MARCH 17th: IRISH CHRISTIANS? WHAT'S ST. PATRICK'S DAY ALL ABOUT?

Colour me green and teach me how to count to potato – we’re a week out from St. Patrick’s Day and I’m sitting here and thinking; “what have the Irish contributed to the global community of late?”

… Still thinking…

… Nothing’s coming to mind…

Anyway, what is this St. Patrick’s bollarchy all about and why do we celebrate it?

Well, it seems that sometime about 1600 years ago this guy called St. Patrick arrived in Ireland bringing Christianity with him. Now can you imagine that? Irish Christians? That’s like free-thinking Socialists or Islamic Women’s Rights Activists – it just doesn’t sound right does it? And there are a number of issues about this as far as I can see.

Firstly, how much of a coincidence is it that this guy happened to have an Irish name? According to historic recollections (uploaded from the ever-reliable Wikipedia) this guy was born across the water in England – to a wealthy Romano-British family. So how come we’re not celebrating St. Augustus Antonio Day or St. Arthur Daley Day? How did his parents know that they had to call him ‘Patrick’?

Secondly; not only did St. Patrick bring Christianity to Ireland, but apparently he also managed to drive all of the snakes out of the country too. Now come on… we both know that’s all a wee bit of a fib don’t we? Like, everyone knows that it was the English who actually drove all the snakes out of Ireland. They did it during the late nineteenth century by transporting them all to the Convict Colonies in Australia.

Thirdly (or, with an Irish accent; “Tirdly”), is the very concept of celebrating the arrival of Christianity to Ireland. I mean, I can’t tell who’d be worse off; the Christians or the Irish. Like Jesus O’Christ, it’s Holy Communion with a baked potato and a Pint of Guinness. And apparently (according to Wikipedia again) St. Patrick used the three leaved Shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to his Pagan Irish congregation. So what was that like? “Here’s the Father, here’s the Son and here’s the God damned Holy Leprechaun!!!”

And you can just imagine some of those early Pagan Irishmen gathering at their local taverns, downing a few Ales and telling each other Christian jokes. Like:

“Did you hear the one about the Christian guy who rescued a young woman from a Roman executioner and took her home and made mad passionate love to her?”

“No, was she beautiful?”

“Don’t know… he never found her head.”

Now here’s the thing; we all know that according to that other great and reliable information source Mel Gibson, at exactly the same time that St. Patrick was arriving in Ireland to begin his ministry (give or take about a thousand years) the Irish were heading the other way in droves to help the Scots fight off the English at Bannockburn. As Mel’s depiction of Wallace stated in his heavy accented Scottish drawl; “Ye coon nawt tek ma frdeedom!”

So it’s kind of hard imagining the early Irish being so accommodating of St. Patrick and his Christian ideals. I mean, they must have viewed him in the same way that we view those annoying Jehovah’s Witnesses today;

“For God’s sake, I’m bloody hung-over and was trying to have a sleep in!”

Yes, that sounds as though it could have been as common an expression in a fifth century Ireland as it is on a Saturday morning in suburbia today.

So there you have it, three good reasons why it makes no sense for the Irish (or any of us for that manner) to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. But despite that, on March 17^th we’re all going to go out together, dress in vulgar green, drink bucket loads of Guinness (even though no-one other than the Irish actually likes the stuff), eat a potato, talk in a silly accent, and kiss and hug a bunch of perfect strangers while reminiscing about the plight of Irish oppression…

… Yes, it all sounds very Irish-Christian to me…

That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO BUILD AN ARK INSURE THE BLOODY THING

Bring me a truckload of timber, a pallet of nails, a bucket of bee’s wax and call me an ark builder; the weather this summer has gone madder than a pre-Darwinian animal collector preparing for a tsunami in a desert.

