Starry night

Thick frost on the car this morning. It looks smeared on, as if by a palette knife. You sluice it with warm, salty water and watch it dissolve.

In the park, the dog will find the shaded places surprising. He’s never walked on frosted grass before and noses the hard, silver whorls with suspicion.

The sun is touching some of the canopy. Long drips flash from these branches.

You’re in the kitchen in a Kmart apron, watching a livestream as you dice brown onions. Tonight, New Zealand’s restaurant industry will either be blessed or snubbed by the ultimate arbiters of sophistication: the French. At the invitation of Tourism New Zealand, who seem pathetically grateful about this, the Michelin Guide has been dining incognito in four of our main centres and will now decide if anyone gets a star.

Why this is fascinating to you isn’t clear. You’re a home cook whose success rate sits about sixty-five percent. Only this week you asked your family how they liked your plum cake and your daughter, a stickler for honesty, said: “It made me feel sick”.

The livestream shows an enormous digital screen behind the stage in what must be Michelin red, adding urgency to the occasion. The country’s chefs are sitting in expectant rows, along with the beaming Tourism Minister, who gives the same speech as both the MC and the representative from Michelin, praising our produce, seafood and hospitality. There’s undeniable glee that we’re outpacing Australia with our inclusion. It’s unspoken, but there is the promise, floating above everyone’s heads, of a Return on Investment for the millions invested in this recognition.

On the one hand, this is a solemn and sophisticated event. Apparently, there is caviar on ice and champagne for later. On the other, New Zealanders can’t believe our luck, and our disbelief keeps bubbling over. The host keeps repeating “We’re doing this!” in a tone of wonder. Nobody says ‘Michelin’ with French inflection, but in the heavy-footed local way (MITCH-uh-lin). We appear, as a country, to mispronounce sommelier. The host hugs the inflatable mascot, the white-tyre Michelin Man, saying she’s always wanted to do it. She tells us he is squishy.

This is all probably noted by the French, who must be in their seats scrolling for evening flights to Paris.

As the Guide hands out Bibs Gourmand, you experience conflicting feelings. Why should we stand for being ranked by the French? It feels very twentieth century. It’s taken us decades to escape cultural cringe but here we are, begging to be noticed by the ultimate Frenchman, who is on stage announcing the recipients. Seriously, if a casting company had pushed his photo across the table, you’d have rejected him on the basis he was too tall, dark, debonair — basically a Paris cliché. His name even sounds made up, rhyming with Polo-Neck. He’s terribly spunky, however, which adds urgency to the occasion.

Yet, let’s face it, this a brand deal aiming to attract high net worth individuals to New Zealand to spend their foreign exchange. Which the country definitely needs, as most of us can’t afford to eat on the reg at Paris Butter. So, you excuse M. Polo-Neck and his mangling of Aotearoa and manaakitanga (Good God, man, haven’t you got it by now? You’ve been here a year).

Fifteen restaurants will be handed stars, to mild later controversy; but you’re unexpectedly moved when Tala’s chef Henry Onesemo, his ceremonial ‘Ula Fala garland looping red across his chef’s jacket, turns his back on the audience to compose himself. He’s just been told that Tala is the only Samoan restaurant in the world to be awarded a Michelin star.

The room gets to its feet to cheer his achievement, and you feel an emotional correspondence in your chest. How perfect, you think. How just; how redemptive of our relationship with the outside world, which has rearranged itself in respect of Pacific cuisine. How many more seats at the table, how many more young chefs might enter the double swing-doors into billows of steam, because of this singular moment? It turns out, we really are doing this.

You feel almost tearful, but it’s only the onions.

The strawberry moon is trailing cloud above Karori. It looks like a shining coin in a wishing pool.

At the salon. You’re exhausted from talking. You talked nonsense during the foils, you talked during the shampoo, you talked during the cutting and the blow-drying. Why do you feel this obligation?

The client at the next station is your opposite. She answers her stylist’s questions sparingly and with understatement, closing after each reply like a sea anemone. You, meanwhile, are a starfish, with all five points widespread.

A young stylist will tell you that most hairdressers are, in fact, introverts. They go home completely satiated by the day’s intimacies (massaging scalps, exchanging stories) and now they want to be left alone.

All Blacks v France and your family, including pet mammals, are piled onto sofas to watch. A fire blazes in the grate and the dog stares at you pointedly as you munch crisps.

