Amid the consternation and flurry that greeted the Government's scrapping of Auckland's regional petrol tax and six-cent hike in national petrol tax, there were the usual blandishments and obfuscations.
It's poor form, I know, to hitch a ride on a bandwagon just as it is disappearing over the horizon, but the sight of that upturned vehicle decorated in Speight's colours in the student sector and the accompanying report on the news pages of this newspaper last week, has proven irresistible.
What do John Key and Talking Heads have in common? Well, I've no idea really, but it's funny how the mind works and pedalling home on Monday evening, a brisk southerly powering me down the peninsula, I found myself contemplating first the one and then the other.
Wellington was bustling; heaving even. Down on Queens Wharf, a New Zealand Harley Davidson convention was headquartered. If polished chrome, burning rubber, the deafening throb of an opened throttle happen to be your thing, then you would have been in hog heaven.
I've been wallowing in nostalgia, revelling in remembrance of things past.
Were Franz Kafka alive and well and living in New Zealand in the 21st century he would probably own a cellphone.
Salt or pepper, Lennon or McCartney, Marmite or Vegemite?
Be still my beating heart. And forgive me, reader, if an occasional blob of perspiration drips from my brow on to the page you are reading.
We are such creatures of habit.
My, my! Aren't we so easily scandalised these days.
Ok, I know it's a bit of a mouthful, but the moment you enter The Store in Kekerengu, you will regain your appetite.
The first catch of the season is always an occasion for more than idle curiosity.
There's a section of the highway that reminds me of that old Irish blessing: "May the road rise up to meet you . . ."
It was a small item, the incongruities of which arrested my attention for marginally longer than the average newspaper brief.
After nine long years in the political wilderness and 40 heady days back in power, by the end of its frenetic two-week first session in Parliament late in 2008 - much of it under urgency - John Key's National-led Government had firmly set its course.
Simon Cunliffe takes issue with criticism levelled at NCEA by a recent newspaper article, which he says offers "yet another example of why and how sections of the media today are increasingly held in contempt."
I wish I could be as confident as some in the independent production sector that we are on the way to a brave new world of public interest broadcasting.
John Maynard Keynes. We've been hearing rather a lot about him lately. He derived his core thinking from observations of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In August next year there will be a referendum on smacking. But I wonder if the whole issue won't simply fade away.
Dear Helen Clark, I almost wrote "Dear Prime Minister", but then I recalled that you're not.