In an uncertain world, it's good to know that there are some things that remain the same. For example, we can be sure that it will take half an hour to find a carpark between now and Christmas Eve; that when the Black Caps and Australia meet, Australia
will always win and that there will always be some idiot who'll dream up a way to protect people from themselves.
I was in Wellington on Wednesday, a gorgeous sunny day, and it was graduation week for Victoria University students. Everywhere on the streets, proud young men and women, flanked by even prouder parents and grandparents, marched towards the Michael Fowler Centre to be capped. But this day of happiness was tempered with a caution from the university - on no account were the graduates to hurl their caps, known as trenchers, into the air in case someone got hit in the eye with a sharp corner of the cap.
This stern exhortation was backed up by stickers in the trenchers and I quote: "Under no circumstances should this cap be thrown. Personal injury to eyes, can result."
My word, yes. Nothing worse than a poke in the etc with a sharp stick. Can you believe it? Initially, I thought it was a student prank but in the absence of a press release from the university, reassuring the public that it was a joke because they wouldn't have come out with anything so ridiculous, I rather fear this is a genuine warning.
Mercifully, on the day I was there, a couple of wild crazy kids from commerce and admin threw caution, and their trenchers, to the wind, and boldly defied the edict. Up went the caps into the air, and down they came again, with no harm done.
And I would love the university's stats department to tell me just how many people have suffered ocular injury as a result of being poked in the eye with a sharp trencher. There's a holiday job over summer.
