-- so hope you all had a day off and great weather to boot for your holiday!

Thanks, helen, it was a glorious autumn day here. Watching media coverage of the day's events, it seems to me that here in NZ, Anzac day, sombre though the commemoration is, has a more unifying effect on the nation than our "official" national holiday. I was also surprised to learn that though NZ sent twice as many troops to WWII, fewer were lost than in WWI. In WWI, NZ lost just over 18,500 men from its population of barely one million at the time, not a nappy price to pay for forging a sense of nationhood.