Last week I took a short break to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, and my old home town. I went specifically to stay with a friend I’ve known most of my life, and now that she lives alone, I try and visit often. Jayne is Wellington-born like me and lives in an apartment high up on The Terrace which affords marvellous views out over the harbour. It’s a great place to see the breadth of changing cloud with each shift of the weather, and I could spend hours watching its passing moods.

I don’t profess to be a good photographer, but I do try and capture light on water when I can. I decided to go for a walk one morning and set off down the hill towards Oriental Bay. I meandered along the waterfront and stopped to take a photo when sun shot through clouds and lit the water spectacularly. You’ve probably all experienced something like I did that morning, when you hold your phone unable to see the actual scene, and click regardless, hoping that the image is in focus. Yeah! It came out all right.

I have strong memories of this area, going right back to childhood. The little blue boat sheds you can see on the right, have been there ‘forever’. The yachts are a more recent addition. One weekend, our family had been swimming at Oriental Bay, when my father decided to take my brother and I for a walk along the front of the boat sheds. Next, I recall, is a boy yelling and splashing madly out in the deeper water. Dad, undid his belt, kicked off his pants, and shoes, splashed in and grabbed the boy. That, I’ll never forget. The boy was fine, I remember, but I have forgotten the rest. I guess Dad must have put his pants on again.

I continued around the road alongside the bay, and planned to walk around the headland. Whoo! The wind gusted and almost knocked me over, so, I turned around and headed back to The Terrace. Once back, I went to my room to remove my shoes, and accidentally took a photo. Truly, I have never yet worked out just how that happens, but I was rather impressed by the photo. I couldn’t have colour-coordinated a scene better if I had tried! That afternoon Jayne and I binged on Netflix, just enjoying each other’s company and playing with Luna, her new cat. And yes, we enjoyed cups of tea and munching on biscuits as we watched the show.

The following day we visited Te Papa, The National Gallery of New Zealand, to view an exhibition of Rita Angus’s work, one of New Zealand best known women artists. The details of this I shall write a post about at a later date. But before I go, I thought I’d show you another ‘accidental’ photo, which proved as well colour-co-ordinated as the first one I showed. Maybe, I should give up trying to take photos, and just leave my camera to take what it wants!