Jim Hopkins: Really, is it fun being you?

They didn't have a copy at the airport branch so the lady at The CD and DVD Shop rang to see if there was one somewhere else.

"There's one left at the Barrington store. Do you want them to hold it?"

"Absolutely! I'll pick it up tomorrow."

"Your name, sir?"

"Oh, Jim'll do."

And Jim did do, exactly as arranged. "There it is, Dad," said my son Tom, after several minutes roaming through the mall.

We were going to collect The Lives of Others, although our own seemed pretty good.

The girl behind the counter in the Barrington store was young; big earrings, long dark hair, braids over each shoulder.

"I've come to collect a DVD. It's for Jim."

She looked in a drawer and came back to the counter with the DVD and looked at me, quizzically. "Are you Jim Hopkins?"

"I think so ... "

Then she said the most unexpected and amazing thing. "Is it fun being Jim Hopkins?"

The brain is a strange machine. Some days it plods along, like a Christmas shopper loaded with presents they don't need for people they don't like. Other days, it flashes through the blue of its own sky like a Spitfire.

It's been said our brains will replay our entire lives in the instant it takes to fall from a cliff. And that's how it was when her words sank in - not a life, that's true, but a week.

Beginning among the sombre stones of Waitaki Boys' High School. Then to a hotel room full of teachers laughing loudly and proving they were much less correct than ever their ministry would wish them to be.

There were flashes from a night in a church hall in Katikati that finished in hoarse whispers - with even those only possible thanks to slugs of Johnson's Baby Oil (an old auctioneers' remedy).

Columns handwritten in the dark; filming with politicians on the campaign trail.

Then, finally, the night before, a debate in Oxford where the manic mayor, Tim Shadbolt, spent most of his speech promoting Invercargill and lamenting the fact his sexual prowess was so clearly underwhelming that Sue Kedgley couldn't even remember their (alleged) night of rapture.

Tom had come to watch that debate, which was extra special for me. What was extra special for him was that he got to drive home in mayor Tim's Chrysler 300D.

Writing that takes five paragraphs, thinking it takes a nano-second.

"Is it fun being Jim Hopkins?" Blink. "Yes! Yes! It is fun." Whatever the ups, whatever the downs, it is fun. And, although I didn't say it to the girl, thanks for asking.

Because, it is, in the end, the only question worth asking. It's the last, best question, the Sunday question we should ask every day. Try it. Ask someone you know; "Is it fun being you?"

Then, if you're brave enough, ask yourself "Is it fun being me?" And if it isn't, be somebody else.

But remember, life's a marathon. We all have times we wish we didn't. This week I've felt like that bloke on the bridge in the painting, The Scream.

It's been the kind of week you want to give to Osama bin Laden because it belongs to someone who deserves to be miserable. But that's okay. We're never more alive than when things are really good or very bad.

And one final thing - working for yourself means gathering your occupational rosebuds as you may. So when a chap from Act rang to ask if I'd write some stuff for them, I said "Yes".

After all, they were only buying my brain and besides, over the years I've done work of some sort or another for just about every party in the country.

But this is different. An ongoing role in a campaign makes you a player, not an observer.

So I'm declaring an interest and standing aside from writing about the election and politics, much to the noble editor's great relief, and yours too, perchance. There'll be plenty of other people with axes to grind. For the next few Fridays, I'll just focus on fun.