Warp

My contract from Little Black Dress has come through. It has been four weeks since My Agent advised me of the offer and I was starting to get a bit twitchy. Being an ex-Project Manager Writer, I can vividly imagine worst case scenarios - and frequently do.

For example, what if Little Black Dress had confused me with someone who could write? What if they reread my manuscript and thought it was a pile of crap? What if they were not mistaken? What if Little Black Dress was a fictional company set up to fool me into becoming carrier host to a special type of hybrid blood for the purpose of cloning a generation of super-aliens with plans for world domination?

Just had a great idea for the plot of my next book - gotta dash

Do you need a reason?

The Outlaws invited two friends to Brett’s birthday dinner. Raewyn is a friend of Rosina’s, and I’m not sure whose friend Chris is. Possibly nobody’s. I’m not sure how it came up, but as everyone sat around the table surreptitiously burping, somebody mentioned Chris was into astrology. He recently told Sian, a friend of Rosina’s, that she had no relationship with her mother which apparently came as a surprise to Sian because she cried for a week.

“Sian, she is, the crab?” said Chris. “Cancer, yes. These people, their relationship with the maternal mother is, how you say? Bad. Complicated.”

“I’m Cancerian,” I said.

“How’s your relationship with your mother?” asked Brian.

“Pretty good, I reckon.”

Chris shot me a look and, if I had more sense, I would have been chilled to the bone. Instead I flashed him a smile which, if I communicated the sentiment accurately, should have said, “Shove THAT up your arse.”

“I’m Aries,” volunteered Raewyn.

“Aries,” mused Chris. “Yes. Aries, you are hard worker. You work hard. But you will be alone. Always alone.”

“Oh,” said Raewyn.

“Yes,” said Chris.

“At least you have your friends,” said Rosina.

“What about Aquarius?” I asked.

“Why you want to know?”

“Andrew,” I said, pointing a thumb at the subject.

“There is no connection between you. This man and you, there is no reason for the two of you to be together.”

“Terrific,” said Andrew.

“You will come to understand this later,” said Chris confidently.

“So, we’re poked?” I asked.

“Yes. I can tell you do not believe this,” Chris addressed Andrew, whose waves of skepticism emitted their own frequency.

“Well no,” said my husband. “It’s just that . . . sort of . . . basically it’s a pile of rubbish, isn’t it?”

I guess silent adoration doesn’t count as a connection

Recipe: Duck au Craig

Given Craig and Margaret’s vocation, it is not unusual to return from a trip to South Island with various species of carcass in various stages of thaw packed in the suitcase. Andrew’s, that is. I try to ensure my wheelie bag is too full to admit offal.

After his duck shooting weekend, Husband returned to Auckland triumphantly bearing three plucked, frozen ducks. Since then, they have resided in The Outlaws’ freezer. Rosina was saving them for a special occasion - or more likely, whenever she could recollect their presence in the freezer.

Yesterday, on the occasion of Brett’s birthday, the ducks were pressed into service for dinner.

Craig sent specific, pithy yet precise instructions for the cooking of ducks. For whoever is interested, here is his recipe.

Duck au Craig

Ingredients
Plucked duck(s)
For each duck:- 1 cup ginger beer OR orange juice

Method
Preheat oven to 160°. Chuck the duck in an oven bag, followed by the ginger beer or orange juice. Seal. Roast for four hours. Craig didn’t mention anything about turning the bag periodically, but I wouldn’t be so brazen as to suggest it was an oversight

 

I faithfully repeated these instructions upon handover of the ducks. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how it tastes, because a) I don’t eat duck and b) Rosina used an alternative recipe for Orange Balsamic Maple Glazed Duck. This was mainly because it only called for an hour and a quarter in the oven which, at eight o’clock, sounded like a better option.

Apparently the ducks were tasty but a tad dry, with crunchy bits that tasted like shotgun pellets

Mental trauma

This morning Andrew was in the shower while I applied mascara, attempting to make out my reflection in the dripping mirror.

Andrew: WHAT?!

Me: I’m SINGING! So SUE ME!

