Random raves

You know, how ages ago now, I went home for a week and then came back and planned to post a nice blurb about how wonderful it had been to see my fucking awesome friends and drink great cocktails and hang out in my old stomping grounds, which mostly just get better, and here are a couple of pics of some of my favourite things (like puppies, noses on kittens and things tied up in string)...? Well? I didn't think so.

Notwithstanding, I hereby have a couple of pics to post:

( Fish n chips at Muriwai beach )
It was compulsory for me to have good f&c while I was there. Alas, the paper blows out the detail of the f&c a bit, but it was exquisite. The batter had herbs in it, the fish was melt-in-your-mouth, while the chips were perfectly crispy on the outside and floury in the middle. Yum. Must do it again if the weather's not too vile next time.

( Another shot of Muriwai beach )
I like the clouds and the sand and the sea being varying shades of each other - except with Mr Chartreuse Towel wandering into shot. Heh. Muriwai Beach sand is naturally that black colour. It's iron bound up with the silica, so it doesn't oxidise. They smelt the iron sand from further down the coast, so it isn't quite as black as it was when I was a sproglet. It also burns like hell in summer if you don't wear shoes!

( Brazil cafe on Karangahape Rd )
This is my favourite cafe in the world. It used to be a fruit shop that I walked past on my way to school; now it's the coolest of cafes. They have a fully manual coffee machine with levers and they do wonderful things with Havana coffee.

I have especially fond memories of the place, because that was where I realised a g/f-to-be of mine and I could actually get on. N insisted that we'd hit it off if we just talked to each other - we had spend months scowling at each other across various rooms - and, looking at each other over the rim of the espresso cups, it turned out that N was right. As usual. I blame the coffee, however. It does things to me. :-)

Espressoporn. There are no words.

I know it's backwards, but it's apt.

Anyone who knows me for more than approximately 5 minutes knows that I have a slight obsession with coffee. Imagine my horror yesterday when I went to my favourite cafe after my hols and found they've switched to poxy evil vacuum-packed Vittoria coffee. Waurgh! Unknowingly, I'd ordered my usual short black with great anticipation, and got a thin acidic travesty of a coffee. When the waiter came out to ask if everything was ok, I mentioned the coffee wasn't up to their usual quality, and he told me then that the brand had changed. And that most people so far preferred the Vittoria. If they prefer thin "French roast" tasteless crap, well, they're bloody welcome to it.

I was was feeling quite miserable about the loss of one of my most consistent pleasures in life right now (the other being food, sadly enough), when I fetched up in Kingston - a suburb about 15 minutes' drive from where I live - for lunch today. I tripped over a cafe called Kingston Grind, and, taking my courage into both hands, ordered a short black. It was fantastic - best coffee I've had in Australia (people tell me there's great coffee in Sydney and Melbourne, but I haven't found it yet). It's apparently their own blend, and was brewed perfectly, with a nice crema and not in the slightest overheated. It was a dark roast with an almost berryish flavour and had a pleasantly charred aftertaste. Perfect, in fact. Shame it's not just down the road from me, like Gus', but hell, I'm happy to go for a nice wee drive for that kind of oral pleaure.

Yay!! And after that I hit the local SF/detective bookshop that I've been meaning to go to for ages, Gaslight Books, and finally bought Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell since I've heard rave reviews about it, and it hasn't come anywhere near the public library (which, to be frank, is crap. Wellington, which is the same size city, has nearly twice the number of holdings as Canberra) - so, I've bought it, sight unseen, which is something I hardly ever do for non-secondhand books. And, and, they had The Summer Queen (Joan Vinge) in exactly the edition (large format paperback, pretty cover) I wanted. Double yay! Much juicy reading tonight, then!