Ladi6 with her son, Philli Park-Tamati, and niece, Mikki Tamati-Clark, at their favourite icecream haunt, Casa Del Gelato. Photo / Doug Sherring
My happy place is an icecream shop. It's something I share with my son, Philli - a real love for icecream. He's 9, and the light of my life. So when I'm not touring or busy, which is all the time, we hit an icecream store together.
My partner, Parks,
is the producer in Ladi6 and we travel quite a lot with the band. We're constantly coming and going - we just got back from a five-week tour in Europe. When we get back we make sure that we take some time out with Philli, because it's his mum and dad going away together and he's the only member of our little family that stays.
We're just so overjoyed with happiness at that simple act of eating icecream together. It's ridiculous, but it's a real thing. It's pure bliss.
Sharing that one special thing makes up for all of those moments that are horrible, when you're two weeks into a two-month tour and you just really start missing him and he starts missing you, and you're Skyping and he's crying, and it's really awful. Or if he's sick and he's really down and tells you how much he wishes you were there.
Our favourite store at the moment is Casa Del Gelato on Ponsonby Rd. My 6-year-old niece, Mikki, and her mum were the ones who showed it to us. It's kind of a well-known thing that we're into our icecream. Family members will go to different spots around the world and tell us about the icecream stores.
