This is the last dispatch from Kaiya and we thank both Kaiya for sharing her week of food, life, doing with us. Also, we thank you, readers for the week of eating, reading and mulling over all together with us.
Kaiya Waerea (she/her)
@kaiyawaerea | kaiyawaerea.com
Kaiya Waerea (she/her, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a chronically ill writer and designer from Aotearoa, now living in London UK. Her research is concerned with knowledge produced through marginalisation, particularly as it is produced through moving through this world in a disabled and indigenous body. Kaiya is gluten-intolerant, (mostly) vegetarian, and prefers to eat with others.
Her writing has been featured in Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents (forthcoming), Errant Journal: Learning from our Ancestors, AIGA Eye on Design, Ache Magazine, Sick Magazine, DreamsTimesFree and others. Kaiya co-runs feminist press Sticky Fingers Publishing and teaches on the Graphic Design programme at Camberwell University of the Arts London.
10th June
by Kaiya Waerea
by Kaiya Waerea
While I generally wake up begrudgingly, and have to actively tear my mind out of dreaming, N seems to be forcibly ejected awake, and bounds up, pootering about my room and chatting away. I continued snoozing, drifting in and out of sleep for another hour. At some point a coffee appeared by my bed, but I let it go cold.
When I finally woke up, or when N finally got bored enough to properly wake me up, he takes my cold coffee and warms it up in the microwave, which is a brand new addition to the house as of about two days ago. Other than warming up cold coffees I’m not really sure what to do with it. N also makes me two slices of vegemite on toast and has an apple himself. To my surprise he wanted to watch another episode of Merlin, so we lounged in bed drinking coffee with it on.
*
The lunch time plan is this: the rest of the spicy potatoes and my leftover chips from my burger will go in the oven. We will have this with a salad of finely chopped leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, raw onion and olives. But first, we need to go into Ladywell to get something to accompany this.
We wander down the road with the heat beating down, discussing whether we need both hummus and halloumi or just one or the other. I was in favour of both, although the Larder, the posh deli in the village, had neither. N ran around the corner shops while I got myself a coffee at Oscars, and luckily Village News had hummus while Ladywell Food and Wine had halloumi. We also got a bottle of juice – for some reason N chose mango and cranberry – and a bar of Galaxy salted caramel chocolate. We sat in the park while I drank my coffee and we shared the strange juice, admiring the river.
At home we do as we planned. I fry the halloumi in chilli and lemon seasoning while N gets the potato based things in the oven and roughly chops everything for the salad. We plate up and everything is delicious.
*
Later in the afternoon after being very indecisive we got the bus to the top of Greenwich Park. We foolishly didn’t bring any water with us, and as we lay in the flower park in the dappled shade of a tall tree I got thirstier and thirstier, until I started getting cross and we got up to find a cafe. The Pavillion Cafe was shut, and the Observatory had shut, but luckily a small kiosk by the lookout point was still open. After queuing for a while I got a bottle of still water and a lemon San Pellegrino which I drank through a straw. It was so fizzy it was almost like sherbert in my mouth, and I took small sips.
N insisted on making a broccoli soup, and once he has decided he wants to make broccoli soup, there is no talking him out of it. I did try, listing all the other things we have in, but eventually he started to sulk so I gave in with the condition that we also had cheese on toast.
We got home at around 7pm, and he went straight back out to get a broccoli and a cauliflower. While he was out I had a wash, and had a lie down while he started cooking. It was delicious of course, with a good heat to it. I had mine with a drizzle of olive oil. N didn’t have cheese on toast, instead having cheese on his soup and plain toast on the side.
Later, in bed, N put on a pot of Rooibos, with honey and oat milk. We drank while eating the chocolate we bought earlier.