I love this time of year – there's a big high sitting over the country and spring is everywhere.
Perhaps it's the daylight saving thing. It seemed to arrive at just the right time this year, coinciding with a blast of more temperate weather.

It was certainly a propitious moment here at the Watusi Country Club, where new blossoms are bursting on the trees and plants are lurching to life throughout the grounds. Just the right time for daylight saving, I thought the other day: these newly-budding flowers need all the help they can get – that extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day gives them just the kick they need to grow strong and tall.
It's the same with the little lambs frolicking merrily in the field, luxuriating in the longer halcyon days we get thanks to the beneficence of a kindly government. If only all their laws were so effective...
OK. As I flagged last week, I'm going to look at the Jazz For Christchurch concert in a little greater detail. It is taking place at Holy Trinity Church next weekend (October 16), kicking off at 7.30pm. And again this morning there was news of yet another quite substantial aftershock in Christchurch. I can barely imagine the constant tension that must bring to people's lives.
Christchurch is, of course, a long way away from the sunny Bay of Plenty and for many people, merely exists as a city filled with white supremacist gangs where they seem to kill prostitutes at unreasonably frequent intervals.
But there's more to Christchurch than that – they also have ‘Smiling' Bob Parker as their mayor and have elected Jim Anderton as MP 437 times.
But I jest.
Christchurch is a rather nice place and almost everyone I know has ties there somehow, whether it's having their kids home safely from university at the moment or knowing friends or relatives who are still down in the quake zone.
It's also the home town of Liam Ryan, who on behalf of the Tauranga Jazz Society is putting together the Holy Trinity concert. He now lives in Blenheim and after the initial earthquake had a house full of family whose homes in Christchurch were in various states of disrepair. Even getting them back was a problem, with the Kaikoura coast road closed under some 30,000 tonnes of rock.
The jazz society stepped up to organise the concert as an acknowledgement of Christchurch as a home for New Zealand music and in particular New Zealand jazz. Some of the earliest artists at the Tauranga National Jazz Fest were great Cantabrians like saxophonists Stu Buchanan and Jim Langabeer, pianist Doug Caldwell, and singer Malcolm MacNeil. In part, this is a gesture of support from one musical community to another.
As I mentioned, Liam was born and bred in Christchurch and did his music education down there with the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, playing violin before joining various bands, the most high-profile being the Narcs in the 1980s.
I spoke to Liam earlier in the week and he talked about visiting the city now:
'I drove into Christchurch last weekend from the north, and as you approach the city you begin to notice chimneys and church spires down and there is a palpable pall hanging in the air. Seeing the central city devastated broke my heart…the streets are cordoned-off with semi-permanent fences and some of the buildings in my neighbourhood around Riccarton are reduced to piles of bricks.
'Add to that the dozens of after shocks – I saw people drop to their knees when a 4.5 hit a shopping mall I was in last Sunday - you feel like the ground is moving all the time, to the point of
feeling vertigo.”
So – get your tickets now. They're $40 from Baycourt TicketDirect. On the night you can expect to hear The Torch Songs Band, Kokomo, Marion Arts, Bay Dixie, Carol Storey, Aaron Saxon, Porina McLeod, Miles Tremlett and more.
Like Liam says: 'It will be good to kick out the jams and send some love South. We are hoping to target the fundraising so it will benefit the music and arts community who have lost so many buildings and facilities.
'Help the city get its heart back.”