Andrew: Maybe I will!

Me: Yeah? For what?

Andrew: Mental trauma . . . and damages

Indiana Jones and the Big Gob of Fluorescent Chewing Gum

Look, it’s not as if I expected the classic brilliance of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, or the gory humour of ‘Temple of Doom’. It’s virtually impossible to eclipse chilled monkey brain dessert, but I expected more, I did. After all, Steven’s had 19 years to polish the wry jokes and construct a compelling storyline. What’s the man been doing?

Just after the opening credits, Harrison Ford pilots a fridge out of a nuclear blast, but the stunt evidently wore him out for the remainder of the movie. He may be 65 years of age, but that’s no excuse for strolling into a burial chamber to pick up his artefact and ambling out again. There was a tragic lack of ingenious booby traps. Where were the poison darts, boiling lava and lethal giant trundling boulders? As far as I’m concerned, if Harrison can’t roll, charge, swing or leap out of airplanes in inflatable dinghies, it’s time he retired the whip. Even swarms of killer ants failed to add menace to the picture. It simply felt like the movie suffered from an ant infestation.

On one occasion, Indy escapes a pit of dry quicksand when it’s BARELY UP TO HIS CHEST. His chest! And if he’d been left there, it might have been up to his chin by the end of the movie. The only thing in any mortal danger was the sense of drama.

I’m still not sure what the story was about. Something about a crystal skull which has to be brought somewhere or other for some reason or other. Even the skull was a disappointment; far from being a special effects triumph of glass with fully functional hinged jaw, it looked more like a gob of fluorescent chewing gum.

The arch villain, Irina Spalko, stumbled into the film after taking a wrong turn on her way to a Bond movie. In a brave career move, Cate Blanchett brings an evil pantsuit to the role which makes her arse look about three times bigger than it is. Spalko spends a lot of time and energy running around after a big gob of fluroescent chewing gum, when she could have fulfilled her vocation as a dominatrix by simply stealing Indy’s whip. I spent most of the movie fantasising about being spanked by Cate Blanchett.

Unfortunately, the fantasy was better than the film

Jedi squirrels

Artwork by Happytoast

Anti-cool

(Not to be confused with anti-freeze.)

Me: I always look like such a ghoul in photos. I used to practice pouting in front of a mirror, but-

Brett: Stop, stop, STOP! THAT - right there - that is why you were never cool

Atmospheric conditions

Auckland has a reputation for being soggier than the rest of the country (with the exception of the west coast of South Island, where the rain falls up as well as down).

One of the reasons Craig and Margaret moved from Te Anau to Oamaru was the brutal climate; yet whenever we visited, we were treated to balmy sunshine. It was quite embarrassing; Margaret would insist there was horizontal snow and cyclones until the day before we arrived, and we’d be all: “Oh, SURE,” and wishing we’d packed more shorts.

 

In fact, on every occasion Andrew and I visited New Zealand - including the hoary depths of winter 2006 - we experienced phenomenal weather . . . everywhere except Auckland.

 

At the end of December, we arrived in the middle of what many agreed was the warmest summer ever (although I am reminded of Dubai, where each summer everyone swears it is the hottest on record).

 

“I can’t believe how warm it is!” people would exclaim, and then: “not for you, I suppose, coming from the Middle East,” not noticing my face stuck to a glass as I vainly attempted to deflame my facial capillaries. Auckland City was indeed clement.

 

Then we moved to Waitakere. It is at least 2˚ cooler than the city and everyone warned us of the savage climate up on the range. Yet within a month our water tank dried up and we had to order a delivery of 10,000 litres from the Council.

 

Inevitably, the day after the water truck came, it started pelting down and didn’t stop for nearly a week.

 

This morning, we woke to driving rain churning up thick fog. Three hours later, the sun is gently steaming the ground.

 

There are no half measures here.

 

 

     

 

Dead tree 30/4 10:02 . . . . and seventeen minutes later 10:19

Natural affinity for squirrels

My legs are killing me.

