Dear diary

My wife is in Wellington being important so last night I had a sad and lonely bachelor dinner of mahi-mahi courtesy of Craig over the fence who has previously supplied seafood and had gone out deep-sea fishing at the weekend. After lying about the 350kg marlin he hooked but got away, he recommended coating the mahi-mahi in panko then lightly frying it in butter “with a little rice-bran oil so the butter doesn’t burn” – he is a farm advisor so is a details guy. So that’s what I did, with spuds and a salad from the garden. As I say, a sad and lonely bachelor dinner, but one muddles through somehow.

This morning a former Listener colleague emailed to say how much he had enjoyed meeting my wife at the Business NZ function last night: “Far too good for you, of course,” he noted.

This is a widely held view. After meeting her for the first time, my mother said to my sister, “She’s a lovely girl – but what on earth does she see in Stephen?”