Wed, 5 November

Overheard at the school gate, 3:14 PM, grey sky, Wellington wind: "—no but the thing is you make the tea wrong and the whole meeting falls apart, like literally falls apart, eleven faces going dark one by one, and you're sitting there with your cup thinking was it the milk or was it the agenda—" "—mine won't eat rice anymore, says it's a school thing, says nobody eats rice—" "—so I said to the Deputy Secretary, I said, the file is literally migrating, it's in the cloud, it's between clouds, it's weather at this point—" "—picks up the backpack and it weighs nothing, I mean nothing, and I think what did you do all day—" "—and the steam, you know, the steam from eleven cups in eleven cities all on one screen, it's almost—" "—beautiful?" "—I was going to say bureaucratic but yes. Yes. That too."