Today we went orienteering at Shank’s Pony near Kaukapakapa (that place is still easier to write than to say. Barely). Andrew doesn’t mind the orienteering, but is not fond of getting out of bed. While I registered, Andrew worked on his enthusiasm with a cup of coffee in the car.

Last week at Stag’s Roar, we did the 3.8km Orange course. This time, I was looking forward to something a bit more challenging.

“The red courses are quite technical,” said the woman at registration. “I would recommend a beginner’s course.”

OH, SHE WOULD, WOULD SHE?

Could she not see my rugged mien, feel the accumulated years of navigational savvy, smell the faint scent of Irish 1980s woodlands on my skin? Could she not sense my natural affinity for squirrels?

There was evidently something wrong with the woman, but I wasn’t about to turn down such a blatant challenge.

“Red 2, please,” I said.

“Are you sure?” She eyed me doubtfully. I was outraged, especially since she was wearing a pair of clogs.

CLOGS!

“How much?”

“Have you orienteered before?”

“Of course!” I snorted. Could she not . . . <as above>.

“The terrain is quite tricky and there’s lots of climb-”

“GOOD! I love hills! More the merrier, that’s what I say! I hope they’re REALLY VERY STEEP!”

Aaand that’s how we ended up doing the 5.0km Red 2 course.

It took us 20 minutes to find the first control - see Friggin Fig 1 below. The line of trees off the north of the track was obvious, yet for reasons that will remain classified we followed the track west to its conclusion and splashed around in the stream for a while. Or more precisely, around 15 minutes.

 

Friggin Fig 1

However, we hit our stride and charged down checkpoints 2-6. Andrew and I were on fire, heartbreakingly in synch with each other and the universe.

The leg from checkpoint 6 to 7 was a kilometre long, which was when I started to wilt. It crept up on me spontaneously; one minute I was hurdling a fallen tree, the next I was negotiating with my legs for every step.

“Come on Niamhie!” bawled Andrew, sprinting up a field. “This bit’s flat!”

He ran out of puff around checkpoint 9. I could tell, because when he found the control he kind of whimpered, instead of waving his arms around roaring: “OVER HERE! IT’S OVER HERE!”

Technically, this course was much more advanced than last week’s. There were few giveaways; you had to be right at the feature to access the control. Some of them were stuffed down rabbit holes and one was half eaten by a cow. We finished the course in just under two hours and have been subdued ever since.

 

To your right! Look! Over there!

 

Action shot: Andrew tears off towards the finish. All right - he balanced on one leg for this photo, but you’ve got to admire his beauty and grace, like a constipated gazelle

 

Andrew channels Chariots of Fire: note the proud chest, the splayed arms, the agonised grimace. Unfortunately, some of the essence is missing due to Andrew’s trying to run in slow motion. Really takes it out of you - and I should know

The PG version

Before we left Dubai, Andrew talked to Trade New Zealand about my applying for residency. They gave him the distinct impression that all I had to do was sing a bar or two of the National Anthem, slap my elbows, and I would be naturalized in the airport.

 

It was John and Haze who advised us to get police certificates before we left Dubai. We humoured them because they’re good friends, but it came as a complete surprise. Evidently, we ignored the alarm bell orchestra.

 

After arriving in New Zealand, we pretty much forgot about immigration, until I realised my temporary visitor permit was due to expire the following week, when we downloaded the application form for sponsorship and residency.

 

Andrew’s sponsorship application was a six page form which had to be certified by a notary public and supplemented with certified passport copy, two passport photos and his police certificate from Dubai.

 

The residency application was another matter. This form was 32 pages and required: a comprehensive medical including blood tests and chest X-rays; a 16 page doctor’s statement; certified copies of our marriage certificate, my birth certificate, and my passport copy; two signed passport photos; my police certificate from Dubai; a police certificate from Ireland; and evidence of my relationship with Andrew including photos and joint bank accounts, statements, tenancy agreements, investment schemes, property ownership, life insurance, etc.

