Sideswipe: 'Warm fuzzies' about NZ

This flavour of Claridges organic herbal tea is a personal favourite, says Peter.

Warm Fuzzies (as opposed to pet peeves):

* Coming home to NZ and seeing the green vegetation and the colourful houses.

* Living in a country where the PM's office is firebombed and the cops treat it as a routine arson attack; no TV statements about increased terror threats, no armed police on street corners ...

* The painters' skies we frequently see in Auckland (and elsewhere in NZ).

* The aroma of coffee, especially about 10.30am.

* Silence.

* Freshly made vegetable soup.

* Dark nights with no light pollution.

* Someone making room on the motorway to allow me to enter safely from the on-ramp.

* When I'm marking a student's essay about a book or a film that I've taught many times and find a perceptive comment about the text that had never occurred to me before.

* * *

A boom in "sari-rippers" has caused a ripple with Hindu nationalist politicians. "This kind of literature should be banned. It is against the cultural values of the country and is likely to have an unhealthy impact on the minds of teenagers," said Vinod Bansal, a party spokesman. Mills & Boon set up a branch in India last year and sales of its £1.20 ($2.80) books have now more than doubled. The publisher has commissioned its first Indian author, Milan Vohra, to write a novel that will contain steamy sexual scenes. Sociologists believe the explosion of risqué romantic fiction may herald an impending sexual revolution in India.

* * *

Yvonne Berridge wonders if anyone else has been caught out buying stamps at Whitcoulls. "I stupidly bought stamps there only to find 'these are not NZ Post stamps ... they're our competitors and cannot be used at a Post Shop'. I didn't even know there was a competitor postal service. Never heard of Pete's Post myself, but wasted $50 on a box of stamps. Turns out NZ Post will deliver letters only, but not take anything through the Post Office. Shouldn't Whitcoulls have let me know this?"

* * *

Another reader also finds some other's inability to talk about anything but their children, tedious. "At my husband's work dinner yearly, all the wives chat about their children's milestones over the last year. Except me, who sits in silence. Yeah, I don't have kids, or want kids, and I'm being bored to death. And worse yet, when the other wives pick up that I'm not chatting because I have no kids, they then proceed to tell me about pregnancy, childbirth, and making sure I enrol for kindy as soon as I get pregnant (because there's a waiting list!) - even though they told me all this last year. And the year before. And the year before that. And did I mention I don't want kids anyway?"

* * *

View today's Herald cartoon

* * *

Today's Webpick: Making fun of TV news... Go here.

Follow Ana Samways on Twitter here.