I’ve never been this tired, I said to Hannah the other day. You’ve never been this old, she replied. (I am 45, for the record.) I’m writing this the day of our last deadline of the year – as is traditional – but hopefully, by the time you read this I will be ensconced in the tent. With luck, I will be horizontal. It has been quite the year.

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Still, I spent last Saturday at The Others Way, a music festival on Tāmaki’s Karangahape Road which seems to be mainly pitched at middle-aged folk who still think they like to party, only they like to sit down every now and then and possibly go for pasta and a Negroni at Coco’s Cantina.

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It was excellent, headlined by American singer Sharon Van Etten. It was a warm early summer evening, one of those days where the sun is yellow and the sky is blue and everything looks and feels good. Auckland was out in force, and we got to stand in the middle of Karangahape Road. Sharon praised us for our sense of community, for creating a place that was safe, and I realised it was a while since I’d heard our good city, or even our country, described that way.

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I guess she was comparing the fact that a bunch of creative types from our little corner of the world were standing on the rainbow crossing in the middle of a still-gritty uptown street with some of the events unfolding at home in the United States. Which is kind of a low bar when you think about it – but I’ll take it.

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Behind me, the Karanga-a-Hape station of the City Rail Link stood poised, ready to accept thousands of visitors a day – the week before, I walked past and they were testing the evacuation drill, which was a little galling, but necessary I suppose. The bars were full, and so were the restaurants. There was a buzz – something in the air – which reminded me very slightly of when the city woke up after the GFC, and we all got on with life again, and actually, some pretty good things happened.

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It was a welcome relief, coming off the back of the past few years – a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, Things Might Be Getting Better. There is much to worry about in the world, but for the moment, I’m hanging onto that feeling – I’ve got a tent to put up, after all.

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