Take for instance the part of the world where I grew up. It’s a little place called Cootamundra in Australia. Now interestingly, in the indigenous language of the region, ‘Cootamundra’ means something like ‘swamp turtle’. But all I ever recall growing up there was the endless droughts and subsequent bushfires. I mean, it would get so dry during the depth of summer there that even the dust would lose the dirt off its’ back on a windy day. And local cattle would be grateful to be able to chew dry old chunks of clay from the bottom of their watering hole while sheep would gouge each other’s eyes out to be first in line to have their woolly coats shorn by some overweight, singlet wearing clipper-maniac oozing perspiration in the fragrance of Jack Daniels.

But this week Cootamundra has been truly drenched – and I’m not talking about a Broad Spectrum oral antiparasitic drenching either – I’m talking about rain at a velocity and volume that would give Poseidon a titanic anxiety disorder for his troubles. It has bucketed down; and not the metaphorical ‘cats and dogs’ either; it’s poured down like hippos and walruses – and I’m thinking that right now, ‘maybe swamp turtles could live there’.

And here in New Zealand we’ve just been hit by a ‘weather bomb’. Now what’s that all about? Did some cell of fundamentalist Meteorologists decide to conduct a mass suicide forecast attack on us all – drawing isobars and troughs over selected maps without any regard for the human cost of their actions? For crying out loud, I had to cancel a plane trip because of their Mecca-maniacal meanderings.

But in all seriousness, some parts of New Zealand were hit by winds of over 150 kilometres per hour during the weekend. 150 kilometres an hour? Like, that’d rip your underwear after a plate of onions. And it tore roofs from houses, trees from the ground, and knocked out the local electricity supply (I guess Dorothy and Toto aren’t in Kansas anymore). And people have been left homeless and some don’t even have a place to charge their Ipod – how cruel is that?

But the whole world is getting like this. And I don’t know if it’s global warming or greenhouse gases or melting ice-caps or what – but we’re seeing heavier snow falls, torrential rain, cyclones, hurricanes and all manner of weather events across the globe. And they’re destroying townships and ripping communities apart. For example, where I live in New Zealand we haven’t had enough sun this summer to tan a possum-skin glove - and people here are just hopping mad about it.

And some people have a right to be hopping mad about it all. For instance, in the part of the country where I live the so-called ‘weather bomb’ hit a small community taking roofs off about 50 houses. Now that’s a terrible thing in itself, but the thing that truly turns my tornado is the number of those households that had no God-damned insurance!!! Like, their sitting there now screaming hardship and uncertainty and demanding to know who’s going to ride in and save their bacon when, in fact, they chose to take no responsibility whatsoever for themselves or their families in the first place.

“But we can’t afford insurance,” they tell you.

Well I say; “who can???”

Like, no-one pays insurance because they want to – they do it because they feel that they have to. That’s the responsible thing to do for you and your family. I mean, I could go to Disneyland twice a year for the amount of insurances I pay to protect my family (okay, Disneyland might not be a good example because nobody goes there anymore – but you get my point). When you live in a place that's prone to major weather events and you want to build an Ark, insure the bloody thing you stupid twat!!!

That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.

SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCIES, LONG MEETINGS AND SANDALS

Attending meetings hosted by social service agencies is like attending your own funeral and expecting to be able to have a coherent conversation with the person delivering your eulogy. Social service workers tend to think they are the most critical people in the world, that what they have to say is more important than a NORAD alert about an impending terrorist strike on a major city, and that everybody that they’ve managed to coerce and lure to their meeting are as naïve and susceptible to this critical message as a Brethren congregation is to their Minister’s dogma. And the biggest complaint I have about meetings hosted by social service agencies is that I’m not getting any younger and I won’t live forever – and my watch indicates that an hour long meeting should run for about 60 minutes; not 240.

So I recently got invited to attend one of these meetings in a rural township about an hour’s drive from where I work. So already, in accepting the invitation, I’m committing to two hours travel time out of my otherwise important schedule. And the agenda for this meeting extends over an hour (so that’s three hours commitment in total) and involves a 15 minute presentation from a key note speaker representing one social service agency, a 10 minute presentation from another, and then a round table of agency updates. My expectation: I’ll gain some informative insight from the key note speaker, gain a better appreciation of the activities of the second agency, and participate in some valuable networking activities.

Reality is a cube when only circles will do.

