MAGIC TIME

It's mid to late afternoon.
It's still sunny and warm but the burn has gone.
It's a magic moment knowing that soon it will grow darker and cooler but now........


It could be  Spring or Winter but this season, Autumn is best.

The essentials:

• Sparkling wine (Deutz NV)
• Smoked salmon (New Zealand cracked pepper flavoured)
• Crackers (Huntley and Palmers baked flatbread 
• Music (looped CD's of Miles Davis, Satchmo, Diana Kraal, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone)
• Reading (John Le Carre The Honourable Schoolboy)

OK, did I miss anything?

Well, company for a start but I was on my own and decided that ...'when in Rome...'

The experience took me back to my salad days' at University when I was living in Upland Road, Kelburn. I used to spend a day at uni (well, to be honest maybe half a day as the courses I was doing weren't riveting), walk home past the shops where I'd buy some nice things for dinner and when at home pour a nice glass of wine (good German Rheingau or French white Burgundy) and sit out on the lawn which overlooked Glenmore Road and Northland. I would put some 'nice' music on the turntable which in those days wasn't the exquisite jazz and blues I'm listening to now but was likely to have been Supertramp, Jethro Tull, Roxy Music, Rolling Stones etc. I would be planning my dinner - Wiener Schnitzel, coleslaw with a roast potato probably and enjoying the moment while I could.

As the sun disappeared behind the Northland/Karori hills I knew that the magic moment was going to disappear also.

Flatmate Noel would soon arrive home, pissed and with a sack of fish and chips under his arm.