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).

HAPPY NEW YEAR...

...suckers.
Commerce, politics and religion promises you new and exciting discoveries and wish fulfillment. In reality it will be the same old crap, slightly differently packaged but will cost you more. People younger then you will see these offerings as having a bit of pizazz but you, a year older and a bit more jaded will start to see through the flimsy wrapping and frayed edges but, to keep face, will grin and bear it.

Anyway, have a god time, don't drink too much and remember to check the local council regulations before letting off those fireworks.

Full House

Counting The Old Girl and I we have 9 adults and one child staying with us between Christmas and New Year and another 2 coming on New Years Eve. I'm glad that we have 'more than one pot to piss in' to paraphrase Man Of Errors and that we have enough room to fit everyone without feeling cramped. We feel that we have given the house a good work-out.
The weather has been pretty good so that kayaking, swimming, fishing and walking have been the daily activities. TV has only been on once (Mad Men on Sunday night). Eating and drinking has been high on the agenda in the evenings with everyone retiring relatively early, exhausted after a big day.

I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE

There is something infinitely relaxing about being beside the sea (unless its Bali on Boxing Day). Tidal changes, the sounds of lapping water, shimmering reflections, diving gannets, jumping fish and bobbing boats all offer gentle distractions. We lived by the sea in Point chevalier also and enjoyed that as well. What I have noticed already over this holiday period is a different sound. The sound of children. Children screaming with delight. Children play-fighting. Children arguing. Children forging new friendships and alliances. Children enthusiastically embracing what is around them. Where were the Point Chevalier children? I know that they existed as every school morning their mothers blocked the streets with their 4W-drive vehicles delivering them right to the school doors. After school and on weekends the precious babies were locked up inside or barricaded in back yards (never front yards) for safety. Are these the same children that the parents have brought on holiday? I don't think so. These kids have the confidence to jump off the diving platform, paddle kayaks, snorkel and to ride horses. I love their sounds of laughter.

BEING HERE

Having moved North I am once again astounded at the different reality that can be found in such a small country as New Zealand when you move from one part to another. I first discovered this when we moved from Auckland to Christchurch for 6 years. (Previously, moving from Wellington to Auckland was not as fraught as I had not reached an age to be 'settled' much as Richard found I guess when he went to Taumaranui). Christchurch society was so different to Auckland and was aggressively defensive - something that we were bewildered by since I was born in Wellington and Lynn in Aberdeen so we didn't see ourselves as Aucklanders or indeed as having any particular 'place' that defined us.

In Northland we haven't found the aggressive anti-Auckland attitude yet but have noticed many subtle differences. I am already aware that I have done more than physically moved location, I have stepped into a different way of thinking. At Lynn's company's Christmas dinner the other evening, when asked what I am doing I responded that I was being a kept man. This, in place of perhaps the usual "I am unemployed' response found great favour at the dinner table with architects and engineers all wanting also to be 'kept men' and imploring their better halves to oblige.

This reminded me of that great Peter Sellers film Being There (Hal Ashby dir.) where Chance the gardener (Sellers), after a lifetime of tending a secluded estate ventures into the 'real' world. Chance's naive comments are misinterpreted by worldly and jaded politicians as being visionary (the satire is in that modern politics and media hinge on 'sound bytes' and slogans because audiences cannot concentrate for more than 15 seconds).
I felt that I was in the mirror image of this movie in that I am going to the garden not leaving it but the 'worldly sophistication' of Auckland gave me the pithy 'kept man' throwaway that hit the innocent spot.

POOR ROBERT

Poor Robert.
Its not just Richard but now even Vicars are making fun of his God.

OK I'm old but I'm still lucid.
I do find it hard to adjust to the confusing proliffeation of television programmes now that overlap so much that it is hard to keep track of start/stop dates.
In the past great series like Brideshead Revisited, Smiley's People, Edge of Darkness, Cracker, Boys from the Blackstuff, Auf Wiedersehen Pet etc. were easy to follow as you knew which channel they were going to be on, which day of the week and at what time. Nowadays, with 27+ channels to choose from and with them all repeating programmes and series very quickly and with great frequency it is difficult to identify the important three Ws - which channel, what day, what time. There are some great new series on (somewhere) but I am never sure if I have caught the first or last series. Also, the very best of them, probably because high quality means low ratings, are on at godawful times (The wire for example was screened at 1AM on a major channel.
Its like The Pictures (or cinema definitely not movies) screening times (don't get me started! - ed). In the good old days you knew where you were. The Pictures were on at 11AM, 2PM, 5PM or 8PM. You couldn't get it wrong. Now they are all over the bloody place. Jeez!