Last night the music continued at the pub nearby till past midnight. Execrable rock covers, with a really unnecessary bass. It kept us up, so that we ended by sleeping through what we were told was a fire alarm, with sirens blaring.
There was no work today and the two new visitors had gone sport fishing so it was a quiet morning. I went for an early morning stroll along the seafront with a small roll from the town bakery (The Bakery), freshly baked but otherwise unmemorable. On returning Lady Bright was awake and we had a quick chat. She was curious about what the cons were about settling in New Zealand so I said distance, the need for a car and weather. I didn’t say the feeling of slowness and distance from what concerns the rest of the world, though I had felt it acutely this morning when listening to the Caliphate podcast which felt remote in a way that I never did anywhere else in the world. In Lahore there was a time when I heard the suicide attacks from my window, but even in other places it never felt as remote as it does here, in a very New Zealand very small holiday town.
She has kindly lent me a dress which will do extremely nicely for the first wedding event, just as I land in Islamabad next week. I had wondered what to do about it, now I know, though I will still, at best, only stagger through after that very long flight and drastic change of time zone.
I have mixed feelings about Caliphate. It is interesting, and they do a good job of making the path to ISIS less than unknowable without flinching from the horror or reducing culpability, but the set-up is a bit irritating (the Expert, the Subject and Joe Public). There was a particularly weird bit about flogging which was presented as a barely comprehensible act of barbarity, whereas I am sure I am not the only one to think I would rather get 20 lashes than a prison sentence of any length. The Subject is very interesting.
After the Gentleman Friend had woken and stretched we had lunch (he had breakfast first) and the two of us took off for Tapeka. The first stage was up and down Flagstaff Hill again, but after that it was all new. A little way down a road and then onto Jim’s Walkway, a beautiful bush path past a lotus pond ringed by snoozing ducks and trees filled with tiny fluttering fantails. We came out at Tapeka Beach which was filled with families bathing and the sea dotted with boats and kayaks. After examining the water temperature (cool but not iced) we continued to Tapeka point. This was steeply uphill of course, past holiday houses squashed together before the path began. In front of one was a small table with two small blonde children selling their wares. I bought some sea glass from them for a dollar. Then the path began, steeply up a grassy hill and then through the bush again over narrow ridges connecting to the high, lumpy headland. Beautiful views over the sea and the Bay of Islands, with little beaches and green-stone coves.
On the way back we passed at least four identical couples, or perhaps the same couple four times.
Our way back avoided Flagstaff Hill and instead went around through a beautiful little nature reserve with tree ferns overhead and cascading ferns of the most usual type all around. Very beautiful, much as I had imagined the country to be.
At dinner we found that the new people had caught a kingfish, or rather one had and the other was clearly annoyed and, in a drunken state, kept picking and poking and snubbing everyone within reach. At last the GF and I fled, our excuse that we were going to watch the sunset despite the heavy cloud layer, and so some blessed moments away. As it happened the clouds ended just above the horizon so there was a fiery orange glow to watch like a volcano or a desired destimation. Standing on the pier we indulged in some abuse and psychoanalysis, and then returned for tea and bed.