A Nice Day for a...

Blue sky. Rangitoto settled on calm green, waters. The perfect day to have a little jog along the well laid paths curving around the bays.

The only bump in the perfect plan was the exercise wills (or lack thereof) of two smaller members of the sporting clan. One's eyes widened is disbelief that he'd be dragged from far more pressing electronic excursions. The younger one's eyes narrowed in defiance.

It is not in this battle that the story lies and once an Ipod was secured for one and a scooter for the other, the small group piled into the car in search of sea views and exercise.

Jogging was the domain of the Ipod wearer who shot off at speed towards the horizon, zig-zagging around pushed prams and unweildly dogs pulling on leads. Leaving one 'jogger' with the scooter. Said jogger tried to jog in unison with manned scooter. How hard could it be? The paths were completely flat and the scooter had two wheels.

Stop... start... stop... start... stop... start... stop... stop... underbreath expletive ("Mummy, if the car was a swearbox we'd be rich")... stop... S-T-O-P.

Deep, deep breath. Composed face. Curled toes.

Bending down, face to face, the jogger looked into two small narrowed eyes.

'Darling, why don't you just go at your favourite pace?' Encouragingly, softly.

'Mummy, my favourite pace is stopped.'

And the big jogger and the little scooterer waited for the medium sized jogger to return.

Then the three got back into the car and went home.

And two small eyes stared out of the window, going at his favourite pace as the car went at its favourite one.