cof­fee and leech their wi-fi. They’re keen to be thought of as a down­town salon where trav­el­ers and loc­als alike feel free to bust out a laptop and hang out, albeit in dis­tract­ingly well-cur­ated sur­rounds. If clear­ing your inbox while a lar­ger-than-life por­trait of Ella Yelich-O’Con­nor peers over your shoulder appeals, this might be the only place to do so.