KEY POINTS:
It seems like only yesterday that I was explaining to recent arrivals, thin-blooded Sydneysiders who go into hibernation when the temperature falls to single figures, that summer in Wellington begins in mid-January.
But it's been warm, even balmy, here these last few weeks. Dining al fresco in the evening is something Wellingtonians do in February but don't even think about at any other time of the year.
This week, though, we've eaten dinner on the deck serenaded by birdsong, watching kereru - the Anna Nicole Smiths of the bird world: spectacular, voluptuous, gravity-defying, pea-brained - swoop across the valley.
Whether it's climate change, El Nino, or the plain old vagaries of weather, I don't know and, for the time being, don't particularly care. What I can tell you is that sitting on the deck in shorts and a T-shirt with a glass of wine at 8.30pm watching a kereru loop the loop is particularly conducive to reviewing the outgoing year, which is what the professional columnist is programmed to do as Christmas looms.
A favoured format is the Best/Worst list in which the writer ostensibly runs a detached eye over the past year's activity in a given field of endeavour and passes lofty judgment. In reality, these lists are usually just an opportunity to show off, give mates or blood relatives a plug, and settle old scores.
Literary lists have a long tradition of ignoring highly praised or commercially successful books in favour of unheralded works by obscure writers, preferably from the Third World.
The conspicuous absence of Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip from some books of the year lists is a case in point: now that 30,000-odd New Zealanders and plenty of foreigners have actually bought the book, it carries the deadly taint of bestsellerdom and, therefore, accessibility.
An even greater sin is to depart noisily from the liberal consensus. Ever since Martin Amis outed himself as a hawk in the War on Terror, his standing in literary circles has slumped - his excellent novel House of Meetings, set in a Soviet prison camp in the Arctic Circle, didn't even make the 2006 Man Booker Prize long list.
A prominent New Zealand writer spoke for much of the literati when she wondered in print whether she should revise her favourable opinion of Amis the novelist because of the unspeakable opinions of Amis the polemicist.
The arts are as susceptible to the mysterious sea-changes of fashion as most human activities. After 20-odd years in a glass cage in the Rock 'n' Roll Dinosaurs Museum, Bruce Springsteen seems to be back in fashion. How else to explain the praise being lavished on his startlingly mediocre new album Magic or its appearance in many Albums of the Year lists?
The only other possible explanation is that some critics are over-compensating for having ignored or underestimated his other recent work, notably The Rising, a fine collection of songs which movingly chronicled the impact of 9/11 on ordinary Americans but was deemed insufficiently apologetic for American policy in the Middle East.
For what it's worth, the best novel I read this year was Don DeLillo's Falling Man. The best novel by a New Zealander was Mister Pip, the best non-fiction book What's Left? by Nick Cohen, the best sports book Penguins Stopped Play by Harry Thompson, a hilarious account of the most dysfunctional cricket team ever to don whites.
The best movie I saw was The Lives of Others and best album I heard was M. O. R. by Alabama 3, the Brixton-based country/acid house band of lapsed Mormons and practising Marxists who perform The Sopranos theme song.
Winner of this column's What Took You So Long? Award is Jean Assam. A volunteer security guard at a Colorado Springs evangelical church, she blew away a gunman as he was embarking on one of those killing sprees that are becoming a staple American downer, like the twisters which regularly trash trailer-parks across the Mid West.
Given the monotonous regularity of these murderous rampages and many Americans' apparent conviction that they need guns to protect themselves from the hordes of tooled-up criminals and psychos (as the anti-gun control mantra asserts, if you restrict the possession of firearms, only the bad guys will have them), it's puzzling that it's taken until now for a potential victim to return fire.
You'd think the instant the lunatic yanked his semi-automatic carbine from his gym bag, he'd be shredded in a hail of lead from the righteous, gun-toting folk in the vicinity.
Predictably Ms Assam gave God all the credit for her success in the High Noon-style showdown. If God was inclined to micro-manage earthly affairs to that extent, you'd think he would've taken out the killer with a bolt of lightning before he gunned down two teenage sisters in the church's parking lot.
