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If you want to see two people at their absolute best, says A'Court, ask them how they met.
A'Court, 56, is in the kitchen with the spotted ceramic chook on the windowsill and she's making coffee. She throws sugar in the plunger. "Do you take sugar?" No. "Oh," she pauses. She and Jeremy Elwood both take sugar.
Read MoreDown the bank. Past the cycle path and the boundary fence and on to the Mt Roskill extension of the Western Ring Route. According to Go Media Billboards, 60,000 eyes pass this spot every day. If they looked up, just before the $1.2m Ernie Pinches pedestrian bridge, they might see a palm tree. A thick trunk, a spiky head, that started its life in a tyre.
This is a story about a tree. A family tree.
Read MoreIt's the next morning and Neill is dutifully doing his media one-on-ones at the Hilton. He was staring out to sea when Canvas arrived in the room with the Antipodes sparkling water and mini Whittaker's chocolate bars. Neill has claimed Cook was "a hard man to read". But what to make of this actor who, on the one hand travels with miniature plastic pink pigs he captions for laughs on social media — and on the other champions big and serious causes. Neill has spoken out against cubicle dairy farming in the Mackenzie Country. He recently suggested a boycott of Cadbury's should its Dunedin factory closure go ahead. He is appalled at the Australian Government's decision to detain 1600 asylum-seekers in Papua New Guinea.
Read MoreWhen she couldn't provide her partner's cellphone number ("Since when has it been a crime to have speed dial?") she says police told her that was suspicious and they would have to search the couple's bedroom.
"I was trying to make jokes, cos, yeah, it was hard... I had the four babies. They're normally really boisterous, but they sat still.
"They started asking, `Are we baddies, mum? Is my daddy a baddie?"'
Read More"When I became pregnant at 16, to a boy from church, and we didn't get married . . . I literally left home on that day. I think I was in my school uniform. As harrowing as that was, all those years, what it did give me was the opportunity to have freedom in my life. One, to choose my own religion - which is none, absolutely none - and also to choose my own vocation. I've always wanted to do what I'm doing today, but I would never have been allowed to if I'd stayed in the family fold, because I was expected to study and become a lawyer and that wasn't negotiable."
Read MoreThis past week, Ihimaera gave the Sunday Star-Times a lift to the beach. He unlaced his black leather shoes, rolled his jeans to mid-calf, paddled the silty shores of St Heliers and spoke fully, for the first time, about life after being labelled a plagiarist.
"My family doesn't do guilt. What we do is acknowledge, we apologise, we try to fix – and it cost me a lot of money to fix that one up.
"I bought all the remaining copies. The book was never withdrawn from sale. I was never taken to court over it. And frankly, nobody died."
Read MoreYou forget that the ocean roars constantly in Greymouth. A strange lullaby for uncertain times. I listened to it on Wednesday morning as the dawn broke. On that day, like the days before, the next noise to cut the air was helicopter blades.
People got out of bed, because that's what you do. They went to work, because that's what you do. They hoped. Because that was all they could do.
Read MoreFor months now, Linnen and other parents have been living with the shocking contents of a confidential independent review into the Mangatepopo incident, commissioned by trustees of the Turangi-based Outdoor Pursuits Centre.
Finally made public on Tuesday, it reveals that while individuals made fatally bad decisions on the day, there was a history of death and near-misses in the gorge. An extensive Star-Times investigation has revealed other damning reports, raising significant safety concerns at the outdoor education centre, years before the Mangatepopo tragedy. OPC was unlucky the Elim incident happened, said one source: "But they were also lucky it took 40 years."