john key and me

much excitement this morning as i drove across town for a breakfast presentation by John Key (the prime minister).  the telecoms industry group had a table booked and my boss couldn’t make it and passed the invite to me. 

the occasion was the morning after the budget where the prime minister and the finance minister give speeches to the party faithful in auckland and wellington respectively.

i could tell it was going to be eventful when i saw a group of protesters and journalists arriving at 7am with their placards and loud hailers.

i walked through the protesters without any trouble, but once we were inside it sounded like things got a bit more exciting (by new zealand standards) and the prime minister was delayed whilst the security concerns were dealt with

he ended up arriving about an hour late. 

the protests were reported as rather more dramatic than they were in the local paper. 

The finance minister separately commented on the lacklustre protesting down in wellington

but then he stayed around at the end just chatting.  i bumped in to a chap i used to work with in my old Easynet days called Sean (left most in one of the photos above) and we were chatting until we realised we were the last people left, with just us, John Key, his private secretary and two security bods. 

so we spent a rather pleasant ten minutes chatting to the prime minister about all sorts of stuff economic and personal.  he’s just so laid back.  i kept thinking ‘oi, shouldn’t you be running the country rather than speaking to a couple of english chancers?’.

jane had her prayer meeting this morning and i think she was teaching this afternoon.

the girls had school – kezia and i found a piece of music last night which a school robot is going to dance to.  it’s this (yay for spotify finally being available in the UK now).  and her friends liked it so that’s good

this evening esther had swimming but kezia didn’t have hers as she was being tired/ill.  but actually seemed very lively later on

then this evening we had our neighbours round for a slap up roast. jane asked if they’d put a shower cap over the dips they had brought.  but apparently it’s  a specially designed food covering thing. 

but a shower cap would be a good alternative