 

We did not have much fun compiling the documentation and had a minor panic locating my birth cert, which we finally tracked down in one of the 118 boxes delivered by the shippers. Considering that in the Middle East we went out of our way to avoid appearing a couple until we were married, we managed to put together an impressive library of ‘evidence’ of our relationship.

 

The biggest obstacle was not having a police certificate from my country of citizenship. The Immigration New Zealand website did not list this in the requirements, but regrettably the application form was explicit and the scary woman at Immigration even more so.

 

While we waited for the Garda Síochána to issue my certificate, I applied for a work permit/visa. For about two weeks, I was an illegal alien, which didn’t at all appeal to my law-abiding nature (although Andrew found it quite kinky).

 

The work permit/visa was processed fairly quickly although there was a blip when Immigration New Zealand contacted me requesting the blood test lab reports from my medical. My white cell count is 113, falling below the ‘normal’ range of 114-129. For a while it looked like my application would be rejected because I was vegetarian.

 

I applied for residency as soon as the work permit/visa was granted. I was impressed with the Garda Síochána, which issued a police certificate within three weeks free of charge.

 

A fortnight ago, Immigration NZ contacted me requesting a certified copy of Andrew’s birth certificate. No worries: his mum tracked it down and we certified and sent it from Oamaru.

 

But on Wednesday, we went to NZ Post to collect yet another registered letter from our buddies Immigration NZ. Apparently we submitted insufficient evidence of Andrew’s and my passionate, ongoing union. Perhaps our marriage certificate is out of date?

 

We are now required to submit a detailed chronological history/account of our relationship (I’m still not sure exactly how much detail they want: the PG version? Or R18?); letters of support from family and friends verifying that Andrew and I still lick each other’s face in public; and yet more evidence that we are not faking a 10 year marriage for the sole purpose of my gaining New Zealand citizenship.

 

At least I’m not the only one with problems. The head of the Immigration NZ Service resigned on Tuesday amidst allegations that she gave preferential treatment to residence applications from her relatives

Stag’s Roar - photos

Here are some pics from the orienteering event at Stag’s Roar last Sunday - photos courtesy Haze - thank you!

 

The Team: Haze, me and Andrew - sweaty yet triumphant.  Rare image of Andrew almost smiling.

 

Andrew demonstrates his internal compass, thankfully with his arm. It looks as if I’m biting him, but I’m not.

 

 

Me, pushing in on the tree’s photo op.

 

John orienteering.

 

Fungus: mushy

The difference between John and me

On Sunday we went orienteering with John and Hazel at Stag’s Roar. Well, Hazel did the course with Husband and me, while John felt navigationally compromised and read his book under a tree.

 

A few things have changed since I last orienteered. No more twaddling around with clear contact; control cards have been replaced by electronic ‘keys’ which are inserted into a reader at each control. No more huddling by master maps waving your arse in the air; the courses were pre-printed on the maps. No gaiters, but I think that’s a cultural difference. There appear to be less brambles to whip the shins in New Zealand.

 

And there was blazing sunshine. Perhaps it’s inverted rose-tinted glasses, but orienteering events in the Irish eighties seemed to always be accompanied by gale force winds, horizontal rain, knee-high mud and puddles of ice.

 

Andrew’s sense of direction continues to be purely instinctive. I was gutted when he hit the third control before Hazel and me. Still not completely recovered from it.

 

Afterwards, we all went to The Carriages for brunch.

 

The following exchange illustrates the fundamental difference between John and me.

 

John: Went to the movies last night.

 

Me: Oh cool! What did you go see?

 

John: The Painted Veil.

 

Me: The- what?

 

John: The Painted Veil. Edward Norton-

 

Me: I love Edward Norton. Great actor.

 

John: Yeah, him, and that babe - what’s her name again-

 

Me: Liv Tyler.

 

John: No-

 

Me: Halle Berry.

 

John: It’ll come to me in a minute. Anyway, it was excellent - much of it was set in China at the turn of the nineteenth century, in the cholera epidemics. It was really interesting.

 

Me: Sounds . . . nice. We went to the movies too.

 

John: Really? . . .

 

Me: Yes! We went to see IRON MAN!

