International Random Acts of Kindness Day

Only Ash and Kate made the effort to Dress Up for Madonna Day, but don't they look Fabulous! We listened to Madonna tunes all day boogying along until the lunch rush crashed in.

Tim was immortalised as Kirsten Dunst in Bring It On. He noted early on that today is International Random Act of Kindness Day. His random act of kindness was to bring me a wooden spoon when I was plaintively wondering if there was a clean one anywhere in the kitchen. Zane and I shared a random act by deciding not to serve the dried up pie to the nasty customers but to give them a nice fresh one instead. The most random act I was involved with was being called 'sweetie pie' when I took a bald guy his muffin.

Ash would just like to let everyone know that she is single and looking. Single, handsome, rich men are invited to call into Cafe Narnia. I recommend using the code words 'banana banana' so Ashleigh knows that you are trying to hit on her. Anyone attracted to the other Cafe Narnia staff pictured here should know they are already taken.

Madonna Wannabes

Tomorrow will be my last day working at Cafe Narnia. It also happens to be a Friday which of course means it's Dress-Up Day and this week's theme is 'Great Madonna Music Videos'. It's an excellent theme of course because Madonna creates a unique sartorial paradigm for each new video which gives us a wide range of possible looks to choose from. This would have been the perfect dress-up theme for me ten or twenty years ago, when indeed I did dress up as Madonna for parties, if not work.

However, my current wardrobe is so extremely limited that I only really have the option of dressing as either a frumpy middle-aged woman or a daggy slob. Surprising as it seems neither of these styles have featured in Madonna videos to date- at least not that I'm aware of. It could happen, but I suspect not soon. Even my underwear is too sensible and too aged to pass as Madonna-wear. I'm stuck for a costume, unlike Ashleigh who has been loaned a PVC corset by a groupie, I mean customer.

She pulled out the corset today so we could all wonder at its kinky shine. It looked best on Zane who makes Kate Moss seem porky. I was quite pleased with my reflection in the oven door and gratified at my colleagues wonderment at my waist coming out of concealment: like objects in the mirror actually being closer than they appear, I'm actually more shapely than my daggy/frumpy clothes usually suggest. Tim refused to even allow the corset to be held up against his generous frame and attempts to do so led to a lively chase through the cafe as Kate sprinted after him and the rest of a trailed hoping for a perv*. No luck, and despite the promise (or threat) of seeing Tim in a cheerleader uniform** tomorrow I expect he will, as always, be in his chef gear. I hope to have the camera with me and plan to post pix of the whole Narnia crew a la Madonna so watch this space.

* Just for the record, there were no customers on the cafe during the entire corset episode.
** Apparently Tim decided that he'd rather come as Kirsten Dunst than Madonna, which is fair enough I suppose.

Magnolia of the Year

As I may have mentioned once or twice I am slightly obsessed with magnolia trees in bloom. Whangarei is a particularly fine town for magnolias and the past few weeks have been greatly enhanced by spotting them hither and yon on my travels through town. Aside from my wonderful childhood memories of sheltering in a beloved magnolia tree I think there are several reasons why I'm willing to make an exception to my favouritism of fragrant flowers (though I did recently meet an unusually strong sweet-smelling magnolia in the rose gardens downtown).

I love them because of their luminous purity. The pale pink ones show this trait most strongly, but even the dark magenta blooms seem to glow with an inner light. I think this might be because the petals are so fleshy and the pigmentation sits on top of a deep icy whiteness that much catch the light and reflect it. Blossoming as they do in the middle of winter, they seem to light up grey days with warmth and beauty. Magnolias start blossoming on bare branches in the depth of winter, for a week or two the trees are covered in luminous pink and then soft green leaves join and eventually overtake the flowers.

The two families of magnolia that I am passionate about are tulip and star. Tulip magnolias are the ones with a few big firm petals which start in something of a tight tulip-like bud before splaying indolently outwards. They are the most elegant shaped blooms and come in a wide palette of cream through pink to magenta. (See picture above).

Star magnolias tend to the paler shades of the magnolia spectrum. They have many thin floppy petals and I have a physical reflex to the sight of a star magnolia: I can't help but stretch and wriggle my fingers like a baby. Star magnolias seem both wanton and innocent to me and somehow make me think of fluttering angels wings.

If you get up close to a magnolia petal, whether still blooming on the tree or part of the carpet fallen below the branches, they are delicious to the touch. Cool, tender, moist but not sticky, remarkably like the fresh sweet skin of a baby's belly, they are pleasant to hold and stroke until they begin to bruise brown. Eleanor and I met on one of my magnolia pilgrimages a few years ago and Iremember her special interest in fallen tulip magnolia petals imprinted by shoe sole or tire tracks.

To honour this glorious plant I am introducing a new award: Magnolia of the Year. Consideration is solely dependant on my awareness of the tree, so it helps if it is visible to the public and not hidden in a private enclave. The criteria for winning is arbitrary and opaque. The prize is being highlighted on this blog.

And the winner of the inaugral award for Magnolia of the Year 2006 is this fine specimen currently blooming opposite Cafe Narnia on Kamo Road in Kensington, Whangarei. It's just started flowering so will be at it's best for at least another week or maybe three.