Upon arrival to the meeting venue, we are all ushered into a room where the chairs have been placed into a huge circle – a typical sandal wearing social service type set up. And once seated the host suggests we all go around an introduce ourselves. He even has a cute little cuddly toy that we’re supposed to hold as we do; and then pass on to the next person when we’re done. And he wants us to tell everyone our name, who we work for or represent, and the type of racing car we think we are???? Like, what’s that last one all about?

Audi R8 – silver.

After 10 minutes have been wasted on this little exercise, he now introduces the keynote speaker. She represents a group whose primary role is to protect and foster the professional development of Youth Workers in the region. She has 10 power point slides to present to us and 15 minutes to do it in. Oh, and by the way, she thinks she's a '69 Chevrolet (but looks more like the '49 model).

At the outset she asserts that her organisation does not focus on Youth, only on Youth Workers and their professional development needs – so far, so good.

She then presents her first slide – the one with the title of her presentation on it. But rather than focus on the title, she hones in on the picture above it: a photograph of five young lads about 15 years of age. She tells us that the one in the middle is her son and here’s his story in 10 (exacerbatingly long) minutes. This is followed by a brief account of all the other young people in the photo and how they relate to her son. Oh, and by the way, this photo is five years old apparently!!!

Her second slide names all the Trustees in her organisation: 15 in all – but that’s fair enough, it might be important information to some people in the room.

The third slide she presents to us gives the CV of each individual Trustee in full – another 10 minutes worth of presenting. We’re now 29 minutes into her 15 minute presentation.

It’s hardly surprising to me by this stage that her fourth slide is solely and absolutely all about her – and on and on she goes; another 10 plus minutes (boy, is she important).

Finally the host interrupts her and politely tells her she has five minutes left. No wonder he wears sandals – he needs to be able to count his toes when doing his maths.

She races through her fifth and sixth slides which provide more amazing information about her (like how she once caught a 16 pound Snapper off the West Coast with the help of her father when she was about 10 years old).

The seventh and eight slides present some details about a couple of projects her organisation is engaged in regarding youth – namely developing a local youth forum and setting up a blue light disco (in conjunction with local Police). But hang on a minute – didn’t you say at the outset that you protect and foster the professional development of Youth Workers in the region and that you don’t actually focus on youth directly? I’m getting confused – go back to telling me all about yourself.

Her ninth slide has her contact details on it just in case we have any questions about what her and her organisation does – well I have bucket loads of questions about her organisation but I pretty much think that I know about as much as I need to know about her right now

At last slide number 10. This is simply her “thank you for coming” slide; that’s all it says. Only there’s another photo there of a group of people sitting around a table in what looks like another meeting. Only she explains that the lady on the left is her Grandmother and this was her 97^th birthday and next to her is Uncle Eric, then brother Samuel, Peter (not sure how he’s related), Aunty June…

Another 20 minutes consumed – the meeting thus far is into its 89^th minute and we still have a 10 minute presentation from the second speaker and the round table updates to come.

But wait!!! Rather than proceed with those, sandal wearing host announces that it’s time for a break and a cup of tea.

I think social service agency meetings suck… and usually I’m right.

BEST OPENING LINES FROM 2011

Here are some of my favourite opening lines from my 2011 Posts:

Give me a cup of Chunky Ebola Flakes served in a mildly tepid bowl of cholerafied milk and call it a breakfast to die for!!!

Find me three wise men and a virgin in New Zealand and I’ll be a pair of Houdini’s pyjamas...

Since his death Michael Jackson has been more popular than a fur seal in a baseball bat emporium.

Tighten my braces, spin my bow tie, pull a rabbit out of my hat and call it a turkey!

I’ve just had an experience that rattled my bones like a leaky bladder on a set of bagpipes.

Put some dead fish in a paper bag and wedge them between the hubcap of your neighbour’s truck!

If there is one thing that I find more disturbing than seeing a truck load of lepers crash into a porridge factory…

If there’s one thing that amuses me more than a Zimbabwean farmer trying to milk his cow before someone shoots their skinny white ass (the cow that is)…

If there’s one thing that scares the bejeezus out of me more than standing on a rickety pier with a sack of rocks and an ankle bracelet...

