All Good in the Hood
Come on guys - where are all those pics of your amazing baking and scrummy dinners? What’s happened to the family dance routines and group yoga and little online drinking parties? The Covid malaise has overtaken us all.
Slumping on sofas, reflective examining of photos of ourselves and everybody else as children, and picking up and putting down of books is about all we can manage in our immaculately cleaned houses. Sometimes we stand soulfully looking into our tidy and orderly pantries and think about what to eat or open our pristine fridges and stare inside, kind of hoping that some amazing food has magiced itself in there - somehow there will be some left-over butter chicken or pepperoni pizza .
But then it’s back to the couch for a few more wrist and finger exercises with the remote.
Me? There’s no trouble in my bubble. I’m easy to please; I don’t long for takeaway pizza or Burger King but if there’s any justice in this world at all, any day now, a real coffee in a takeaway cup will come my way.
Meanwhile, I want to have a shout out to my amazing neighbours. When I told my Wellington friends that I was moving to Foxton Beach they said things like: But will you feel safe there? And - Do you actually know anyone there? And - What will you do there?
From a Wellington perspective, it seemed like an unlikely, slightly down-at-heel outpost and an odd place for a widow to choose to decamp to alone. Vague memories of gang problems and an unprepossessing run-down strip of highway running through the town, didn’t do much to improve the image they had in their minds.
But our little secret paradise is the perfect place for this isolation gig. And isolated it is - so quiet that if a car goes past in the night, we all know what time it was and even during the day, nothing moves for hours on end. But at Foxta Del Sol we have everything we want, pretty much everything we need (usually) - a fabulous climate and a fabulous beach as well. We have iconic landscapes on our estuary where the Godwits come each year, and the blue hues of the distant Tararuas are so heartbreakingly beautiful that I will never tire of them.
But that’s not all- not even the half of it- I have wonderful kind and caring neighbours and friends. Lots of us are home alone here, and we watch out for each other. We have coffee mornings on the drive and afternoon drinks on the lawn. Sometimes I find a bunch of flowers on my porch or a little bag of veges- fresh from the garden and just enough for one. And we chat in the street in our pyjamas and walk on the beach two metres apart (mostly). We drink a bit much (sometimes), and we know who is doing what (usually) but we are careful not to curtain twitch (mostly).
We make each other food and email crosswords, and tell each other what to watch on Netflix. And we have theories and we give advice and we listen to advice (mostly).
I hate this isolation thing, but my neighbours and friends make it a whole heap better.
My only gripe is that they are dominating the tuis - none of the tuis ever seem to want to come over to my place- they like it next door and cannot be persuaded to change their minds. I guess tuis have good instincts.
lots of love - Lesley
