The Balmoral family are hospitable

I had just drifted off to sleep when the phone rang. It was quite late at night. My caller was the secretary/treasurer of the Amateur Newspaper Columnist’s Guild (ANCG). She told me I had been selected, presumably at random, to represent the guild by accompanying John Key and his family on their historic visit to stay with the Queen at Balmoral Castle. I didn’t have an opportunity to even express surprise. It was either yes or...

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The tortured road to Damascus

During that period around BC and AD there was a young man named Saul, born in the Middle Eastern city of Tarsus whose great intellect was recognised at an early age. His father, a wealthy merchant, saw that his son was well educated, getting the most noted teacher the Jews had ever possessed, Gamaliel, to privately tutor him. Saul became steeped in Judaism, the religion of the Jews. About that time an outspoken thirty-three-year-old had...

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Glory Days - before Springsteen

The euphoria in Otago when they lifted the Ranfurly shield from Waikato was short-lived. They say a week is a long time in politics, but it is agonizingly short when you parade your heroes down Dunedin’s main street on Monday only to watch them lose the “Log’o’Wood” the next Sunday. Pity too because the Forsyth Barr Stadium is a great venue to defend the shield in any weather. Hawkes Bay waited 44 years to have the shield...

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A sad slice of American life

I was a keen follower of Close Up on TV One and enjoyed Mark Sainsbury’s searching current affairs interviews, but am less enamoured with the Seven Sharp replacement. The super-confident trio of presenters sit at the one desk and have curious conversations with each other, laughing at their own repartee which I don’t find particularly entertaining. It is probably aimed at a different demographic grouping and so I’ve had to move on.My...

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