If there’s one thing that makes me shit rhubarb into hard marbles...

If there’s one thing that makes me madder than a milliner sucking mercury from a broken thermometer…

REFLECTIONS ON 2011: Some of the best bits from last year's posts

Here is a collection of some of my favourite one-liners and other thoughts from 2011 – I hope you enjoy.

Regarding Reality-based TV programmes:

Why do gorgeous women want to bitch-slap each other for a chance to get close to Bret Michaels?

“Trading Spouses” is a prime example of this. There is only one rationale for why two men would engage in wife-swapping activities and that isn't even in the show.

Regarding Commercial Flights:

The stewardess who I would dearly love to hate except for her perpetual cuteness (I flap my arms like a butterfly to indicate to you that when we crash those doors are going open and let the ocean flood the cabin)...

Only an idiot still believes that the so-called ‘brace’ position is likely to be advantageous when you hit the side of a mountain at 375 kilometres an hour. It doesn’t matter how you sit, a high velocity splat is still a high velocity splat – and the only way anyone is ever going to recover your body after that is with a flat bevelled shovel and a bucket.

Regarding having the ‘sex talk’ with your teenager:

Anyway, you take two out of the box and you and your boy go about that awkward and silent exercise of putting them on cucumbers. Yes, it’s a silent exercise; there’s no actual discussion or explanation as to why you’re putting these things on cucumbers – you just hope that your boy has enough nous to realise that this has nothing to do with making a salad.

Regarding the Green Movement:

If there’s one thing that makes me madder than a milliner sucking mercury from a broken thermometer, it’s these hemp toting dread-haired greenie totemplonkers who want to tell me that I’m killing the earth because I’m breathing too much air and drinking too much water.

Regarding the Twilight Series:

So what’s all this mind-numbing senseless tripe they call the Twilight saga? Like these vampires aren’t very scary are they? For a start, they’re all vegans!!! Who ever heard of a vegan vampire? But it’s worse than that, because Twilight vampires are also mostly angst-riddled and depressed teenage vampires – so they mope about and complain a lot just like Emos – only the Twilight vamps don’t cut themselves like Emos do because that would be ‘sooo eeeyeeew!!’ Like, there’d be blood and pain and stuff involved and Twilight vampires don’t really like blood and pain and stuff, they only like hair products and playing baseball.

Regarding Mobile Phones:

And lately I’ve noticed that more and more people are walking around wearing those ‘bluetooth’ ear pieces. Like, can anyone other than Russell Brand look more of twat than these clowns? I mean, they walk around like they’re talking to themselves – except they have to shout because apparently what they’re saying is so important that you and I need to know about it too. These days you can’t even enjoy a quiet chat over coffee without some nobb behind you yelling into his ear piece that “Errol got so pissed last night that he hurled outside Franky’s and far out, man, it was the funniest thing…” Come on, it’s not a tin can attached to a piece of string you know.

Regarding Old people:

If there’s one thing that scares the bejeezus out of me more than standing on a rickety pier with a sack of rocks and an ankle bracelet, it’s the idea of getting old. I mean, it must really suck being an old person and no longer being able to contribute anything to society other than creating a demand for nursing home jobs that facilitate employment opportunities for foreign language speaking immigrants and Mexicans.

Regarding all those Sponsor-A-Child advertisements:

Then I have to think about the practicality of the kids themselves. The first thing I notice about the kids is their physique. Although this is a sponsorship deal, I can’t see a single athlete amongst them. Sure, some of the little Zimbabwean kids might make good track and field competitors – they can certainly run in record time to escape the guy with the machine gun. But the land mine damaged Vietnamese kids have more than just a few barriers to overcome as part of their training schedule. There are definitely no high jumpers amongst that lot.

