We've had a lot of passionate feedback following last week's column about water safety.

Some of the responses are on the letters pages this week. Others, including many phone calls, confirm there are a lot of reasonable thinking people out there who are also fed up with ill-prepared lunatics on the water.
The coastguard reported this week its search off Maketu cost at least quarter of a million.
The antics of lemmings in the surf also drew a lot of response.
It's clearly time for a re-think of behaviour on the beaches. Even some basic flotation, when conditions dictate, would save lives. A shorty wetsuit offers at least some buoyancy assistance. Or, as a couple of Burmese fishermen discovered this month, a large chilly bin can be a lifesaver. The pair survived a month afloat in their esky after their boat sank in the Torres Strait. My Grandad always said, never go to sea without a well-stocked chilly bin. I don't think he went so far as to use it for a lifeboat, however.
And speaking of lunatics on the water, we were privileged to help out with safety boat patrol duties for the GP hydroplanes and other race machines in action off The Strand in the weekend. A brilliant event for Tauranga and I salute those crazed drivers who put on such an amazing spectacle.
There was one team with the motto: 'Pilot it like you stole it. Don't bring it back till it's broken.”
They certainly did, and break things, they did.
The action was close-up and exciting. The sound, you could hear it in Papamoa.
Even the local ski racers put on a stunning, close-up, high speed event.
Let's hope the organisers were sufficiently impressed with Tauranga's waterfront, enthusiastic crowd and hospitality that it becomes a regular event on the GP calendar.

On a local front...
In other news, America has a new president and our new government is having its arm twisted by the Maori Party for land deals. So hard, it seems, John Key's broke.
Meanwhile at No.1 The Strand, we're not getting into this political pettiness over the Gaza situation. We have one rule regarding Israelis and Palestinians: There are to be no rocket launchers in the bar.
People of all nations and beliefs are welcome, even Australians, and while we are all horrified at the war in Gaza, there's no need for prejudices to be carried over in this country.
There is very little NZ can achieve and banning either side from cafes around the country is futile. I don't think the Hamas leader is suddenly going to drop his rocket propelled grenade launcher and throw his balaclava in the dust and cry: 'This must stop. My cousin's wife's penpal in Kaikoura can't get a latte.”
The only valuable action New Zealand could take would be to send Minto over there. After a couple of nauseating grizzles from him, the hatred of both sides would be diverted in the same direction. His.

Finally, this interesting piece from a reader arrived this week, which was good timing, since I've spent far too much time boating and not enough time rabbiting, so thanks to Fanny Flatiron for providing some riveting copy at the critical moment.

A pressing need
As I was standing at the ironing board, steam-ironing a flat double sheet (yes, there are still some of my breed left in this world, those who hot-wash bed linen, dry it outside, and then iron it; women who understand the sensual pleasure it gives a man to feel the caress of smoothly ironed sheets as he slides into bed) my eye was caught by the small label attached to the hem at one end. I had read this label many times before, but it still puzzles me.
‘Head this end, toes the other.'
Now, why should we need labels to tell us how to lie in bed? Surely it follows, as day does night, that if my head is at one end of the sheet, my toes will be at the other. Have we become so dependent on the Nanny State that we need to be told to lie lengthwise in bed? Must we never contemplate pushing one foot out of the side of the sheet on a steaming hot night? Can't we even consider (heaven forbid!) that we might prefer to sleep the Other Way Around?
The other label on the sheet gives us a possible clue by stating its country of origin which is, not unusually, China. Is the head-toes label, then, some inscrutable Chinese joke? Or perhaps it is an instruction for correct behaviour to prevent lewd or inverse acts whilst between the sheets?
Perhaps in that country, where for so many years the Red government ruled every aspect of its citizens' lives, the head-toes instruction was an attempt at natural birth control. Perhaps the government had decided that sex should not be an all-over-the-bed affair, but an act undertaken in a sober, thoughtful, and upright manner, with one's head at the top and toes at the foot? Somehow this doesn't lie well with the fact that it was supposedly the Chinese who alerted us to the existence of the ‘G-spot', in the pursuit of which, I am certain, toes and heads must have strayed considerably from the hems at either end of the sheet.
Here is a message to all those men who, for years, have yearned for the ultimate sensual experience in bed. (No, don't phone me—I'm worn out after a enjoying a lifetime of connubial bliss on sheets I've ironed for my husband's pleasure.)
Buy your wife an iron. And cut off any head-toes labels you find on your sheets.
Fanny Flatiron