One arrives and another departs - 24/05/04

LOCAL NEWS

The government has backed down on a change to the law which would allow consensual sex between people aged 12 to 16 as long as they were within two years of age and there were only two taking part (more information than I would want to know). Funnily enough, Diana wasn't keen when she realised that would be Rory in just over two months.

Police issued a record 400,000 traffic infringement notices (tickets) last year. Glad to know I was doing my bit in helping them set that record. It includes 41,000 for not having their license on them.

Big news in the paper today, a near miss between an Air New Zealand plane and a Qantas plane (800m horizontally, 125m vertically, require considerably more) but it happened in March and whilst in Indonesian air space.

An estranged husband, subject to a non-molestation order, killed his ex-wife and baby, seriously hurt two other kids and killed himself (slowly, he was in hospital a couple of days before he died). The courts were absolutely speechless, pointing out that the piece of paper should have protected the family and they couldn't understand why it didn't work. Perhaps if they started printing protection orders on bullet-proof jackets, it might help. As Gavin said, if you would take notice of a protection order, then one probably isn't required.

Helen Clark met the Pope. Not sure which one was further from the far side of death's door. I guess it is fair to say that they both had equivalent status with the person they serve. It was a short meeting, as the Pope's ventriloquist guy was feeling ill.

An elderly woman was run over by a police car on the way to a callout near Nelson. The car's lights were flashing at the time. I wonder if it will be like the woman that was killed by an ambulance. I guess she didn't look both ways.

A string of arsons in Gore (a pretty small town) may have been slowed by the arrest of a 37-year old man (with only half a packet of matches on him).

A woman has been arrested for the murder of her husband, reported missing 16 years ago. Police have finished digging up the garden in the house they were occupying at the time. The reinstatement will feature on a celebrity gore version of the gardening show "Changing Gardens".

Lana Coc-Kroft has been in hospital nearly a month since returning from Celebrity Treasure Island. The early return is probably more interesting than the show itself, I suspect.

WORLD NEWS

An airport terminal collapse in Paris proved to be terminal for six people.

Fahrenheit 9/11 won in Cannes, the Palm D'or I think. Should help George Bush's re-election no end.

REAL SPORT

Rory's team won water polo on Friday night, 9-2. Rory made two good intercepts that the team scored from, but didn't score himself. He spent one quarter in goal and barely touched the ball.

Hannah's team could have won on Saturday, but they lost 0-1. That's okay, one more match before the end of grading and we have a good cause to be in division 2.

Rory's team played the top of the table team and lost 0-2. It was an awful game for his team, I am very concerned about how they are playing. We've had some issues with the coach this week and I am not sure what we can do about it.

Rory plays inter-school soccer on Tuesday, and we are both going to watch.

Hannah has her cross-country race on Friday, I will try to be there.

SPORT

Man Utd did the business and beat Milwall 3-0 in the FA Cup final, as they should. Giggs set up two of the goals, which Van Nistelrooy scored. Ronaldo scored the other.

The Brumbies beat the Crusaders in the Super 12 final, as I sort of expected. They were about 16-0 up after 12 minutes. I didn't watch it, had Sky set to record the FA Cup on another channel.

The first cricket test between New Zealand and England is now at the end of day four. We looked good at the end of day one, they looked good at the end of day 2, by the end of day 3 we had our nose in front. With one day left, the poms need about 280 to win, Richardson got a ton in the second innings after 93 in the first (his average is already pretty good).

The Warriors won, the Rabbitohs must be utter crap.

MY SAD LIFE

Soon after sending my email last Monday, Brett Furlonger made the trip from Perth to Auckland to be with his mother. She died on Wednesday night. Funny, I checked the paper Friday morning, almost by accident, and she was there. Her funeral is today. Brett, our thoughts have been with you this week. I had a few beers with Brett and Allan on Saturday. Luckily, no pet was hurt (last time we did that, Allan's dog Meg died while we were there).

Jonno's significant other, Emma Young, had her book come out this week. Called, "The Astronaut's Survival Guide" is a children's book. BTW, Jonno, spoke to Steph this week, she seems well.

I forgot to mention I got some sales figures on my book last week, nearly 400 copies since January, which is way better than I expected. There should only be around 500 copies left, so another version could be possible.

Rory had the afternoon off school on Tuesday, due to a teacher stopwork meeting. I picked him up and we went bowling and played pool. It was kind of fun.

I had lunch with a guy that went to the Liverpool Manchester United game a couple of weeks back. He got to meet a couple of Man United players and got their signatures on two programmes from the game, he gave me one of them. They were signed by Tim Howard and Ronaldo (the young one, not the Brazil international, but he scored the first goal in the FA Cup final on Saturday night). He was going to take his Dad to the game but he was too sick to go and took his brother instead.

Work on Rory's science project has continued. It's a long way off finished but we made good progress in getting some data. Had some interesting results so far. Been shooting CDs with an airgun. The results have been quite interesting. Rory has learned a bit about scientific method as well as ballistics and the transfer of kinetic energy.