Anyway, this particular former celebrity is a few doughnuts short of the broadside of a barn. It’s like having Kirsty Alley advertise a new dietary programme, you know you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Regarding Christmas:

Consider the idea of the $5.00 Secret Santa. This is particularly relevant to workplace/office Christmas functions. Prior to the event the organisers reiterate several times that the Secret Santa gift must cost no more than $5.00 – it’s stated on the invitation, verbally reaffirmed on a number of occasions by the office PA, and it gets repeated in the reminder email the day before the event – so it’s virtually a written contract that your Secret Santa gift should cost no more than $5.00. But if you turn up to the event with a Secret Santa gift that actually did cost $5.00, then everyone is going to judge you as being a ‘cheap bastard’ – and you won’t get invited back next year.

Find me three wise men and a virgin in New Zealand and I’ll be a pair of Houdini’s pyjamas - it’s Christmas season once again and everyone I know is acting more frenzied than a lion in a first century Roman amphitheatre.

Take the sad example of my work colleague Teddy who, as I write, is in the process of attaching his baubles to the ceiling directly above his desk. I mean, of all the places to staple your baubles, that isn’t one I’d choose. I mean for crying out loud Teddy, it looks like you’ve just had a giant scrotum explosion above your cubicle!!!

And what the Charlie Brown is Snoopy’s Christmas all about??? Christmas is a Beagle in a Bi-Plane? That makes about as much sense to me as a Democrat running for office without a sex scandal.

Take for instance the provocation of Christmas Carollers – they come to your front door and sing those insipid songs, daring you to come out with your garden spade and pulverise as many as you can before the Police arrive (I can usually manage about four).

Regarding Halloween:

So the little costumed monstrosities come marching up your garden path and you know that nothing you do is going to be right. For instance, comment on their costume – does the nice white sheet mean that you’re a ghost or that you just hate black people?... Is that Alien mask supposed to look like a giant foreskin on top of your head?... Whatever you say, the kids are going to cry or their parents are going to take offence.

Regarding the TV programme Glee:

So right now I’m between a rock and a hard place – I have to sit with my Lady, hold her hand and say stuff like; “isn’t it sweet how they just bastardised that Beyonce song” [the one about the asshole sticking his ring on it] “and made American Football look like the gayest thing ever”. But in reality – I’d rather be in the workshop driving a four inch nail through the top of my foot…

Regarding Art Deco:

Now I may be wrong here, but wasn’t the original Art Deco period the precursor to the Great Depression? I mean, wouldn’t you agree that a bunch of flat-roofed pastel-coloured stucco-clad sheds are enough to bring anyone down?

Regarding Michael Jackson:

Since his death Michael Jackson has been more popular than a fur seal in a baseball bat emporium.

Accusations of weirdness, paedophilia and glove puppetry must have taken their toll at times.

Regarding staff at Auckland’s Sky City Casino:

This guy has the height and stature to qualify as a third world Dictator but instead, chooses to work reception at an inner city casino hotel so he can victimise old ladies.

Regarding visiting the Doctor:

He then decides to take a swab. The next thing I know he’s got me pinned down with his knee on my chest, left hand firm on my forehead, and he’s thrusting a giant cotton bud so far down my throat that I can feel it rubbing my Spleen.

Regarding being sick:

Who fed me broken glass and razor blades with my chicken soup? This isn’t Halloween!!! Yep, woke up with a whole batch of Iraqi WMDs going off in my throat causing my head to pound and my neck to ache. Fortunately they’re occasionally relieved when I throw up some alien acid that burns the crap out of everything between my stomach and the porcelain (which shows vague signs of a melt). And there’s the fever too – from cold to boiling quicker than a Katie Perry chorus lyric. But the best part is the hallucinations throughout the night – not nice things like flowers or paisley colours or rising stock prices – but horrible things like Zombies with razor blades, kids in Halloween costumes, a meeting with the National Party Caucus to discuss whether New Zealand's low income families should retain their basic human rights…  

Regarding Psychics and Mediums:

And I remember thinking, ‘why would anyone need a dial-your-fortune line? Surely if the Medium was any good then he would know when he needed to call you’.

