I don’t know about you, but I have a weakness for pies. Not those absurd fruit-filled atrocities, but real meaty pies, full of gravy and chunks of dead animal. Yum!

But despite my love for pies I hardly ever touch the things, because I know from experience that the moment the pastry touches my lips I’m like an alcoholic falling off the wagon. I can’t afford to go near those packages of meaty delight, or my poor heart might just say “I’ve had it with you!”

I can still dream, though, and the memory of past pies is often enough to sustain me when things are going wrong. In moments of adversity, personal tragedy, or extreme anger, the mere thought of a meat pie dripping with rich gravy will usually pull me round.  Mince and cheese, steak and cheese, or even chicken and vegetable: I don’t really care what I put in my mouth when the urge takes me, so long as it’s… um… meaty.

Some things affect me more than others. Bad or idiotic behaviour by our leaders pushes my buttons, and a session of Parliamentary Question Time will usually leave me in a lather, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog and desperate to main or dismember the whole damn lot of them. Thankfully, the smell of a pie will usually calm me.

This week in politics was a tremendous rollercoaster, going from ghastly to golden, and then back to ghastly in just a few days. It began with an outrageous assault on our civil liberties when the government pushed through legislation criminalising some forms of protest at sea.

But that didn’t matter too much. I just closed my eyes and dreamed.

Then there was the marriage equality vote. It was a good result and probably the highlight of the week politically. But some people behaved afterwards as if some terrible mistake had been made, and as if we were now all to be consigned to the furnaces of hell for eternity. Apparently God’s too busy to stop children from being blown up in various parts of the world, although if we dare to mess with traditional marriage we are to expect fire in the sky.

So the ongoing bigotry of some people left a bad taste in the mouth. But not for long.

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On Thursday Labour and the Greens announced a new power policy, and a proposed new government agency, NZ Power. I’m still not across all the details of the policy, and I don’t know whether it will bring down power prices for consumers. But the government’s reaction infuriated me. Comparisons with Stalin and North Korea were thrown about carelessly, which only demonstrated how bereft of ideas this National government is.

But my bad mood didn’t last long.

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And now everything is perfect. But I cannot allow myself to fall into complacency. I need to prepare myself mentally in anticipation of Rodney Hide’s Herald on Sunday column tomorrow.

But I just don’t know whether it will be enough.