I was born on the tail of a fish

What an opening line for a movie.

But I was. really. honest. Theres an uproar over the geographic board changing the names of our Islands, from the gay no brainer geographic indicators we've got, to the more beautiful and poetic names they already had, Te Ika a Maui, and Te Wai Pounamu.

Course noone wants the old names because they can't say them. They could compromise and call them say, Maui Island, and Pounamu Island, as well as keeping the full Maori names.

But I was born on the tail of a fish, Te Ika a Maui, the great fish of Maui hauled from the sea as he stood upon his waka, Te Wai Pounamu.

A much preferable story to I was born in the North Island, that the one thats north of the south island......

My kid was 11 today, I lay in his bed as he got ready to sleep and told him about the day he was born, a grey rainy thursday, and how when he came out, he didn't cry, he just looked at me bewildered, his little face all swollen from the trauma of his arrival, and swaddled in a blanket with his dark eyes staring out, not a sound did he make, and they put him on my breast and he suckled like a wee piggy and fell asleep. I could barely imagine him being a year old and now he is 11, it happened so quick I can hardly beleive it. He stands on the precipice of his teens and I realise I miss the little boy who used to sleep next to me at night and didn't mind if his mother kissed him on the lips.