Regarding Democracy:

I hate democracy - it allows stupid people to vote (you know, people who listen to talk back radio or lay concrete for a living) - but it doesn't compensate by allowing smart people like you and me to have extra votes to negate the stupid peoples' votes. So everyone has a vote and every vote is measured the same - and that is really REALLY stupid!!!!

Regarding natural disasters:

And how many of these gooberwoppers will actually go to the beach and watch the oncoming tsunami or head to the top of the mountain to experience the volcanic blast? Like, some will even take deck chairs for goodness sake! And you just know that none of them are going to survive the impending disaster and that in a few months time, their predictably tragic deaths will feature on at least seven different reality/disaster cable-based TV programmes (including ‘Gone in Seconds’, ‘World’s Scariest Disasters’, and ‘Who’s the Dumbass now?’).

Regarding Religion:

Of course the difficulty is that the industry itself is not regulated. I mean, in the insurance sector Brokers have to abide by a mandatory Code of Practice. The same can be said for Realtors, Lawyers, Physicians and Zimbabwean Tour Guides. But in this game, anyone can act as an agent: Priests, Rabbis, Imams, Monks – and these are just the more reputable ones.

VISITING AUCKLAND'S SKY CITY: Room Service? I just want a bloody room!

Holidays Schamolidays! I’ve just arrived back from mine and what a disaster it almost was. It was almost like riding a camel across the Antarctic and not finding a Starbucks for at least three days (long Antarctic-type days that is).

You see, my Lady and I had a simple plan: we wanted to go to Auckland for a few days – that’s all. Her son was returning from a six week excursion through Asia and he was arriving back in Auckland at the time of his 21^st birthday. Now he just loves Casinos so we thought we’d put him up in the Sky City Tower Casino Hotel for a few days – our shout. My Lady’s mother also wanted to go. Now she’s quite a fragile woman with limited mobility – so we booked her in the Sky City Tower Casino too. As for us, we booked ourselves into a hotel a block down the street from the Sky City complex. That actually saved us about $500 on the trip. But the best thing: my Lady and I had saved and we had managed to pay for all flights and accommodation for the four of us as well as accumulate a pretty substantial pot for the Casino. So all was good…

…so we thought.

Now for those regular readers out there, my last Post talked about my Christmas plague and how I thought that after ten days I was finally over it. Actually, it came back with a vengeance just before we left on our trip. So between packing and preparing for the trip I found myself once again sharing regular rhythmic exchanges with the porcelain. And my broken glass and razor blades in the throat, projectile Alien acid puke, and brimstone exploding out of the forehead plague entrenched itself so as to haunt the entire period we were away (I’m still fighting it off even now).

On the brighter side – the week leading up to our adventure was absolutely brilliant. The sun shone every day, the breeze kept at a minimum, the evenings were warm but comfortable: the makings of a perfect summer. But on the morning of our trip we woke up to flooding rains and 55 knot winds.

So some bastard with an over zealous tendency towards administration infatuation cancelled our flights!!! Worse still, they couldn’t get us on another flight for the next two days! So there we were, at the airport going nowhere while my Lady’s son was already in the air out of Thailand and making his way to Auckland where no-one was going to meet him.

So we hopped in the car and drove. What should have been a 55 minute flight turned into a five and a half hour car trip – in absolutely crappy weather.

But eventually we got to Auckland and found our way to the Sky City Tower Complex. It all felt as though things were finally looking up – they could only get better from here…

…Hmmmm

You see, we go to check my Lady’s mother into her room at the Sky City and two things go dreadfully wrong. Firstly, the chowderghoti (pronounced chowder-fish) behind the reception counter tells us they’ve booked her in the secondary hotel complex across the street. Now that’s not what we asked for; the woman is an Invalid for God’s sake. We told them that on their stupid on-line reservation form – that’s why we booked her in here. If she could have walked across the street then we would have booked her in the same hotel we were staying at – and saved an additional $250.

