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!)