Children touch Blair's heart

Holding 5-year-old Cerys Purnell's hand, Tony Blair examines messages on Mountain View School's Wishing Tree with Helen Clark. Picture / Martin Sykes

He was, he said, "very touched".

As he walked under the Wishing Tree at Mangere's Mountain View School, a spreading melia hung with mobiles and wind chimes, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with 5-year-old Cerys Purnell hanging from his hand, inspected the messages on the cards swinging from the branches.

"I hope I can go to university like [Blair's eldest sons] Euan and Nicky," read one, signed Cattleya. "I hope they are doing well at university."

"My wish is that you have a happy birthday on May 6," wrote Hure. "I hope that you are home for your birthday and not in another country."

Dalene wrote: "I hope that your visit to Mountain View School has made your anniversary a very happy one."

She was talking about Tony and Cherie Blair's 25th wedding anniversary, which passed in a frantic round of hand-shaking and baby-kissing, their entourage outnumbered by uniformed and plainclothes police.

In exactly 24 hours in New Zealand, until 5pm last night, they attended a Town Hall reception, had dinner together at waterfront restaurant Sails, and went to a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Mr Blair spoke by video link to a climate-change conference in Wellington while Mrs Blair went off on a "private visit" to a Barnados early-learning centre in Mangere.

He did a series of interviews, then a press conference with Prime Minister Helen Clark, with whom he is known to have a warm relationship. Then followed a sun-filled lunch cruise on the launch of National Business Review publisher Barry Colman.

At the multicultural Mountain View School, where the kids go barefoot and call the principal by her first name, Mr Blair seemed relaxed, with the business part of the day over. He had a successful stab at "kia ora taatou" (hello everyone) and did a hongi with a pupil.

He told students and teachers that the Wishing Tree's messages meant a lot to him: "I was very touched."

After a pit-stop at the Villa Maria Winery near the airport, the Blairs left at 5.30pm on a British Airways charter flight, bound for Indonesia.