Okay, we finally get that one sorted and they shift her back across the street and into the immediate complex as per the original reservation. But that’s when the chowderghoti reveals their next bungle. He says we haven’t paid for the room!!!! Oh, yes we have – we paid for it on your stupid-ass on-line reservation site using our credit card. He doesn’t agree and wants us to go and get a printout of our credit card statement to verify our claim. Only it’s Sunday you dumbass – the banks aren’t open until tomorrow. So after a secondary argument we finally manage to get chowderghoti to agree to check Her mother in and sort out the payment issue the following day (which we did – and did we get an apology? I don’t think so).

Now before I continue, let’s go back a step – you will remember that we had intended to fly but our flights were cancelled and we drove instead. Well I’m a pretty smart guy as you well know. And while we were on the road I had the foresight to ring ahead and organise a parking space at the hotel where my Lady and I were staying. And when we arrived at our hotel (where there were no problems checking in – and they acknowledged that the room was paid for bar the additional parking space that we fixed up then and there) they directed us down to where our parking bay was. So off we go, around this corner and that, down the lane to the security door, punched in our code, down the ramp and… What the #@*&$!!!! Some dingerwotzi has parked in the space that we just paid for!!!

So back to reception – he comes down and does some investigating. What does he find out? This guy has been allocated parking bay number 18 but he’s parked in number 20 (our allocated space). Hmmm, I guess number 18 can kind of look like number 20 at times??? And you know what? These people breathe the same air as the likes of you and I. Scary thought, isn’t it?

In the mean time, some other chowderghoti at the Sky City complex had managed to cancel Her mother’s booking in their adjacent, across the road facility but failed to put in the right input for the transfer across to the primary facility. So while my Lady and I are down the road at our hotel (parking in bay 18 because of dingerwotzi), Her mother is getting the third degree about her reservation and she’s starting to panic. Fortunately, that’s when my Lady’s son arrives at the complex and, coming across his terrorised Grandma and the four foot tall bully of a chowderghoti (like this guy has the height and stature to qualify as a third world Dictator but instead, chooses to work reception at an inner city casino hotel so he can victimise old ladies) and intervenes until Mum can arrive.

Well my Lady and I arrive back at the Sky City complex where we have to now enter into another argument about Her mother’s reservation. And four foot tall chowderghoti thinks he knows everything. Well, I’ll tell you one thing he doesn’t know… he doesn’t know about my plague. You see, he gets me so worked up that I start to cough – and I cough and I cough…

…and there it is little man, a nice shower of projectile Alien acid puke for you.

As he cowers off in complete and utter humiliation, another chowderghoti comes over, reviews our predicament, clicks a few buttons on his keyboard and ta-daaaa! Miraculously resolves everything.

“I hope you enjoy your stay,” he smiles as we head away.

I think the service at Sky City Auckland sucks…  and usually I’m right.

WHY BEING SICK REMINDS ME OF A CREDIT CARD COMMERCIAL

Give me a cup of Chunky Ebola Flakes served in a mildly tepid bowl of cholerafied milk and call it a breakfast to die for!!! I’ve just spent ten days on my back with some monsterous unearthly plague of a virus that has left me more frail than an 89 year old hip replacement part and more frustrated than pre-pubescent male caught on the same beach as a Victoria’s Secret Summer catalogue shoot.

Yes… ten days in bed… literally dying… and it doesn’t matter what anybody else says – I know I was literally dying…

…Until I got better of course.

Day One: a normal day really – nothing overly special. Most of my days are like that; I get up, trip over the cat; fall into the shower; eat some breakfast (a healthy, heart approved serving of Eggs Benedict with Bacon – who is not a Jewish Rabbi by the way) washed down with a large Soya Flat White, catch the bus to town, talked sports with Larry in Accounts  – well, you don’t need to hear all the detail - Except that later that evening when I got home I noticed that I had a bit of a sore throat coming on and I thought; “great, a Summer Cold”.

Day Two: Who fed me broken glass and razor blades with my chicken soup? This isn’t Halloween!!! Yep, woke up with a whole batch of Iraqi WMDs going off in my throat causing my head to pound and my neck to ache. So I go to Doctor number one – Think his name was Mengles. He sticks a monitor in my ear to take my temperature, looks down my throat – well more like mines down there with a great big spade, full sized Tonka truck and a helmet light – and declares that I have Strep Throat. He then decides to take a swab. The next thing I know he’s got me pinned down with his knee on my chest, left hand firm on my forehead, and he’s thrusting a giant cotton bud so far down my throat that I can feel it rubbing my Spleen. With that, he prescribes some Penicillin and some mild pain killers and sends me on my way – best part $60 for his services.

