Officially on the clock, I was out and about and tasked with reporting on John Key's address at the National Party's Lower North Island Conference.
On arrival at the Napier Sailing Club, the presence of the finely dressed Diplomatic Protection Squad was obvious. One of them I recognised as a police hero of the Napier siege - possibly the finest cop in Hawke's Bay. They'd chosen their men wisely.
Impressive, I thought - right up until I was denied entry. Namely, I couldn't furnish a business card. I'd forgotten to bring one.
I began to protest, but then realised I do sport a beard. I suspect the protection squad was probably ordered to taser anything left of centre.
Thankfully I managed to argue myself in just minutes before the PM began his address.
Now, while I spend as much time following philately as I do politics, I like this PM. Wise but not cocky, conservative yet socially liberal, sincere but seldom smarmy.
With his opening line he raised a belly laugh. A fine start. But hey, packed with party faithfuls this wasn't a tough room. The General was regaling the Bay's captains of industry.
This isn't a criticism. I can only imagine Labour Party soirees are similar exercises in preaching to the choir. (Except of course they'd boast more beards and fewer European cars).
Anyway, this guy was entirely convincing. Whether that's due to his speechwriters or tailor, is immaterial in this column.
His address, if I could paraphrase it to two points, would read something like this:
A) We can lift our economy.
B) We should lift our economy.
Most, I suspect, would agree with A. But obviously many take issue with B.
For example, outside the club a mob of anti-fracking protesters were beginning to mill. I later discovered they were intent on handing John Key a letter. It's a safe assumption they had reservations with B.
The PM and his supporters had no choice but to drive past the placard wielding protesters. And this is where it got interesting.
The clash of these two demographics was, for a reporter, a marriage made in heaven. The drivers' faces had me in stitches. Fresh from a soliloquy on the importance of wealth generation, they baulked, rolled their eyes, snorted, gestured and scowled at the protesters. Some were downright irate. Here was a direct affront to the Sunday sermon they'd just said "amen" to.
With reinvigorated confidence in their vicar, many of the flock ignored the placards and floored their cars, too focused to question their way of life. This was roadside blasphemy.
No, I don't like working Sundays, but this was entertainment of the highest order.
And for some strange reason - maybe because it was Sunday - I couldn't take either side seriously.
Partly because I think the PM's growth myth is exactly that and, partly because if you're against any commercial endeavour that violates the environment, then most of us would be handing in resignations tomorrow.
This was self-evident as I hit 100km/h in my fossil-fuelled car back to Hastings, over bridges of impure water, past the unremitting rows of orchard, where agrichemical sprays waft into the Bay's ether, our lungs and waterways.
I'd stumbled across two parties respectively worshipping their proxy gods of Mammon and Mother Nature.
They were exercising the right to worship. After all, it was a Sunday.
Mark Story is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today.
