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The Koru Club is reassuringly empty with only half an hour to go until boarding. I hope this means an empty flight and a vacant seat or two beside me. I'm not flying business class this time and I have had some tedious flights in the past. For readers of my Facebook page, todays comment wasn't entirely fictitious. On a trip to Los Angeles once I mentioned my profession by way of conversation. For the next eleven hours I was held personally responsible for the crusades and for the various heinous crimes committed by various Christians against my seat mate, his family and his family's family even unto the seventh Generation. Next time I flew the same route I was less than honest. When asked what I did to put bread on the table I almost truthfully said that I was a teacher. Whereupon I found myself in an increasingly convoluted, decreasingly honest conversation about educational policy, pedagogy, Piaget and my views of the same. After that I scowled and mumbled. I'm good ...

Christmas has come and gone and so has New Year. The family arrived, hugged played games, talked, ate, unwrapped presents and gave some, talked, ate, hugged and left. Resolutions got made, though why exactly is a bit beyond me: just because the Earth has reached some arbitrarily defined point in it's annual journey around the Sun seems to me to be no good reason to take up jogging or leave off eating chocolate. As usually happens after the festive season I am briefly on holiday, sitting around in the house with the best view in New Zealand, taking photos, wandering around, thinking about swimming, wandering around a bit more and, mostly, reading books. One of the books I am reading is one I gave to Clemency as a joke on account of it's title. Marcus Chown certainly has a way with catchy monikers for his books. The last one of his I read was called The Never Ending Days of Being Dead , which seemed less like the title of a book about quantum physics, which it was, and more...