After a leisurely Sunday morning we accompanied the Doyenne to her weekly shop, helping with the heavy gingerbeer crates she couldn’t manage by herself. (Or, more accurately, the Gentleman Friend helped her). Part of the shop is a wholesaler, which is the sort of thing I enjoy wandering through and seeing the immense buckets of butter or man-high sacks of porridge. After loading up the car we parted ways; the Gentleman Friend and I went off for the afternoon and the Doyenne returned home. We had a pleasant brunch downtown – I really do think Wellington feels a very liveable city – and then climbed up Mount Victoria. It was a sunny, warm day, and the usual Wellington winds had abated. It was a steep walk, as are all Wellington walks, and of course I wheezed all the way up through the trees. At the top, of course, is a road and it was filled with tour buses from the cruise ship that had docked that morning, but fortunately they were on a strict schedule and disappeared a few minutes after we arrived.
From the top of the hill it was possible to get a view of Wellington and its confusing grography, as well as a small sense of the awe-inspiring geology, with the airport visible on a land bridge thrown up by tsunami and earthquake, and the valleys marked like notches from a falling axe in the hills around.
We continued our way to a lower hill, passing some terrifying mountain bike trails along the way and apparently suicidal young men and women hurtling down them at speed. At one point the path turned into a slide, which was a pleasant surprise. It continued downhill, marked by signs warning passersby not to touch the poisoned carcasses, and into sport fields. Here we found a football match about to start, between a team of Chinese students in blue and NZ students in black. The quality of play was not impressive but it’s always nice to watch a proper sport live. When we left the Chinese students were 1-0, after a ball just accidentally drifted into the NZ goal. One player on the NZ side was notably better than the rest and it was made really obvious by his name being called out in a constant refrain – Sean, Sean, Sean – as other players signalled their positions to him.