 

John: Oh, with Harry Connick Junior.

 

Me: No, Robert Downey Junior. He IS Iron Man - he totally rocks! Awesome actor. And Iron Man is such a great superhero - I mean let’s face it, Spiderman is great but Peter Parker can be a bit whiny. But Iron Man, you know, he’s pretty single-minded and you gotta admire that in a superhero-

 

John: I’m not convinced.

 

Me: What? How can you not be? Iron Man has compelling motives, an engaging character arc, and he blows stuff up and flies!

 

John: Mmm

 

The Seekers

When I was a kid, my parents had an LP of The Seekers, an Australian group who popularized the folk dirge. Maracas were an integral part of the group’s percussive strategy. ‘The Best of the Seekers’ featured classics such as ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’, ‘A World Of Our Own’, ‘Morningtown Ride’, and ‘Georgy Girl’:-

 

When I was a little girl, I used to look wistfully at the cover of this LP innocently lusting after style like Judith Durham’s. At the age of six, I thought the guy on the left was quite the fox. I used to listen to the LP over and over, and drop the needle repeatedly to the start of ‘The Carnival is Over’, the lyrics of which go:-

‘Now the harbour light is calling
This will be our last goodbye
Though the carnival is over
I will love you till I die’

I used to weep for the impossible love between the one-armed strong man and the bearded lady.

You can imagine my joy when I came across a Seekers CD on sale in Christchurch Airport last Tuesday. As soon as we got home, I put it in the stereo and turned the volume up full.

“What did I do?” asked Andrew plaintively, in a quiet moment between ‘Open Up Them Pearly Gates’, and ‘Red Rubber Ball’.

“What?”

“I must have done something wrong for you to be torturing me like this. Are my ears bleeding?”

“These are CLASSIC SONGS!” I said, and I told him about my parents’ Seekers LP and Judith Durham’s dress with the bow and the frills and her satin shoes.

“I can just imagine your parents listening to this,” Andrew muttered darkly.

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?”

“Just that it’s the sort of music they’d listen to.”

“Well they did, and so did your wife, and now you’re listening to it too. Ooh, I love this one!
‘But if I should lose your love, dear
I don’t know what I’d do
For I know I’ll never find another you-ooo-ooo!’”

Andrew stared at me in horror.

Regrettably, the Seekers declined in popularity because they weren’t raunchy enough for the seventies. This picture goes a long way towards explaining why:-

Aging chafes

Last night, Andrew tested his new car stereo at maximum volume as we drove down Henderson Valley Road. It blew off my clothes and tossed my hair around. The thrumming passenger seat whipped me into a nympohmaniacal frenzy.

I’m sure that would be entirely true if I were 10 years younger with a full supply of oestrogen. Also, had James Brown or Lenny Kravitz been playing rather than Moby.

Reality = the passenger seat chafed a bit

Death by impatience

Saturday afternoon and I’ve just finished cutting into the trim in the lower hallway and kitchen areas. We’ve done no painting for months, mainly because the mere thought of it was enough to induce spontaneous coma in the pair of us. I can just see us finishing the painting a week before we move on.

 

Cutting in turns me into a person who can spend however long it takes obsessively coaxing three bristles into a 1cm² corner. I always have to be careful not to get an eyeball stuck to the brush or my tongue stuck to the wall.

 

There is a shelf that runs the entire length of the stairs hallway, with a 40cm section I can’t reach unless I balance by the toenails on the banister or dangle from a light fitting. Unfortunately, I’m not quite limber enough for either these days. When I asked Andrew to do it, he claimed he didn’t have the patience.

 

“To paint a 40cm strip?” I asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“You realize I could fall off the banister and injure myself?”

 

“Well, I might DIE.”

 

I’m not sure from what exactly - acute impatience? Then again, this is a man who would spend his time exclusively soldering bits of metal to other bits of metal and soldering the result to more metal, except that he occasionally has to eat and sleep.

