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KENKEN

It looks like sudoku, but it’s a test of arithmetic rather than a pattern puzzle.

Each vertical and horizontal line has to contain the numbers 1-6. The numbers in each heavily outlined set of squares, called cages, must produce the number in the top corner. For example, 9x means the numbers multiply to equal 9.

TIP: Numbers can be repeated in a cage, as long as they are not in the same line or row.

If, however, I suffer from a misdirected love towards Auckland, the likely root cause, according to Dante, is either pride, envy or wrath. I don’t feel hostility, nor envy towards Auckland, so pride it is, and not for the first time. Southern pride and capital pride mixed in too.

What does all this mean? I need to get over myself and, when this cursed lockdown lifts, embrace Auckland with fresh eyes and ears. That is my resolution.

One person who escaped Auckland, but might have been better to have stayed home, is Judith

Collins. Because National is also in purgatory, although, to be fair, it must feel more like hell, and its current direction is unsustainable. Weekly Collins tremors continue unabated and National’s support crumbles.

That said, it would be unseemly and logistically awkward to replace her as leader during lockdown, so she has gained a reprieve. But surely not for much longer.

And as said in my previous column, the overarching political situation presents as an unstable equilibrium. That is, the sheen has come off Labour – its 10-point drop from its previous giddy heights has been confirmed in two more polls. There’s no apparent ‘‘rally round the flag’’ effect. Tougher choices are ahead.

National MPs, driven by desperation as David Seymour’s ACT inches ever closer to National’s polling floor, will be asking themselves if his rise is an existential threat. Who knows, but it sure looks that way.

Simultaneously, and tantalisingly within reach, there is also opportunity to recast the political dynamic in National’s favour, and in both directions, if they get the next change right, and it sticks. They need to have a hard think and look at how John Key’s National won back suburban women, because the gender gap revealed in polling is catastrophic for National. I believe the country desires a more competitive election in 2023. That’s why National’s current tension is acute.

It feels like we are all in purgatory. Life has stalled. Even though it hasn’t. It’s all about

I believe the country desires a more competitive election in 2023.

vaccines.

We Kiwis love to travel. One of the joys of living in New Zealand is being able to leave it. But I never come home with a heavy heart, far from it. It’s a joy returning to the coast.

People overseas are often surprised how much more New Zealanders know about their countries than they would expect us to. Living down here, isolated at the bottom of the planet, we have always been curious about the wider world.

But now it’s all too hard. And the country lives differently. Leaving is possible, but the costs, financial and hassle, are prohibitive, and not conducive to fun.

Right now, New Zealand feels neither one thing nor the other, so it feels like purgatory. But at least I can roam. And here’s hoping you can soon too, Auckland.

Stuff Travel

en-nz

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282660395556943

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