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I got a photo of Noah today, eating MacDonalds and wearing the accompanying Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hat which came with the 'food'. Not that he knows what  a teenager, a mutant, or a ninja is, though he has a pretty good grasp on the meaning of turtles. He's being toilet trained and he has a sticker chart: the deal was struck with his mum for 1 (one) sticker for every result in his potty (of both or either variety, verified by inspection of either parent) and when the chart is filled he gets to eat MacDonalds, which, though he has very little prior experience of it, the kids at preschool assure him is way cool. So he figured a) lots of small efforts are more lucrative than 1 major effort and b) if he eats and drinks a lot his productivity will rise.  The chart was set up on Friday and he got the ninjaburger on Sunday afternoon. I expect he is going to become a lawyer like his mum, who is, even as we speak, negotiating a revised contra...

Next time, maybe? The recently deconsecrated church at Miller's Flat Today I took my bike to Lawrence and rode the Clutha Gold Trail , a recently opened bike track which runs about 73km from Lawrence to Roxburgh, where it joins the Roxburgh Gorge Trail, which in turn links with the Central Otago Rail Trail. This is all part of a good idea by our Government to build a network of cycleways extending from one end of the country to the other; an idea whose implementation is way behind schedule, but which might nevertheless be the most positive thing for which John Key's government is remembered. I drive the road beside the Clutha Gold Trail very frequently and had watched it being built. So today was the fulfilment of a plan formed when I first saw the guys at work putting together all those little bridges: to spend a day off doing an out and back ride from Lawrence. I planned to go to Beaumont which I thought might take an hour and a half, but I was surprised how easy it wa...