I just asked Brazil to go and eat the leftover beef from Saturday’s dinner party, which means I’m officially turning into my mother — who I once found handing my father half-empty containers of cream cheese and pesto dip directly from the fridge, a pile of empties behind him and a spoon halfway to his mouth.
I’ve also started opening windows “to let the air in”, washing towels that patently don’t need it for the satisfaction of folding them and putting them neatly away later, and re-using ziplock bags.
At least I’m not washing the glad-wrap yet.
—
This afternoon, while you were all at your desks, doing whatever it is that you do at said, I went for a delightfully refreshing swim at Hataitai Bay. Yes, “delightfully refreshing” means exactly what you think it does, but it was still lovely. The air was warm, the breeze was playful, the water was still and sparkly and clear.
I’ve been determined, this summer, to keep swimming as often as I possibly can, and so far it’s been AMAZING — especially during the day, when the regular pack of leather-skinned Hataitai Bay retirees and I have that particular slice of beach to ourselves.
Swimming is something I forgot about for a few years there. As a kid, I LOVED the water. I would have spent all day in the sea, and slept moored by the ankle to a jetty if you’d let me. I wanted, almost desperately and nearly exclusively, to be a mermaid.
Then I grew up, and it got into my head that the ocean in Wellington was, being as Wellington is, a thing reserved for crazy people in wetsuits and leathery retirees in inappropriately brief briefs.
And now it’s March, and I’m still swimming. Someone said recently, probably at Webstock, that you can find the things that make you happy in what you liked as a child. I forgot about swimming for years, but every time I ease my cautious way back into that still, sparkling water, overtaken by a guy in a speedo and an elderly lady in a hot pink swimming cap, my heart slows, my head stills, and my
entire
body
relaxes.