My dad was gay as is my son. My revulsion at the uniform wearing and flag waving on the steps of Parliament at the time the petition was presented remains to this day. I won't donate to the Salvation Army and no one else in the family has since then. If they stop me in the street or come to the door I tell them why I won't give them any money. I guess the apology rang hollow to me, it just felt more like it was out of worry about donations drying up than genuine remorse. The Wellington City Mission gets our money instead.

We always made Reindeer Pud, (they are magical so they eat pudding) the kids make up a mix of flour, water, raisins (ie whatever you have lying round) and leave in a bowl on the hearth together with a beer or two for Father Christmas and a carrot for the reindeer to nibble.... you make reindeer prints with three fingers into flour and dot them around, give the carrots a chew to leave teeth marks and flush the pud down the loo (leaving a suitably dribbled and scuffed area around the posed bowl) Mum was Jewish, who knows where she got this but it is now Tradition....

My stockbroker sent me an email saying "having seen this you won't want to bother " and he was right. If they were aiming for the wankers and arseholes market they may have a hit, otherwise not. (ps I am a woman and a NZ investor, yes we exist)

Serving documents always had a fun side......Way way back when I was a junior solicitor the firm I worked for had an extensive maritime practice. This meant arresting/ detaining ships in port. To do this you had to affix the writ or notice to the mast or to the stump provided for same. Problem was the crew would be keeping a look out. Women lawyers were rare back then but " ship girls " were not. I would gussy myself up, get the biggest meanest bloke on staff to accompany me and pop a hammer, tacks and a tape dispenser in a capacious handbag and set out. Leave bloke on wharf looking nonchalant, up the gangplank, saunter to the mast, whip out the writ and affix same. Off with the stilettos and down the gangplank at a run. I had the only 100% served record in the office.

Hey, give us right wingers a break.

We are a so called "right wing" household - 1 ex Labour (long term member, electorate committee and all) waiting until they get their act together. One tribal Nat (except for the year he voted for "the other side" which amusingly was the year he chaired the local National electorate committee and Labour won) and a youthful libertarian (aren't they all ?) who has a mate standing for ACT. We ALL shouted at the screen during that story.

Personally having had to spend 10 years working my way through a law degree in the 70's I would have loved a student loan. It still makes me snicker when I get the youngsters in my office complaining about their student loans while signing up to buy a used car from a finance house. My standard line is "One of these things is an investment in your future, and it ain't the car". They pay no heed.

Some time back my sister, who is a softy for any animal support group needed a parking place on the Wellington Hospital campus when working there. She was offered one at what seemed to be a really really good price up and off Mein Street....turned out to be where the "activists" thought the Malagan Institute and Abortion clinic staff parked.....she had acid poured on her car (by both sides) was spat on (by both sides), lunged at and hit (yup you guessed it - by both sides). It escalated to death threats made to her home phone and to the house and to ours and the rest of the family and finally she just gave up the park. Thing was, her work involved research designed to help women who suffer repeated natural miscarriages and her volunteer work was the SPCA. And you know what, both lots of "activists " knew that because they knew her, it had nothing to do with their causes, it was all about them and their personal need to show how staunch and special and hard arse they were. We actually got very good advice as to how to cope with this shit from the police. Frankly it was not pleasant at the time (especially with them telling you they knew which school your kids went to) and I now have absolutely zero time for animal rights activists, the anti-abortionists were bad, but the animal rights crew were frankly crazy dangerous.

Just popped over to the TV 3 site to register my approval for the John Campbell interview with Ring. Frightening people with untruths when you stand to gain monetarily from it is simply evil and such people should be pilloried when appropriate.

Well this year ain't been great. Our Mum died on the 25th December after being very sick for long time, it has been a harrowing 18 months. We had been prepared to a degree and now, after the funeral we have dispersed to beaches near and far to just deal as best we can....she was 80 and an incredible woman.

We believe she was the first ever woman pathologist in NZ though we have some trouble proving it as they registered in the UK back then. In later life she helped out with a school literacy program and she could never get them to understand that she didn't carry a gun and solve murders....that was the CSI effect.

So now the family are spread out - Wainui Beach, Waikanae (the Kapiti one) and Ocean Beach....we will remember all those long wonderful beach holidays we shared