Here’s what’s good and Welling­ton-relat­ed this week!

Best book that every Wellingtonian should read because I just did and wow

Sod­den Down­stream by Bran­na­van Gnanalingam. 

This has sat neglect­ed on my book­shelf for far too long after it came out in 2017, but as our pub­lic trans­port gets worse, ter­ri­ble weath­er events get more fre­quent gets worse, pover­ty increas­es and com­mu­ni­ties get more frag­ment­ed it has become even more rel­e­vant.

“Thou­sands flee cen­tral Welling­ton as a far too com­mon ‘once in a cen­tu­ry’ storm descends. Roads are closed and all rail is halt­ed. For their own safe­ty, city work­ers are told that they must go home ear­ly.

Sita is a Tamil Sri Lankan refugee liv­ing in the Hutt Val­ley. She’s just had a call from her boss. If she doesn’t get to her clean­ing job in the city she’ll lose her con­tract.”

I could­n’t put this book down. It osten­si­bly takes place in less than 24 hours, but there’s so much crammed in — his­to­ries of trau­ma, pover­ty, mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and also sheer deter­mi­na­tion. It’s noth­ing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced but I could pic­ture every sin­gle scene in it, because Bran­na­van is that good a sto­ry-teller. You should read it.

(Dis­claimer: Bran­na­van was once the only one of my co-work­ers to come to an after­noon tea I had when I moved into a new flat so he’ll always get high praise from me). 

Best cafe that everyone on the Wellingtonista email list was talking about

Em start­ed it: ““Mar­ry Me Chick­en” toastie at Zephyr. In gen­er­al, the vibes at Zephyr, that place is gor­geous and yum”

Then Tom B added: “Zephyr was going to be my selec­tion too! Here’s some pho­tos: of their out­door area, “mar­ry me” chick­en gnoc­chi, and their mues­li. ”

Outdoor area at Zephyr

museli at Zephyr with coffee

'Marry Me' chicken gnocchi at Zephyr

And even Tom A came to the par­ty: “very tra­di­tion­al but also gor­geous high tea for in-laws at Zephyr last week­end, weird though to be cor­doned off in a cav­ernous space. Some food pix:”

high tea sweet things

high tea savouries

high tea scones

So that’s three ‘istas who’ve been there, plus my last­ing endorse­ment from ear­li­er.  I guess you’re going to Zephyr then!

Best tribute to a public servant

We’ve talked before about Simone & Mol­ly and how use­ful they are, so it was love­ly to see Simone get­ting her dues  in a half page arti­cle in The Post — “Social media maven ‘Simone’ signs off from coun­cil” 

Best development in choosing a nail colour a combination of nail colour photos

 

4 Sea­sons Nails in John­sonville has a new fold­er full of dif­fer­ent nail colours laid out all easy and pret­ti­ly aes­thet­ic so you can pick with­out hav­ing to rum­mage through a mil­lion lit­tle sam­ples ran­dom­ly in a bas­ket togeth­er. Beware though — I got the mat­te option for gels and they’ve already start­ed chip­ping after one week (nor­mal­ly I’d go three weeks with­out a chip), so maybe stick to glossy? (Gel express is $48 plus $5 for old gel removal, and all the staff wear masks at all times, but none of the oth­er patrons seem to).

Best response to the Spinoff written by a member of the Wellingtonista this week

Em’s piece “My future Pōneke doesn’t fea­ture gen­er­a­tive AI.”

Best scholarships currently open to Camp Boom

Camp Boom is a week­end of fun and pow­er for fat babes that I put on in Novem­ber, but this year is the last time Camp will run, because I am clos­ing the House of Boom. If you’d like to join us at Camp for talks, work­shops, crafts, move­ment, gin/beer/wine/soda tast­ing, an enor­mous clothes swap and all kinds of oth­er amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty events, and you can’t afford a tick­et, there are cur­rent­ly TWO schol­ar­ships open — one for any­one age 27 or under, and one for any­one who needs the finan­cial assis­tance.

(Very obvi­ous dis­claimer: I run Camp Boom and House of Boom and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly prof­it finan­cial­ly from them though not in actu­al­i­ty. If you’d like to sup­port the event, get in touch!)