John brings me a cup of tea in bed. I stagger out to the living room and share the love. Cecile has been up for a while putting things in order and is looking pleased with herself. In fact, there's not a lot of extra...floor clean, wine debris and food detritus. We're on the go slow and break for croissants. John's concerned there's no music so we search for speaker cables and plugs and, with some tape, get the stereo going. I've missed my cd's. I used to play them often. The set up in the old house was the amp, speakers and player in the living room with another set of speakers wired to the kitchen. But no controls, so I had to walk back and forth to get the volume right when I was cooking.
John celebrates with a mouth organ solo. We're still shuffling around when old school and university friends, Lynley and Keith, arrive with their son, Tim. On their way from Wellington to Invercargill where we all went to high school. Girls' and boys' high. Lynley's aunt and my mother travelled to Europe in the 1950's and Lynley and I travelled together in 1986. After spending a summer cooking for salmon fishers and grouse shooters in a huge estate owned by English aristocracy, we travelled to Sicily, Malta, Tunisia, and Algeria, weeks before their civil war broke out. When we got back to Europe we cooked in a ski chalet in Meribel. Adventures and stories we don't talk a lot about these days but lots of history added to teen growing up. We're like sisters. And my mother taught Lynely's mother. All in the family. Keith and John went to school together, then the three of us flatted together at uni for a year.
Kahu brings his photography folio out, then everyone is off. Quiet reigns in the new whare once more.
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