I saw something walking down to the Oval yesterday evening that made me wish I was a painter.

Dunedin's geology is volcanic. We're surrounded by hills. There's a harbour and a little flat land, and then hills in all directions, with a green belt that makes it possible to always be within ten minutes of forest, then the outer suberbs, with bigger darker hills above these. The harbour and Peninsula are to the east. The sun sets to the West, everyone knows this.

The light last night reminded me that summer's almost here. In summer, just before twilight, every hill in Dunedin is bathed in that light that's so golden it's the colour of roses.

When I got down to the bottom of the hill, the last little bit of each hill was golden, and the rest had fallen into darkness. It was gorgeous, there was this ring of golden light just touching the tops of the Peninsula and Mount Cargill and the funny scrappy hill with the quarry on it just before you turn onto the road to Port Chalmers. It made me want to be a painter, because it was like the light enclosed the city and held it, and the colours were deep violets and corals and that halcyon sunshine colour that you can't even give a name to. And I really just wished that I could paint, and that I could find those colours and make something vibrant. I wanted chiarascuro, I wanted the grey of the sky and the dark branches of all the trees around the park silloheutted, and the industrial buildings and then the wildness of the hills and the immanence of their highest points. But mostly the wildness of the hills, the wild purples and darkness, but especially, especially the golden bit at the top that's like some meadow at the top of the world.

I've never seen the constrast at that very moment before, normally I'm outside when the hills are completely golden, but miss the last bit.

Last night Dan and I met a friend, Ursula, that I used to work with at the Library at a secret shady David Lynch bar that you can only get to by going down an alley past some non-descript skips towards an equally non-descript door. It's just one room inside, with meathooks in the ceiling and brick walls, I think it used to be a cool store, when the building was a hotel. But it's also all luxurious. A fire and comfy seats, and so many people waiting for a seat that you know it's at that stage where it's notoriously exclusive, which means that everyone wants to go there. We hovered at the bar and watched a very entertaining bartender, who we have nicknamed 'the Mime'. He was so animated, I hope he likes his work. Then we bagged a seat by the fire, it was a nice place, cosy and not at all pretentious, when we were there, anyway.

We moved on to a place I haven't been to for about three years, to watch a friend's band play, and I was amazed when I walked in the door, because everyone seemed so young, comparatively. But it was much more fun, in that the boys had groupies wearing kilts and woolen hats and I think I saw a girl with a sock on her arm.