Day Three: Broken glass and razor blades still there – great! Fortunately they’re occasionally relieved when I throw up some alien acid that burns the crap out of everything between my stomach and the porcelain (which shows vague signs of a melt). And now there’s the fever too – from cold to boiling quicker than a Katie Perry chorus lyric. But the best part is the hallucinations throughout the night – not nice things like flowers or paisley colours or rising stock prices – but horrible things like Zombies with razor blades, kids in Halloween costumes, a meeting with the National Party Caucus to discuss whether New Zealand's low income families should retain their basic human rights…

So Day Four begins with a trip to a second Doctor. Her name was Livingstone I presume. She begins by also sticking the monitor thing in my ear before going for a coal mine down my throat. Fortunately she doesn’t need to take another swab so the bruising on my Spleen will have a chance to clear. She prescribes a different antibiotic and a variation on the same mild pain killers. I mean – razor blades and glass, acid producing vomit and a volcanic-level fever – give me the real stuff for God’s sake!!! But I figure she must know what she’s doing because she has given me a different antibiotic – and she charged $85 for her services – indicating a higher expertise than Mengles. So I’m quietly confident.

Day Five: It’s Christmas Day!!! Yay!!! More broken glass and razor blades. More Alien acid puke. More brimstone exploding out of my forehead. The only good thing is that I’m now so exhausted that after every three breathes I have to go and have a lie down. I haven’t eaten in four days, hardly drunk anything, and at last puke everything was like acidic soap bubbles in the absence of any other substantive fodder to be excommunicated.

So after I collapse at lunchtime – my darling (who I have to concede here with utmost sincerity, was there for me every step of the way – even when through my own frustrations I sometimes failed to demonstrate my appreciation of her) dragged me to our local Hospital A&E department for some answers. Here we get an American sounding Doctor (Elementary Watson I think) who announces that it isn’t an infection like Strep Throat and that’s why the Penicillin and Antibiotics haven’t helped. Instead, he decides it’s viral and calls the nurse to take a bucket load of blood for tests. But I like this guy – he prescribes some major heavy duty painkillers (like these will knock you out and send you to the Moon). Better still, he doesn’t cost anything because he’s part of the public health system – so even if he’s wrong – who cares; it’s very dark up here and planet earth is blue.

Day Six, Seven and Eight are pretty much the same. Broken Glass and Razor Blades, Alien Acid Puke and “Fire in the hole” fevers quelled by Elementary Watson’s super juice and vague trips to the Moon. But I realize this can’t go on. I’m still not eating, still hardly drinking – and my poor darling is at her wit’s end looking after me.

Day Nine: less glass and razor blades – no Alien Acid left to hurl. Can’t sit up in bed without having to take a lie down. But I decide to stop taking Elementary Watson’s super juice. I need to be able to focus enough to get to Doctor number four tomorrow and demand resolution.

Day Ten: Throat feels vaguely human – getting my strength back. I head out to see Doctor number four: Spock. Now she looks at all the tests done by the others and concludes that it’s not an infection – no evidence of that. It’s none of the viruses tested for either – bloods were clean. It’s Influenza – a nasty case. And the best thing you can do is stay at home, take over-the-counter paracetamol, keep your fluids up and ride it out. Oh, and that’ll be $35.

Great! $60 for an initial wrong diagnosis and ineffective pain killers. $85 for a concurrence with that initial wrong diagnosis and equally ineffective painkillers. A gallon of blood for a ‘kind of in the ball park’ diagnosis and some super effective, let's-go-to-the-moon-type painkillers. $35 to be told that I didn’t need to spend any of that money because none of the doctors could really do anything more to help than what my darling could have done at home – PRICELESS

Can I get a refund on a poor diagnosis?

That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.