MISSPENT YOUTH REVISITED

A dream of mine has been to own a house that is big enough to house a snooker table without having to sacrifice normal living space. We have realised that in buying a large villa that has a lovely large room at the back of the house that is not directly required as a living room or a bedroom. Lynn generously suggested that this could be my snooker/billiards room when we first looked at the house and today we installed the snooker table (a 9ft beauty only just smaller than a full size model). Full credit to Swasbrooks who I bought it from. Yesterday when negotiating a purchase, delivery and installation when asked when I wanted it I said 'tomorrow morning' expecting a laugh from the other end of the phone line. "No problem' was the answer and this morning Barry and George brought it along and installed the slate based monster. They are very professional and carefully positioned and evened it up over a 3 hour period. Fabulous service when you consider that they drove up from Auckland to do this. Thanks also to Lynn who cheerfully agreed to the purchase even though we have kind of used up all our money with the house and relocation. Oh, well, a job for me will be next on the agenda if I can drag myself away from the table.

2010 - here it is.

Another year has begun so what will it bring us?
On TV we may see new reality shows like ’A Day in the Life of a Toilet Cleaner”. This has great disgust value with likely close-up shots of ‘shotgun’ toilet bowls, vomit-filled basins and clogged urinals. Yum.
Staying with TV it is long overdue for a competitive series like ‘Celebrity Music Teacher – Who can best control the hormonally charged teenagers and get them to appreciate the finer aspects of life… and live.
On the political front, in place of Rodney Hide wearing his yellow ties we may see Murray McCulley in Fiji finally cutting the arms and legs off of his pinstriped suit. Currently he looks ridiculous wearing it in a hot climate and also his party may just well leave him over there for all the use he is elsewhere.
In music we will no doubt see yet another icon disgracing him or herself by fornicating with a Meer cat at the zoo or exposing him/herself at the Destiny Church’s Sunday service.
The Tablet, the long-established Catholic newspaper will be outed for having been using subliminal images of fornicating devils in their feature pages to woo back a dwindling subscriber base.
It will be proven that the New Zealand wine industry has been a cleverly orchestrated scam driven by off-shore billionaire expats like Brierley, Myers, Fay and Richwhite. They have created shell buildings in scenic locations and have been secretly bulk importing wines from Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.
Whitebait will be proven, as many have suspected, to be a cynical scam perpetuated by South Islanders, whereby maggots are packaged up and sold at outrageous prices to naive Aucklanders.
A proven link will be exposed between Government controlled TV 1 and 2 and ‘Independent TV3 and others. The cartel will be shown to have been creating ‘jobs for the boys’ while milking unsuspecting viewers and advertisers.
Muslim extremists will recruit menstruating women and plant explosives in their tampons before they board airplanes.
I could go on but I will just depress myself.
P.S. jet skiers have been seen up here in paradise. I think I will get myself a gun.

AND THEN THERE ARE THE GOOD KIDS....

.. as long as you're not on the receiving end of that hose.

YOU LIKE THE PARENTS BUT....

do you have to like their kids?
Now everyone at some stage in their life faces this. Your friends have children. Some are wonderful little additions to society and are a pleasure when they visit. Others are little demons who, if they did exist in their own right would not be allowed to step across your doorstep. The problem is - they are the off-spring of good friends who you love dearly and who seem totally unaware of the failings of their child (rug-rat, sprog, toe-muncher).
Sometimes they show some sort of embarrassment when their little darling goes off on yet another rampage or throws a tantrum but often they are oblivious to the brittle atmosphere created.
So how do we respond? Do we throw the unruly element out? No we grin and bear it, or usually as I do just remain really silent (I find that this lets the parent know that we are not amused).