 

While I painted, Andrew spent the morning ripping out the interior of the MR2, including door handles and panels, the dashboard and centre console, the seats and floors. I think he’s fixing the car stereo. The reason I’m uncertain is that it always sounded fine to me. However, he flew into a rage yesterday afternoon, because - from what I could make out - the car is too small to fit a sub-woofer.

 

To inspire him while he tinkered, Andrew put on a CD of greatest rock hits ever. At the moment, Jimi Hendrix’ ‘All Along The Watchtower’ is vibrating the living room, while Andrew has sufficiently fixed his car stereo to blast Norah Jones at top volume.

 

Some things never change, but there’s something infinitely comforting about that

Beanie

Every second day or so and depending on atmospheric conditions, Andrew and I go for a walk or cycle. Over a quick mid-day snack, we consult our map of the Waitakere Ranges and choose a trail within a 20km radius.

 

One of the best so far is just a little up the way from us. It is a bush walk called the Goodfellow Track, which takes about an hour via Fairy Falls.

 

Today we needed to go into Henderson for provisions (me) and mooch around Bunnings (Andrew), so we decided to do the Goodfellow Track on our way. It was a beautiful - if blood curdling - day.

 

“Where’s my hat?” I said to Husband.

 

“What hat?”

 

“Well, any hat; although preferably woolly or fleecy and featuring ear flaps and insulation. Ooh- and a bobble.”

 

Andrew was unreasonably unhelpful - possibly because I was describing an imaginary hat, but still. Anyway, I struck out on Goodfellow Track without headgear.

 

“My head is cold,” I grumbled.

 

“Well, walk faster,” said Andrew.

 

About 20 minutes along the trail - I FOUND A HAT! We crossed a stream and there, lying to one side of the track, was a lovely, warm, woolly hat in exactly my size. Well, it wasn’t that lovely at the time, because it was soaked in mud; and obviously not that warm for the same reason. But it was indeed woolly and as for size, well a head’s a head. It’ll fit, even if I have to chop holes for my ears (which admittedly might defeat the purpose).

 

“Look!” I exclaimed, pointing.

 

“What?”

 

“A hat! Lovely, warm and woolly in exactly my size - perfect!”

 

“Isn’t it a bit . . . nasty?”

 

“Not at all, it’ll clean up great after I pick out the leaves and pine needles and the mud and - oh, are those dead spiders? - Just a moment while I give it a little rinse in the stream.”

 

 

Me at the top of the Goodfellow Track. Auckland City in the background to the East

 

 

 

I fear I have a kauri tree fetish. Sorry to subject you to it, but they really are the most astonishing trees. Andrew took a photo of me standing next to it to give an impression of scale. Unfortunately, after five days of farm food in Oamaru, my waistline looks about equivalent in diameter to that of the tree - so that one’s staying on the hard drive

  

 

 

Part of Fairy Falls - it extends further up through the bush, but I couldn’t fit it all in the photo. We usually have a quick dip, but it’s getting a bit cryogenic

 

 

 

What’s wrong with this photo?

A bull called Fu Manchu

On our last night in Oamaru, we gathered around the telly for some family bonding. There was some quality TV on show (worth bearing in mind that it’s been a while since I’ve goggled the box). First up was the Chicago auditions for ‘America’s Got Talent’, this episode being about nine months behind America.

The first contender was Consuelo, who ‘sang’ blues gospel in Gregorian chant complete with quotation marks. One of the three judges described her as looking like ‘Hilary Clinton on acid’, which is roughly what she sounded like as well.

Then there was a country singer who sang a song which featured the lyrics ‘I went 2.7 seconds on a bull called Fu Manchu’. Anyone who can air a line like that without snorting his mic gets my vote.

Awesomely, a lardy transvestite performer calling himself ‘Boy Shakira’ took the stage in a tasseled bra and transparent skirt. I have never seen anything so funny. After his performance, his doting mum said: ‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted for my son, that he does something that makes him happy’. Have I missed something poignant and heartbreakingly true, or did she fail in her duty to set goals for her son?

