Bitchin'!

Well, this week has been a blur of activity, but I shall valiantly attempt to recall our various shenanigans over the last seven days.

Monday saw us visiting The Embassy, Wellington’s fully restored ‘heritage’ cinema, to see ‘Kung Fu Hustle’. Nice big seats, leg room a-go-go and a blasty loud sound system created a viewing experience far superior to our previous screening of this film on a very teeny tiny monitor on a bus in South America with Spanish subtitles. ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ was good then and it’s even better when you can see what’s happening and understand the dialogue. We got home to find what I thought was a random piece of fluff outside the bathroom door – it was in fact a very large, but luckily also very dead, spider. Even the sight of it inanimate on a piece of paper made me flinch and wonder whether I should go on one of those conquer your fear type courses so I don’t have to go all girly every time something eight-legged & hairy comes near me. Jo told me it had big pincer-y things too. Great…

Tuesday we headed over to Jo’s sister’s place (in our soon to be back garden) to join her weekly ‘Survivor Night’. This is when Amy & her pal Sal engage in the intensive concentration and tension that is watching ‘Survivor’, an American reality TV thing. After a quick trip to the Indian takeaway, we settled down to observe varying Americans – both in size & accent – get very competitive and backstabbing. Quite fun actually. When we arrived home I proceeded to freak out Jan Phipps by remembering to phone her to wish her “Happy Birthday!” lovely as it was to speak to her it did make me quite homesick.

Wednesday we arranged to meet with Jo’s friends Ingrid and Gerard at Chow, a fancy Asian-ish restaurant to scoff food, make chit-chat and listen to Jo’s mum do her cabaret thang. When we arrived at 7.45pm we were the only people there, but it slowly filled up and Ann ended up playing to an almost full house. There was also a slight worry that her accompanying guitarist wasn’t going to make it, but he arrived only 15 minutes or so late (artists, eh?) and I was saved the indignity of having to provide acapella backing vocals (not that I offered or was asked, but I know its what Ann was hoping for). The food was okay, but to be honest not much more exciting than Wagamama and a bloody sight more expensive ($6 for a small bowl of Asian greens!!!) so I predict they may not still be here when any of you come to visit. You’d be better off going to the Asian place we went to in Warsaw. Of course you’d have to be in Poland and not New Zealand, but that’s a minor issue. On the plus side Wednesday was 2 for 1 cocktail night – hurrah!

Thursday saw an evening of quiet contemplation in front of the TV.

Friday night it was off into town again to meet up with Jo’s mate Radhika who is down in Wellington from Auckland for a week. We started off in Matterhorn, described on one website as ‘the heart of Wellington’ (crikey). It is a very nice bar & restaurant though, with a rather lovely outdoor fireplace, although there was quite a strong smell of fish & chips at the entrance. After a couple of beers, some sparkling conversation with Radhika, her boyfriend Ron and her friend Colleen (if you ever meet her ask her about her trip to the Temple of Hapshetsut in Egypt, its worth the wait) and a trip to their incredibly teeny tiny loo (obviously their own special form of body fascism – if you can’t squeeze through the door to get into the loo you’re too fat for them), we heeded our rumbling tums and, guess what? Surely it can’t be? Yes, we – minus Colleen - headed to a restaurant. This time it was the turn of Floridita, where we stuffed ourselves with antipasti and various Italian delights, along with a lovely bottle of wine (but of course!). After such strenuous activity, and much more chitchat, Jo & I headed home.

Saturday saw a flurry of activity as Jo & I went all domestic and started some serious furniture hunting. Off we zoomed in our little silver car (which, Patti, now sports a rather fetching “Keep Portland Weird” bumper sticker) to Thorndon Quay where many a furniture shop lives and managed, after some debate, to choose a bed and a couple of sofas. We haven’t actually bought them yet, thought that had better wait until we moved into our place and could check that they would fit, but I’m quietly confident that they’ll be fine. After this we realised we needed to kick off or Sunday shoes and headed, on Amy’s recommendation, to ‘Real Hot Bitches’, a truly stupendous dance troupe/class led by Ange (Wellington’s Susie Robinson in gold shoes and knee pads) and Rosie (owner of a mighty fine powder blue visor). The basic philosophy of this group is to relive your youth by learning group formation dance routines to super-duper 80s/90s pop classics. Having ‘felt the fear and done it anyway’ we lurked at the back of the hall slowly working our way through a rather fine routine accompanying ‘Push It’ by Salt ‘n Pepa (any troupe member can volunteer to choreograph – for that is how they spell it – each week) that included kung fu kicks and ‘attitude’. Luckily my confidence was bolstered by the arrival of Amy & Sal and the provision of legwarmers (they really do keep your legs surprisingly toasty!), although Jo’s insistence on pulling faces at me during the robotic segment challenged my professionalism. By the end of the session I was pelvic thrusting with the best of them, but I really do need to work on my running man. Feel free to check out their website www.real-hot-bitches.co.nz for more info! Exhausted though we were, we headed home and had a quick dip in the spa pool before heading back out to eat more food.

This time we visited The Last Supper Club under the guidance of Amy and her friend Ange (different from the aforementioned Ange, but she did join us at RHB and came up with our rather fine ‘attitude move’ which included a butt-slap inspired by Caleb Clarke). I was rather hoping the waiting staff would dress like Jesus and the Apostles, but sadly they kept the biblical theme to a minimum. Or perhaps this theme was more active behind the scenes, which could go some way to explaining why it took so bloody long for our wine to arrive. So far, this is my favoured feeding place; their antipasto was bigger & better than Floridita and I had a fabulous warm rabbit salad. Amy’s lamb was good too as, out of sheer politeness because she couldn’t finish it all, I scoffed some of that as well. A quick hop and a step over the street saw us enjoying more wine at the Ponderosa bar (quite swish actually, despite the Western theme), some discussion of potential RHB tunes (I’m favouring “If I could turn back time” by Cher, Sal has some great ideas for the cannon bit) and then back home to rest our tired dancing feet.

Aside from these goings on we’ve been busy doing exciting things like bumping into old pals of Jo’s, getting massages (lovely), window shopping, visiting the fruit & veg market, looking for jobs (Jo is working her way around many recruitment agencies), reading books and contemplating how to decorate our house. Oh and I got a new sim card for my mobile phone…I’ll text the number to relevant folk. All fun and games eh?

Hope all is well with you all…happy dancing!!!