Te Atatu Pony Club's grounds share a boundary with Auckland's busy North Western Motorway. Last night Matt and Sheridan were up at the Pony Club helping to set up jumps for this weekend's One Day Event (ODE).

As Matt was one of the few parents who had turned up to help the club president asked him if he and Sherry would help her to paint out the graffitti tag that had appeared on the cross-country jump closest to the motorway.

They headed off with a can of paint and walked to the end of the grounds by the motorway only to discover they had brought white paint with them which wouldn't do. Not keen to walk all the way back to the clubhouse for coloured paint they spotted a freshly painted red and blue jump with two paint cans not that far away. There wasn't much left in either can so the President suggested they pour the little bit of the red into the blue and just paint the resulting colour onto the jump. Instead of purple the resulting colour was a dark blue - much better for covering tags than white.

They set to work and began painting the whole jump to make it seem like the tag was never there. At this point rush hour traffic was just starting to drop off so the motorway was still fairly busy. As the painting progressed they began getting toots and waves and yells and thumbs up from passing cars. A steady stream. Confused they kept painting. However, when they heard someone angrily yell "Labour" accompanied with the fingers they clicked. By the time they finished they were getting a constant stream of toots and waves from the passing traffic.

They went back to the clubhouse and told the parents who had arrived to pick up their kids and the other helpers and almost everyone laughed agreeably when one person joked you should have used the white paint to add an "N" to the jump because they were in Chris Carter’s electorate. There were one or two glares but the majority seemed, like the drivers, to be rather keen on the idea.