We had preying mantises in our Mt Albert garden; hatching from boxlike ootheca cases, infesting in the thousands; the babies don’t have wings and migrate mostly by spreading their legs and floating on the breeze, into everywhere. They are truly evil, vicious cannibals – that you just have to love. I had a pet one called Martin that guarded my prize marijuana plant against stoner weevils.
  I boast the dockside fishermen as being from Grimsby due to a private football joke been going for decades with Tony McVey but I think these actually came from Scotland.
  The looming tree is included here in obvious homage to Paul Cezanne – for plane perspective. To hail Ian Kingstone who advised of such – with a sidelong reference to the proud pohutukawa he painted plein-air down Judges Bay – an anecdote he claims to have fully forgotten.