Sunday, March 22: Venetia and I decide it is okay to walk around Hamilton Lake, at a suitable distance, and we enjoy a sunny breakfast outdoors at Grey St Kitchen. Well clear of other people. Wonderful chilli scramble and excellent coffee; we have no idea, really, that this will be the last GSK breakfast, and meeting-in-person, for many weeks. We mime farewell hugs, Venetia gives me tomatoes and kale from her garden, I head to Hamilton Farmers’ Market for fish and more vegetables. I feel safe, it’s a big airy barn and there is lots of goodwill and banter. I load up with aubergine, leeks, avocados, carrots, garlic, tarakihi, red peppers, sprouts. It will be another “last”.
Keep calm, keep cooking: I make chicken soup with a carcass salvaged from a summer barbecue at the Mount. I’d saved it for a rainy day. It’s raining hard, it seems the most uncertain time of my entire life.
When the soup’s done, I phone my ex-neighbour, Diana, and offer to drop some off to her. “No,” she says, “give it to someone who needs it more.” Diana says she’d found an old chook in the freezer, and poached it slowly until the flesh fell off the bones. She has combined it with a bag of mixed vegetables and put it into pottles for the freezer. She’s primed for lockdown.
I have gorgeous Raglan tarakihi for dinner. This may be the last Sunday fish dinner for ages. The entire weekend’s been like a last hurrah.
