A weekend idyll with enzymes, pub havoc and chocolate croissants

I am a domestic Goddess.
I am sitting in the kitchen watching my Turkish bread rising and I have a batch of chocolate croissants in the oven. This batch will likely be demolished with a flat white of my own preparing and I will have to bake another before Attila the Wife and I go over to Diamond Harbour today for lunch with her cousin and her husband. However, while the rising and baking is going on, there is the opportunity to listen to my friend Charlotte's Queens Birthday broadcast on Radio NZ National (she's not the Queen and while her pronouncements are important, she's unlikely to be summarily declaring that I have a knighthood and she's dissolved the government in favour of a benevolent dictatorship headed by me). I also have the chance to look back over a lovely long weekend.

Friday saw a thankful end to a week where I did battle against an exam on the most tedious topic in Christendom - Advanced Land Law. There are goblin-like pinstriped lawyers in oak panelled offices who have prolific sprouts of coarse grey hair coming from their ears, eyebrows and noses and have been practicing land law for sixty years who haven't completely come to grips with it yet. I never stood a chance and it was a weary and careworn author who, along with Attila the Wife was hosted for dinner by a couple who are eagerly anticipating their nom de guerre for this blog, which incidentally are The Godmother and The Godfather: they happen to be the officeholders of Godparents to Attila the Wife and I rather like the sinister air that this gives them, but in reality in the world of competitive loveliness they are in the top ten in the country and are assured of an Olympic berth when this becomes an event at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Enzymes not included.

The word of the evening was 'enzymes'. The Godmother has a book beside her bed on enzymes and this is how we came to have a meal of largely raw food and corned beef, all topped with pro-biotic unsweetened yoghurt. I never had any doubt it would be delicious but still the combination of smearing yoghurt on corned beef pleasantly surprised us. What also surprised me was the notion of leaving a Friday dinner healthier than when we started it, but indeed we were and this recipe has been reproduced by us since then and carries our recommendation. The Godmother has now become the high priestess of enzyme cuisine and while in between cigarettes she waxed lyrical as to how it made her feel better, I doubt I'll be attempting to read the enzyme book unless it also has a plot, some characters including a dangerous, lofty-breasted female spy and no enzymes in it.


This made perusing Facebook of a Saturday all the more pleasurable to see who of my friends got more plastered than James Hardy the night before. Having so many friends in the world of hospitality means that this category of people is extensive. Some choice quotes include these two gems:
"It hurts to live this morning."
"I've been doing some deep thinking and Jewish maths. Realised in my adult life I've spent over 20k on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. The rest I've squandered."

The Excelsior Building: now home to a flock of rock pigeons.

In our healthier and unfuddled Saturday morning state, Attila felt the need to drag my carcass out on a scenic bike ride through the newly opened parts of the Christchurch city centre. We've done this a few times but it was our first foray into Cathedral Square and down High Street. We rode with a combination of wonder and sadness. Wonder at the sheer scale of the demolitions and sadness seeing seeing so much of my old community destroyed and devoid of life. What was striking was my first look at the other side of the old Excelsior building. I worked in the Excelsior Sports Bar in the bottom floor of the building for a year and a half. I also had the odd foray into the backpackers in the upper two or three floors for reasons I won't go into. Now the building is as you see it in the photo. One wall propped upright by a stack of shipping containers ostensibly to maintain the facade for whatever building is put there to replace it. Whatever is put there to replace it will never come close to replacing the memories and spirit that the building held in the hearts and minds of the residents, the resident boozers and those who found themselves working in the High St Cafe, the Excelsior Backpackers or the Sports Bar. It was built in 1884 and while I was a late arrival to the joint, thinking only to turn up in 2005, I was told a wealth of stories by locals that showed a lasting affection for the place. Some of these stories involved infidelity and arson, others were stories told by locals of bar fights who were helpless with laughter by the end despite, or perhaps because, the person crying with mirth next to them in the bar was the one who broke a pool cue over their back that night. It sounds like nostalge a la boue, but for me, while there are certain characters I am quite happy to see the back of and I hope are murdered in their cells, the balance of stories are of happy memories, hard work and good people. This was an example of the difference between a pub and a bar: a pub has a collective animated spirit and acts as a community; a bar is a place which merely serves drinks and often needs a theme to try and bring people in. 

We named this the pineapple tree because we weren't
entirely sure there wasn't a bloody great pineapple
growing out the top of it. We couldn't be bothered going
to look.

Attila and I pushed on with my head crowded with memories: of the scrum that was the night of the second test of the 2005 Lions Tour where the queue for the bar was the bar itself and the area behind the counter was awash two inches deep with spilt beer, I worked a 20 hour shift that night; of finishing a shift and having a beer under the pineapple tree with my boss, engaging in conversation that was a mix of character assassination, horrifying jokes and muttered imprecations about our employer; of studying at Broadcasting School from 8-4.30 during the day and then working until 2-3am and sleeping in the gaming room and living in a state of perpetual tiredness. I don't miss the hours or the work, but I do miss the community that, although I left that place I went to work for another institution that I grew to love nearby. High St was a collection of characters and walking down the street was difficult because you would constantly have to stop and talk to people.

Following on the theme of pub, last night the Mistress of the Damned and I (I'm the damned) stopped off for a sneaky pint on the the way home. This was a Sunday, but a Sunday of a long weekend and so our local was groaning at the seams with punters all talking and enjoying the band. This is good for the pub but havoc on my poor old deaf ears. The pub has hard surfaces everywhere and nothing that can soak up noise. As a consequence the noise level of the people talking tends to rise to compensate the fact that they can barely hear each other. This rapidly means that all around you people are shouting at each other and the band has cranked their speakers up to 11 because no-one can hear them either. I have to sadly admit that this is a bit much for me and so we left the pub to its pubbing and went somewhere else, which is a shame because when it is quieter I am quite happy there. However, we gravitated to Smash Palace (see links) for a couple of pints, a game of backgammon and some cheerios. Smash Palace is a bar created by the Moore family that is an agglomeration of converted buses and caravans under a haphazard collection of canopies and coloured lights. On a balmy night like last night it really was just the thing and I was surprised not to see more people there. You could make as much noise as you like in the open air and it wouldn't put Attila and I off our game or our discussion about the house we had viewed earlier in the day. We'll probably end up at Smash Palace a bit more often I think...

And so is that was the long weekend that was that will end with lunch in Diamond Harbour and me presenting my pub quiz tonight. I will go back to the grind tomorrow morning content. It is time to put the bread in the oven and the croissants were delicious thank you. I hope your weekend was just as fulfilling.