⛈Not Your Normal Newsletter⛈
Flooding, food, & flatmates ☔️
Holy shit team - it’s been one HELL of a weekend. Let me start off by saying this is not going to be a normal newsletter - in fact, I wasn’t even meant to be writing a newsletter today (I’m meant to be incredibly hungover after Laneway but spoiler alert: Laneway was cancelled.) Instead of our usual programming (i.e the news) which will return tomorrow, I just wanted to fill you in our weekend here in Tāmaki Makaurau.
So on Friday it was pouring with rain - nothing we weren’t used to up here in Auckland - but it’s fair to say that it was chucking down a fair bit of water. Nonetheless (and call us optimists) Flo, Hayden (my two flatmates) and I jumped in the car because we had a lil flat holiday booked in Whitianga. As a little bit of context, this was Flo and Hayden’s THIRD attempt at a holiday here - both times that they’ve tried to go before they’ve had to call it off. But we were DETERMINED to make it this time, so off we went. About two and a half hours later we got to a town called Thames where we saw a sign saying that THE ROAD WE NEEDED TO GET ON WAS CLOSED, and DUH, because JUST after we’d left Auckland 🌊flash floods🌊 had started to hit EVERYWHERE - houses were slipping, roads were slipping, buses were filling with water, motorways were flooding, Elton John’s show was cancelled (!!) - it seemed to get super serious super quick. And now we had to get back there. So, after a quick bite of Subway (and a quick doom scroll of the live updates we were getting from Auckland) we got back on the road. For the most part the trip back was okay (mostly due to great driving by Hayden) until we got on the motorway and what should have been 20 minutes left of the journey turned into almost two hours!!
We got home at about 10:30pm (an hour after Auckland was put into a state of emergency) and checked the house, which thankfully was fine (Liv and Rubes’s house was SO close to flooding - the water was right up to their deck), but this was what the road looked like just outside of our place:
I will say we got off incredibly lucky - our house and belongings were fine, we have no dependents (except for checking on our mates) and we didn’t lose power or water. Others were not so lucky. As of right now, there have been four known deaths from the flooding, Auckland is still in a state of emergency, and we are expecting more rain, so I reckon I’ll be reporting on this for a few days yet.
All the information you need on the sitch is here!
On Saturday morning Hayden tried to lift our spirits by making half-baked pain au chocolat (how do I say multiple of these? Pain au chocolat’s??? SORRY.) Then we reverted back to our old (dare I say lockdown) habits - we rearranged our whole lounge, Flo cleaned the fridge, we went for a walk to see what the rest of our neighbourhood was like (people were being so cute and neighbourly 🥺), I read about half of ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’ (it’s fucking amazing), and watched Love Island. We found out that Laneway was cancelled (lowlight) and Flo sprayed Hayden in the eyes with fly spray (highlight.)
Then Hayden made his famous smash burgers (if you’re lucky he might give his recipes out to paying supporters) and I watched ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ (also very good.) Here’s a little montage of Hayden making his burgers:
On Sunday it was still raining but Hayden made us pancakes for breakfast (sorry, he’s actually such an angel):
And then we ventured out because I wanted to get an activity to do - namely a little miniature ‘flower house’ that I had to build (I ended up grabbing a few more things because one thing about me?? If I see something cute imma get it):
And then Flo and I tried to start building this house and OMG IT’S SO HARD AND IT’S GOING TO TAKE US A LIFETIME!!! I’ve now worked on it across two days and all I’ve done is a mini table and chairs. Very good for testing your patience though.
I needed a lot of breaks from this frustrating mini house, so in between tantrums I read a lil more of ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,’ watched ‘The Menu’ (liked it a lot actually!) and cooked dinner for Hayd and Flo.
Monday was always going to be depresso because we were all meant to be watching Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, and Finneas - friend of SYSCA - at Laneway (😥) and also we don’t get a new episode of Love Island on Monday’s (😥) and I have to clean the bathroom (😥), so to make myself feel better I’m writing this to you.
Hope you’re safe wherever you are, and that you enjoyed this little self-indulgent newsletter, and I’ll see you tomorrow for your daily news update!
PS in the time since writing this and sending it, Hayden whipped this up and wanted me to show all of you:
A few extra resources:
V glad you're safe! It's going to be a mess for a while. I really hope today's rain doesn't do more damage...
Also, where can we acquire a Hayden?
Happy to hear you are all safe!! Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was my favourite read of last year and I’m really happy you’re enjoying it