This will be my last column for a month – it's been a long time and I need a break.

And it has been a long time. Looking back I notice that I wrote my first column for the Weekend Sun back when it was still a bright-eyed bushy-tailed youngster of a newspaper.
That first column was unleashed on the world on the twenty first of March 2003. Allowing for public holidays, acts of god and the ailing facility that I used to call my memory, it all adds up to something more than 300 columns, or an accumulated 210,000 words, more or less. That's a lot of paper to wrap fish and chips.
So it's time for a little break. I will be absent from this slot for the month of July, though still supplying film reviews for the DVD World column (just can't stop watching those damned movies!).
In the meantime, fear not. I've been fortunate enough to enlist the aid of one of the people I have most respect for on the Tauranga music scene, the esteemed Derrin Richards.
Many of you probably know of Derrin, at least if you read this column or keep an eye and ear on local music. Derrin has for many years organised original music events, the most recent of those being the (sadly now defunct) Plug ‘n' Play nights. He has a passion both for original music and for encouraging new up and coming musicians. He is also a helluva player in his own right.
If you have seen him play recently it was probably backing John Michaelz. Derrin is a wonderfully instinctive accompanist, whether it be on guitar or his more recent additions mandolin, banjo and lap steel. I first really met him when he was recording songs for John's solo album from four years back, Some Songs, and watched as he laid down perfect take after perfect take on tunes that he was often largely unfamiliar with. Since then he has popped in many guises, backing American singer Kelly Slattery, forming one half of blues duo Blue Smoke, or filling in whatever was needed – a bit of bass, some guitar – with various artists at the Plug ‘n' Play nights.
But, in addition to that, Derrin is a smart fella with definite ideas about the music world, a passion for promoting music. He starts a series of five columns next week. Read them, send him emails – he's probably far better at remembering to answer them than I am…
In the meantime I will be travelling the world in search of new thrills and excitement. And I can't say I'm sorry to leave the somewhat depressing times we seem to be going through right now (though they'll no doubt still be here come August).
Amongst various things dropping rain on my generally sunny disposition is the fact that money for adult education has been slashed, pretty much destroying for good the Adult and Community Education in Schools program (ACE). A bitter little pill that was sneaked into the budget without anyone seeming to notice.
And, of course, I'll be fortunate enough to miss the pro-smacking referendum. Just when Tauranga was getting over the national reputation it gained from foisting Winston Peters on an unsuspecting world we have this other rampant little do-gooder, and nine million dollars is about to be wasted on a fatuously ill-worded referendum.
'Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”. Gimme a break. Should it be a criminal offence if it is part of bad parental correction? Or indifferent parental correction? And what is this smack? Surely a different sort of smack from the one you get offered by a bug guy in the pub when you accidentally spill his beer.
Ultimately, it looks like all that Larry Baldock and his crowd of well-meaning child-smackers will accomplish is to permanently discredit the idea of public referendum. Do you really need to waste nine million to do that?
My suggestion would be that, since they might again become the only people who will legally be allowed to be hit in New Zealand, only those under 13 should be allowed to vote.
See you in a month's time.