He still asks his questions and answers them, his hands are as expressive and the faces he pulls are fun to capture, but it was an easy going, happy-to-comment kind of former PM who sat and chatted with David Speers to promote his book.
And what a mighty tome it is.
Not one to take on an overseas jaunt but one for contemplation and consideration.
An at-home kind of book, preferably with time to spare, a few good reds and a warm fire.
But as there’s a plethora of new books to examine past and present PMs, the machinations behind their incumbency and the demise, it is often the reflection of the protagonists that makes us want to read carefully and ponder why we elect any of them to rule from the hill.
One remembrance, with a photo to capture the occasion, was with a director of the National Press Club, Misha Schubert, chatting over lunch with the Rudster.
The last time I caught them together was when he happily posed for a photo with her at Parliament’s Mid-Winter Ball when she was ‘very’ pregnant.
That ‘baby’ is now 11 years old.
And that’s when you realise time stops for none of us, but it seems to concertina memories with age.
