Little and Friday

Little and Friday, nestled in suburban Takapuna (or possibly Belmont) is a delight, a bakery and cafe that makes quite possibly the best baked cafe goods you'll find in this fair city (you can find their baking in other cafes too, or you used to be able to). But before I get distracted thinking about their exceptional sausage rolls, tarts (savoury and sweet), cakelets and the rest, this isn't about the food... I only have myself to blame for that one!

Little and Friday has one loo, and what I particularly like about it is that it is accessed through the kitchen. This gives a curious (ok, nosy!) person like myself a perfect opportunity to pretend that my natural walking pace is about 1/2 a km per hour, and spend those precious micro-seconds checking it out! But once one can dawdle legitimately no longer, it's outside (beware if it's raining) and then inside again into the one (not-disabled) toilet...

Plain and colourful, it makes the most of what it is - a longish narrow space. The floor's red, the wooden-beer-crate bin bright yellow, the walls white. There's some natural light (yay), a retro mirror above the loo, and an all-important message written blackboard-styles above the mirror... Now I'm not that fussed about 'men put the toilet seat down' in my own personal space (though I recognise the arguments for it!), but in unisex publicly-shared loos like this, it's really only polite - as the owners have to astutely observed (and since they ask so nicely, how could you object) - just as it's only polite to leave it as clean and tidy as you found it.

The loo offers commercial loo roll (but not a rough and hard version thereof), nice domestic hand soap, and best of all, paper towels for hand drying. Hoorah. The sink, narrow with two taps, only offered me cold water despite my best attempts at turning the hot one on. On a hot summer's day, that didn't bother. It might in winter. Which makes me wonder if it'll turn into a little room of icy coldness on a winter's morning...

This loo comes across as an excellent example of the 'functional' style of loo, working with limited options, but adding that little extra that makes me smile. I'll be back!