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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 ...

I’m not really a business class sort of person. The thought of paying the price of a pretty reasonable second hand car for a couple of glasses of champagne, a meal or two and the rental on a chair for 12 hours sticks in my craw a bit. But here we were, for reasons I won’t bore you with, taking the right hand gangplank and heading uphill to the top story of the world’s largest airliner. And here we were being shown to our seats, and by seats I mean cubicles, by an astonishingly pretty young woman in that particularly elegant uniform worn by Emirates cabin staff. There was a sort of bedside cabinet thing containing a minibar, yes really, and spaces to stash your stuff. There was a TV screen not much smaller than the one we have at home, and if the effort of reaching across to work it was too much, two, yes two different remote controls to fiddle with. There was an armchair with lots of Homer Simpson seat goes up seat goes down doohickery going on. If you got bored with more TV channels ...

It was pouring with rain in Napier this morning and cold with it. I slept well in the guest flat beneath the Bishop's house where I was ensconced because my lack of a sleeping bag precluded my staying in the more spartan boarders' quarters at Napier Boys' High. It was good to sit up into the evening comparing episcopal experiences with David Rice, and then, this morning, to attend a workshop at the National Youth Forum The workshop I opted for was run by Justin Duckworth of Urban Vision . Justin delivered one of those addresses where you have an uneasy feeling that no matter what process of selection and choosing I may have thought I went through to be there, the real reason was that the Holy Spirit had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, dumped me into the little plastic seat and said to me "Now my lad, just keep your trap shut, and your eyes and ears open. This is for you. Understand?" He talked about the non negotiables of Christianity: obedience to Jesus, a...