Tui at evensong

A long time ago, when the world was new and exciting, I was in the local church choir, and attended evensong. It was my first year at university, and had failed to gain accommodation in any of the Halls of Residence, The offer of a room in a shed behind the house where my schoolmate had gained private board as the landlady was related to his mother, was gratefully accepted. Both be and our landlady were staunch members of the Anglican Community. I was in the process of discovering my place in the world as well as in the cosmos. Attending church was a household outing every Sunday, and with encouragement I added my voice to the small choir. For the first two terms only.

Today is Saturday, yet the beautiful voice of this Tui, briefly quiet as I took its picture, was far more melodious and worthy of evensong than was my voice. I probably could have been trained, but running, throwing the discus and rugby were more my thing until S .....

On my first walk since being lurgi-struck, I also saw some election posters. We are due for an election in September (our Parliament is re-elected every three years (very occasionally shorter). Young Chloe Swarbrick is the Green candidate, who now has a real chance of being elected.

The sitting MP (Nikki Kaye) has resigned, from being Deputy Leader of the National Party and from Parliament, after a second change of leadership in our conservative party in just eight weeks. 

The Labour Party is led in Parliament by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who retains the high approval ratings she has had for most of the past nearly three years. She has had no need to send troops into a dissenting part of our country in order to enforce obedience to the law; actally I'm not sure that it is obedience to anything, it is more to enforce fear of Mr Trump's power.

I am so grateful that I was born in New Zealand, and that the last person who told me how much he admires Trump and Putin is a patient; for other reasons than those beliefs, although those beliefs appear to arise from the illness that brought him to us.

I have just read this afternoon of the use of the US military against the civilians of Portland, and cannot comprehend how the elected President of a democratic country can believe that he is entitled to initiate a civil war.