Nikau is on schedule for opening Monday – wahoooo! We were invited for a special friends and family practice lunch today. We were chuffed! It was such a glorious rushing back of routine and memory. Lots of familiar faces there, both staff and customers. The cafe is still the same, there is a new bar top and toilets and till, but it was neat to see lots unchanged, right down to the My Little Pony on the coffee grinder.

I can’t explain the swell in my heart when I rounded the corner via the familiar route from home and saw people sitting inside at the tables. Felt like I was home or something.

Familiar lunchtime view

Little coffee pony

Smiling at the bar (The Mister had kedgeree & I had asparagus with this great pistachio/lemon/parsley mixture on top … no date scones today)

Sad SAD news is that there’ll be no Sunday opening. Nice lifestyle choice to balance their hard work but we’ll have to have a family conference to figure out how to deal with that! We had a brief conversation with Kelda and a few suggestions for what she could do on her Sundays – perhaps date scone or sour dough loaf baking sessions! I think that’d be great!!

Random thoughts today about the passion it seems I have for orange:

Very often, completely involuntarily I smile at orange things.

When I went into the photo store today to collect some prints they recognised me, probably because all the photos were fairly orange and even though I wasn’t exhibiting all that much today there must’ve been a glow.

People tell me they thought of me when they saw such and such orange thing.

I have a lot of orange stuff. I forget that when people see my desk for the first time. I know I’ve published photos similar to this before but here it is again.

Right down to the staples.

When your stuff that people don’t even see is orange, that’s an addition!