Oh, boy

Up to Matakana yesterday, an hour's drive through green and orange countryside on a blue-sky day (apart from the sudden squall around lunchtime that dragged the temperature right down - but at least we were spared the nearby mini-tornado).

The Saturday market there is a real institution: slow food from local producers at fair prices. We went to have our knives sharpened by the ex-pat Irishman who prides himself on a precision job: three separate grades of sandpaper, two different stones and four grinders, at the end of which he tests the blade by shaving the hairs on his forearm, which is presumably as smooth as a baby's bottom. It's a long process, made longer by his clearly having kissed the Blarney Stone back home, and an apparent inability to multi-task, so that the job comes to multiple halts as he chats about politics, life, and local gossip (the whitebait fritter lady was once exposed as using Chinese whitebait, shock, horror!) Still, it means he fits in well with the slow food philosophy, and he certainly gets the knives lethally sharp. "Keep some Bandaids handy in the kitchen," he warns every time.

We weren't in any hurry anyway, as we were going to the movies. Matakana's cinemas are a joy both to behold and to sit in - but the greater joy this time was watching Taika Waititi's Boy which was wonderful: funny and sad, deep and powerful, but with a light touch. Beautifully done - I fully expect to be seeing this movie in random bits for years to come in media studies classes at school. And I'll count myself lucky.