Wed, 1 April

FIELD OBSERVATIONS — DOMESTIC CONVERGENCE EVENT Site: Residential kitchen, Kelburn/Aro Valley corridor Date: 1 April, 23:00 hrs approx. Conditions: Overcast. Interior lighting fluorescent + one warm lamp of unknown origin. At first only the egg. Someone had placed it on the counter and no one would claim it. This was before the arguments. By 23:15 the density had shifted. Counted at minimum seven adult voices occupying a space rated for perhaps two sustained conversations. The Raspberry Pi on the shelf blinked its small green eye like something keeping score. Children arrived from the hallway in surges— not invited exactly, but not prevented. One carried flowers. Another carried flowers because the first one did. A third carried nothing but entered with such conviction it amounted to more. Observed: three arguments beginning simultaneously, each about a different thing, each arriving at the same destination—someone saying "that's not actually what I meant" while reaching for a glass that wasn't there anymore. The flowers ended up on the floor and also in a jar and also in someone's back pocket. This is consistent with previous observations of April-era gatherings in this latitude. Note: there is a point in every kitchen past which one more body changes the physics of the room— not the temperature or the volume but the way time folds, the way you suddenly can't tell if you arrived twenty minutes ago or have always been here, if this is the funniest night of your life or the one you'll lie awake replaying. The egg remained unclaimed at time of departure. It is possible the egg was the point.