Not as late as last week - 16/01/06

Weather has been pretty good, best of summer this last week.

LOCAL NEWS

In a small country like New Zealand, all it takes is one bad crash and we have a road safety crisis. A crash north of Auckland yesterday caused five hours of delay for people coming home from holiday.

A young woman who plotted to kill her Father was sentence to 200 hours community work and 18 months supervision because she had second thoughts and had said sorry a lot.

New theories abound about why teenagers drink. Apparently advertisements for alcohol make them drink excessively, where as most ads I see seem to want you to try a different brand rather than fall off the wagon. They must have subliminal messages that the other ads about not drinking excessively and not drinking and driving lack.

A day-care centre in Christchurch has been linked with 21 cases of hepatitis in a month. Not very nice, it's not the sort of thing you want to catch. They reckon no parents have withdrawn their kids - like hell.

A keeper was attacked by two lions at a zoo in Wellington. I think he just got in the way of the food, they didn't do a lot of damage and didn't see him as potential food.

Australia wants our sperm. I don't want to think about that.

A convicted killer that was denied parole a year ago is now being given leave to meet with his new lady friend. He stabbed his last lady friend 34 times. I don't think the new one reads the papers.

Five acres of bush were burned when a man thought it was a good idea to show skyrockets to his kids in Mangawhai. Instead, he showed them how to burn $20,000. He could have saved money by buying a video. Skyrockets have been illegal for some time.

WORLD NEWS

Trouble seems to be brewing in Fiji again. They seem to have more coups than elections.

Greenpeace continue to confront the whalers in the southern ocean.

SPORT

No idea what has been going on this week. Sod all, although Chelsea only just beat lowly Sunderland 2-1. Man City beat Man Utd 3-1 in a match where Christian Ronaldo was red carded. Not sure if Middlesbrough turned up to the game against Arsenal, because Arsenal won 7-0. Fulham beat Newcastle 1-0. Liverpool and Everton both had 1-0 wins.

MY SAD LIFE

Gavin's dog Meena died this week. She was pretty old, and really looked like she was struggling on New Year's Eve. Shushi is now the last dog standing. Gavin and Yana went to Tiri yesterday.

Kathryn is away in Europe for another week.

We went to the museum yesterday, and were treated to a show. As we arrived, a chap was leaving rather quickly. Three security guards seemed to be chasing him, although one did a face plant as she leapt down the steps. They caught up with him on the grass by the cenotaph and escorted him back. Was most unusual. We went to see the Da Vinci exhibition which was mostly models of his designs.

Went swimming at West Wave on Saturday, remarkable because the pool was set to 50m, which was a struggle. Seems lots of pools had "biohazards" or "faecal incidents" on Saturday. Yuck.

Kauaeranga Valley Camp was pleasant, and lacked any major incidents. Weather was very good. We did Hoffman's Pool a couple of times (there is a photo of Rory jumping off the cliff there in my photography book, from three years ago. He is a bit larger now.) Everyone went to Cathedral Cove a day when I had to work, so I stayed behind. They all seemed pretty impressed, maybe I will see it next time. I nearly had to come back home, left my power supply behind for laptop and got it couriered down. Got a bit exciting. Looked at some photos of the kids from previous visits, they are so much older and more independent now. There were four other boys and they hooned around together. The two Matts have been on other similar trips with us for years. Sam was new to the camp but Rory knows him well from water polo. The boys and girls each had their own cabin so the parents were left in relative peace. Activities included table tennis, flying fox, swimming and kayaking, archery, shooting, go-kart, jiggers, playground, and an artificial ski slope which we didn't use for tobogannning. One night we looked at some previous photos, one from three years ago showed that all the kids were shorter than Diana. Now none of them are. The holiday went well, I think.

Ollie has been like a little purring hairy black cuddle leech since we got home. He has also brought in a bird. He's a right pain.