NZ Visual Diary - entry 441

setting the table

For much of our 47 years together my wife and I have had a satisfying division of labour. Randolph enjoys cooking, and she is a superb chef. She also loathes the chore of dinner clean-up. In a moment of contrite confession she has admitted that, in the course of meal preparation, her habit of using every sauce pan — every kitchen utensil no matter how well hidden from reach — is a baked-in culinary reflex. Her dread of facing the kitchen carnage of an impeccably prepared meal is palpable. Fair enough, the dude does the dishes.

Not to worry . . . I not only enjoy immensely her culinary creations, I also relish the time of quiet reverie or splashes of jazz music via AirPods that attend the Sisyphian task of post-feast kicthen restoration.

I am also the partner who sets the dinner table, an easy task when place settings are limited to two persons, but the chore is within my dinnertime remit. Therefore, I was especially attentive when I saw the gentleman featured in today’s photograph begin to set his table, a reclusive edge of a pedestrian lane that connects Queen and High Streets. His Fanta drink marked one edge of his table, followed by the makings of his mains - a collection of fast food favourtites - gingerly placed in other quadrants.

With equal alacrity he set himself on the hard sidewalk, surveyed his dinner victuals and began to eat with relentless intensity what was likely his sole rations of the day.