A massive Southerly arrives uprooting the large poplar tree that graced the terrace and wiping out five cars.

The cicadas noisily invade the lobby of the apartment building.

Despite the weather the annual Labour History Project Rona Bailey lecture takes place, providing an over history of the Public Service Association and I have the unusual experience of doing the catering for the event.

Russell finds me the book which I’ve been looking for for forty years. I’d read it once, taken it back to the library and couldn’t remember the title. It’s called: People’s history and socialist theory.

In an idle moment of play fighting in the back of the car I suggest I might teach Tūhana the Chinese burn that we used to use as boys seventy years ago. My daughter suggests I would be teaching him to be a torturer and a racist. I google and find that she’s right – it’s got nothing to do with the Chinese.

Trump announces his gob-smacking Board of Peace, which takes us back politically, several centuries to the East India Trading Company.

Will Cuba, a country that has done little harm, survive, or be overthrown for providing mass literacy for its people, universal health care, a model of income equality, training doctors and providing health care for developing nations, being a key player in the overthrow of apartheid South Africa and for singing and dancing joyously?

Walking back from the Orongorongo River Valley, we suddenly encounter a hundred adolescent girls heading into the river and back. Several of the PI girls surround us, exclaiming. You walked to the end? Well done, we’re proud of you. God bless. We want to be like you when we’re old.

Early Friday morning, waving the Palestinian flag on the Hill Street overbridge, I share chai tea and spiced cake with a young man who used to be head boy at a suburban college and who is now ‘doing creative gigs’. This is his first time at the flag waving and he gets two flags to wave and also drapes himself in a third. A lot of cars toot.

An image for a book cover (unfortunately nothing local will do) will cost $1000 if it’s a real photo or will be free if AI generated. It feels like a lose-lose situation.

I can’t figure out whether an organisational dilemma is one of governance or one of executive function. I’m not sure how much I care.

Every morning and evening, down below, the motorway is gridlocked.

The most modern EVs are universally painted white and feel like something from Mars.

The couple who have been organising the flag waving for two years are retiring and gift us small packages of stones painted with the colours of the Palestinian flag. It is a charming gesture.

Maybe cruelty won’t win out.