Rugby will hold your interest for about 15 minutes, at which point you’ll wander upstairs with a book. Your family understands this, which is why your remarks are unearned, and so ignored. “There’s one for the Mums,” you say, as the referee appears on screen — the only man over 40 on the pitch.

It’s been brought to your attention that a package of vintage records, posted by a relative to your house, has not arrived as expected. The courier has mislabelled the parcel. It’s been delivered to another house by mistake.

As this house is not far from yours it suits everybody for you to pop down there and ask for it.

You write a letter to the householder and stick it in your pocket in case nobody is there, clip the dog to its harness and set off. The letter is cringing (terribly sorry to inconvenience…) while also staking a claim. It’s tiring to write, honestly, and you eat a large slice of the sickly plum cake while doing it.

You’re not in the habit of knocking on other people’s doors, but imagine if there was a day a year when this was acceptable, and allcomers were invited inside? Who would you find behind the bubbled glass, the brass knockers, the leadlight windows, the bevelled woodwork along your street? Would you meet an inspiring yet housebound person, and go on to write a bestselling book about your new friendship in the manner of Tuesdays with Morrie? Or would you end up buried in five places, and on Netflix?

The dog decides to evacuate generously outside the house concerned. You bag his leavings and tie him to the gatepost.

The house is blank, offering no clues, except for a man’s sized pair of Red Bands in the doorway. You’re aware of at least two security cameras trained on you as you knock and wait. This seems paranoid. There’s no answer but there on the step is the parcel, addressed to your daughter.

It would be the easiest thing ever to pick it up and take it home, but you can’t, of course. Parcel theft is a crime. The householder is probably watching you on their mobile right now and will assume you’ve thieved something of theirs. You dither, imagining a screenshot of your face posted on the community Facebook page with the message, DO YOU KNOW THIS WOMAN? SHE TOOK MY PARCEL. YEAH I’M COMING FOR YOU LADY

You post your explanatory letter in their mailbox, which is stuffed with advertising material and unopened letters. Good grief! This person might not be back for days! What if someone thieves your/their parcel in the meantime?

You ring the sender and agree the courier needs to uplift the parcel and deliver it to your house. This is a task for someone in uniform, not somebody in cord pants and a bobble hat, whose dog has loose bowels.

There’ll be a flurry of further texts and conversation, after which you’ll wait for a further 24 hours but eventually the damned parcel appears on your doorstep, full of eighties albums from your husband’s teenage bedroom.

You leaf through them. You did all this for Hit Wave 82?

Any Other Business

I still haven’t finished Land by Maggie O’Farrell.

Shameless Plug #1

My friend Jane, the Tina Brown of Wellington community newspapers, hopes to encourage young and new writers to submit work to The Local (monthly suburban papers in Mt Victoria, Te Aro and Karori).

I’m teaming up with Jane and the seriously impressive Dan Keane to present Write Your Welly Life on Sunday 9 August — an uplifting, friendly writing workshop with nibbles.

Suitable for Substackers, diarists, columnists or any writer looking to up their game - and for people looking to write a column like 'My Night Out' for The Local. In the workshop you'll not only learn and discuss techniques to communicate in more interesting ways, but also have a go, with some short writing exercises.

You can book your place here. We would LOVE to welcome you, and any of your writerly friends, and clink glasses!

Shameless Plug #2

I startled myself in the upcoming Listener, writing a piece defending Wellington as a precious city of institutions, of collective memory and of conscience (can you imagine the National Library or Archives New Zealand anywhere but here? We’re a city of pedants, bless us). In it, I invite our many critics to bore off.

It’s probably more of an elegy than an argument. I’m passingly unkind to Auckland, but you have to crack an egg to make a muffin.

A shining city on spongy land, holding back the bush and sea by sheer force of will and the busywork of statutes; a whipping boy for all the nation’s problems. Wellington: forced to swallow the country’s medicine, hollowed out by public service cuts and the scapegoating of the lanyard class. As broke, now, as everybody else; that’ll teach us to put on airs.

The magazine is on shelves from tomorrow.

💐 Thank you to every lovely reader who has pledged support, left a comment or subscribed in the last few weeks! It’s so very heartwarming and motivates me to keep going. On that note, click the 💛 and you’ll help other readers to find us!

My nose is cold. I must stop.

Leah

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