What is so remarkable about this particular magnolia tree? 1. It is so tall and so lavishly blossomed that it practically lights up the neighbourhood. 2. I was facinated by this tree even before the blossoms revealed it's identity as magnolia because of the 'hula skirt' (thanks Ash) modestly obscuring the lower trunk. 3. It happens to have exacty the same kind of cream and magenta coloured tulip blooms as my childhood companion tree so it gets points for nostalgia value.


NB Nominations are now open for 2007's Magnolia of the Year Award so feel free to write in about your favourite tree. Next winter the judge might take a tour before making her decision.

Vanity and the Low Maintenance Haircut

The first hour is always the worst after a new haircut. I think it's the lingering trauma of being forced to stare for 30 minutes into a mirror at my unadulterated face propped on top of a cape. No softening of its roundness with hair or clothes, no escaping all the features I avoid in the quick dance around mirrors at home to ensure I'm presentable with as little attention as possible.

This lengthy session of self-regard makes it difficult to feel anything but disappointed when the new hairdo fails to have made my face look any different. The hopeful magic promised by the NEW LOOK articles in women's magazines has not worked, again. I'm still me with the big cheeks and rough skin. Worst of all, that moment of truth is the one when I have to tell the hairdresser what I think of their work. It's impossible to blurt "It's awful" especially when I remember that the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is but 2 weeks, and that it will look completely different when I have washed it and let it dry naturally. So I feign enthusiasm and pay my money.

This time I fled to Narnia afterwards for comfort and sure enough the glad cries, the compliments, the fussing and playing with hair, the enthusiasm for its styling potential got me through that rough worst hour. An hour of not looking in the mirror and of letting my hair relax into its own response to being thinned out was enough for me to start feeling ok about it. After a wash I might even like it enough to post a photo.

Flashdancing the length of New Zealand

Workplaces in Northland are being encouraged to 'Walk the length of New Zealand' in 10,000 steps a day. Walking the length of New Zealand has been a long time dream of mine, so I was quite excited when I first heard about it. Unfortunately, the idea isn't to take a few months off work and follow Te Araroa , the long path, from Cape Reinga to Bluff. But still, just keeping track of the number of steps and pretending that you've walked from one town to another seems like good training for the real thing, so I'm quite keen.

The catch is you need a pedometer and the official ones cost $40! which I don't have spare. I'm bidding on a $3 version on Trade Me but lucky Ashleigh was given one. So today she set off on her journey without the rest of the Narnia staff. Though because it's a virtual jaunt we all get to watch her from the sidelines. She kept us entertained with experimenting how to maximise recorded steps. Turns out that dancing round the kitchen, particularly her favourite Flashdance routines, is a great way to accumulate steps (and gets her much further along the virtual road than dancing on the street would). Remember Flashdance the 1983 movie? Welder/exotic dancer wants to go to ballet school? Lots of sexy dancing in water spray and grungy clothes? That's Ash in the kitchen at Narnia!

Vampires in Narnia

Last Friday's dress up theme at Narnia was 'Vampires', which happened to co-incide with a) the usual St John's Ambulance crew breakfast and b) a fundraiser for Hospices. Kate's fabulous vampire-bride costume complete with fake blood dripping down her chin and neck was perhaps too convincing in such company. ONG was the only other staff member to make much of an effort but her medieval style black velvet tunic was so hot that she almost fainted mid-morning and had to revert to a t-shirt.

My excuse for only the most cursory of vampire gestures (bite mark drawn on my neck with red pen) is that I was involved in a painfully drawn out process of moving homes made more agonising by the persistant downpours which kept interrupting my efforts to get things in and later out of my car with out saturation. Most of what I am schlepping around the country with me are art supplies (ie expensive paper and painstakingly made plaster casts) and paper in particular doesn't respond well to moisture.

Fortunately or unfortunately my 'could do better' in costuming was rendered insignificant in the chaos reigning when I arrived at work. Not only was every table still full at what would normally be a quiet time, but the kitchen was bursting at the seams with people. The old chef was lying face down on the floor in the pantry (face practically in the dush pan) receiving therapeutic massage from his cousin Ash who was camping it up for anyone who had to squeeze past to get to the food. The brand new chef was being tested by cooking 50 breakfasts in his first three hours in the tiny kitchen, shared with Lindsey who was on dishes and tuneless whistling until they started some serious male bonding over expensive car talk. Kate, and the other two female staff were serving, making coffee and generally running around. I literally couldn't imagine where I could fit into this mayhem but within an hour Ash and both chefs left for the day and I got to work trying to replace the food flying out of the cabinet as fast as I could make it.

The Disney Tapes

Working at Narnia is hilarious. I arrived this morning and was enveloped in a furry group hug- the heating was off and so staff were draping themselves and a few of the customers in (fake) fur coats from the Wardrobe. Later the Other New Girl, who started the same day as me last week, arrived to wash dishes. Turns out that she and Ash share an unholy passion for show tunes. Their singing and excitement rose to off-pitch and fever-pitch respectively when ONG brought inside her tapes of orchestras playing Disney tunes. Such fun!

I've never worked in a place where people sing, dance, laugh and goof around so much while still managing to get a lot of work done. Friday is dress up day with a theme chosen at random. Last week was 'senior citizens' for which I wore a fetching grey wig. Ironically it happened to coincide with the local Alzheimer's Society's coffee morning at Narnia. They thought it was pretty funny that we needed a special day to dress up as old people.