This summer, the incessant drone of a rotating irrigator can seem like a blessing.
A continual summer, one would have to say, rather than a continuous one. It arrived and withdrew, arrived and went again.
Here in Hawke's Bay, you could have a beautiful day of unbroken blue and hours of lazy sun, only for the air to become as cold as death
at 6pm.
But there were also the long, brilliant late afternoons and sunsets of ferocious rays and enthralling orange vermillion.
You might think not a lot happened at the farm. Friends came through, there was endless food and cooking and nights of wine and laughter but the curious weather caused much comment and mild complaint.
Mind you, I was still very occupied by the need to use the irrigators and the sprinklers to stop the hot spots on the lawns becoming dead as dodo spots.
This was a big responsibility and I kept a wary eye every sunny day. We have a very good little farm irrigator. It is attached to the end of a thick black hose and rotates with a ss-ss-ss for hours on end.
Then came Haiti. Poor Haiti. Haiti is a lost cause. Haiti is an eternal sore festering upon itself, re-infecting itself constantly, never healing, always toxic.
Haiti was where Columbus discovered the New World, of course. How's that for bad luck?
You become the first man to cross the Atlantic from Europe and you miss North and South America, where the money is, and you find Haiti.
I first heard of Haiti when I saw some black-and-white BBC documentary back in the early 60s.
I recall shots of the mad old dictator, Papa Doc Duvalier, being driven through villages of desperate poverty in a black Rolls Royce. Every now and then, slow-moving old Papa Doc would stop the car and hand out dollar bills to his meek, incredibly grateful subjects.
Imagine, a President driving round doling out dollar bills. I suppose we'd be grateful too, if John Key started doing that. Then Papa Doc died and his son, Baby Doc, so called because of a chubby baby face, took over.
He'd grown up in Paris. Then Baby Doc was ousted and somewhere along the line a priest called Aristide came along but he couldn't do much.
From then on, Haiti becomes a tragic, hopeless, helpless blur to me. Until now. No one can ignore Haiti now.
Sometimes it can seem a blessing to have as your only noise the wind in the trees and the ss-ss-ss-ss of the rotating irrigator.
THE APPOINTMENT of Mike Moore as ambassador to the United States is sound. The appointment had been in the pipeline for about a year, I understand. He is connected everywhere, Mike Moore.
He is charismatic and affable. He can tell you a story about anything. He has a brilliantly anarchic, ranging curiosity.
He will look at any problem, twist it this way and that and look at it from any angle and consider any possibility to make it work. He is not restricted by dogma.
Nevertheless, he remains committed to trying to improve the lot of people round the world and is constantly travelling to the four corners of the earth, consulting and advising.
He told me a wonderful story once.
When he became director-general of the World Trade Organisation and took up residence on the shores of Lake Geneva, he began to take calls from business editors of the world's greatest newspaper, Le Monde, Le Figaro, the Sud Deutcher Zeitung, the big Dutch newspapers, The Times of London, the London Telegraph, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, all wanting to talk about the great matters of world trade.
One day he is asked to take a call from the Press in Christchurch.
The young female reporter comes on the line, full Kiwi accent: "Mr Moore, how much are you being paid?"
His has been a long career, a lifetime in politics.
He came from nowhere, of course. And while he had his trials and disappointments in that career, even isolated for a long time by the party he served for so long when that party held power and would have been able to advance him, he remains loyal to it and he still loves to laugh at life's absurdities.
And while he is political, he is hugely business-focused. And it is business, and the loosening of trade restrictions with the US and the relationship between New Zealand and the US, that will be his focus. Who knows what he will achieve with that ready laughter and experience among the American establishment round the corridors and cocktail circuits of Washington DC and round the rest of the US?
Mind you, as he pointed out to me this week, there was a time when he was director-general of the World Trade Organisation when ambassadors lined up to get appointments with him. Now he'll be lining up to get appointments himself.
OH, AND best read of the summer? Andre Agassi's Open. No one who opens the book seems able to put it down. One morning a few days after Christmas my brother Ken, an avid reader, came downstairs at the farm holding a copy of the book, of which he had read about two thirds. I questioned why he would be reading such a thing. "I was given it for Christmas, and actually, I'm finding it hard to put down."
When he finished it, I picked it up and found myself engrossed and lost to our guests for a day-and-a-half. It is a brilliantly constructed book about a tortured man who is a genius in his field. It is a psychological thriller, without the crime. You turn each page amazed at the people and situations you meet.
Shortly after I started, I rang Bill Francis. Bill and I always chatted before the end of every year about what we might be lining up for summer reading.
"Bill," I said, "Two words: Agassi, Open." He said he had it with him but hadn't started it yet. A day later he texted me: "Brilliant! Best sports bio ever!" I rang Richard Griffin demanding he read it.
He said he was reading some obscure thing about the human mind or some kind of puffery with a title I can't even remember. Bugger that, I told him. Get the Agassi book.
Treat yourself. He mentioned that his man in the bookshop in Masterton had recommended Agassi to him before Christmas. Like me, Richard had turned up his nose at it.
A few days later, Richard Griffin, like the rest of us, is knocked sideways by the Agassi story and the strange assortment of odd and brilliant characters who share the painful, ultimately contented journey of a champion.
If you haven't read it, you must. It is the most fascinating thing I've read in the last few years.