If you have never seen it, you should take the time to watch the vid on YouTube:-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIr3gaqefXg

If you want more, you should check this out too:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KiL-cH8ihs

Sharon and Piers voted Boy Shakira through. David Hasselhoff, perhaps feeling that Boy Shakira was not enough to spike the ratings, stormed off set in a hoff. God, it was nailbiting. Would he punch out the cameraman? What if his face fell off? Would he ever return?

He was back in time for the next act after a nip in his dressing room.
There were more histrionics from Hoff when Piers and Sharon refused to vote through a hip hop dance troupe of inner city kids. Unfortunately, their only discernible talent was the leader’s ability to look menacing. He might have done better had he worn a tassled bra and transparent skirt instead of a clown outfit.

Finally, we had Alex Mooney.

“I break miscellaneous objects with my butt,” he announced, before dropping his shorts and, well, breaking miscellaneous objects with his butt. With a seismic flex of his cheeks, he snapped two pencils in half. A ruler met the same summary fate, followed by a fork which he bent almost double.

I can’t help but wonder whether he meticulously trained his arse five hours a day from an early age, or did he discover this skill by chance when he accidentally sat on a pencil? Although Alex had more raw talent than Boy Shakira, the judges unanimously voted him off. In fairness, I’m not sure how he could develop his act; perhaps by crushing beer cans or small cars.

After this, everything else was a tragic anticlimax. ‘Medical Emergency’, despite featuring real live-with-potential-for-death victims and lashings of blood and goo, failed to scale the same glorious heights as ‘America’s Got Talent’. It almost got there with the guy who fell off a roof and broke his back. A doleful voiceover informed us that he might never walk again.

“OH FACK OFF!” roared my Stepfather In Law at the telly.

“Craig,” I admonished. “That poor man may be paralyzed from the waist down.”

“Crap. Look! He’s wiggling his toes.”

“But his leg didn’t jump when the doctor hit him with a hammer. And listen - they just said-”

“It’s bollocks.”

“Hey, can you stop leeching my drama?”

Then there was ‘Border Patrol’, where immigration officials were suspicious of a grinder wheel with a large crack in the side of it. They spent a lot of time pulling their chins and pondering the fragility of grinder wheels, before some bright spark noticed it originated in Columbia. They drilled a hole in the wheel and discovered 2kg of cocaine - in Auckland Airport! Or some other airport quite close by! I mean, everything is in New Zealand.

I have embarked on a mission to persuade Andrew to get a telly - but it is second on the priority list after the puppy

Portrait of pluckers

Actually, several of them. Just back in Auckland and updating the blog with news from the weekend.

My Stepfather In Law, Craig (the one on the right) and his dog Morty. Craig was supposed to pull a sneer for the photo, but in fact this is more or less how he looks all the time. He is half as terrifying in person, but twice as terrifying when holding an axe.

 

The other duck shooters. All men had strict instruction to look menacing, but Andrew figured the suit was enough. From left to right: Husband; Andrew’s mother’s daughter’s boyfriend Ian aka Taffy; and Dave.

 

The men tried to persuade me to pluck, but I was having none of it after the stunt Craig pulled with Trevor the Trout back in 2004. I reckon thems that shoots it gots to pluck it

Herbert the Duck

Herbert was a happy little duck. He liked sunshine. He and his brothers and sisters paddled in the river, snapping at flies and dancing shadows.

But Herbert preferred the rain. He and his brothers and sisters played with the raindrops and fished for minnows. They quacked and stuck their little ducky tails in the air.

One day, their mother said: “Children, it’s time you learned how to fly.”

Herbert was scared. What if he was not able to fly? What if he dropped out of the sky?

Herbert was right to be scared, because one day he copped a gutful of lead and died.

The End

Duck cemetary

[WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES]

When I first met my Mother In Law and Stepfather In Law, they lived on top of a hill in Te Anau. Dusk was falling as Husband drove the rental car up the 70° driveway. We rounded a corner and there, silhouetted against the lowering sky, was a tractor with its digger raised. At the corners hung two bloody carcasses twirling idly in the breeze.

If the moment had a soundtrack, it would have been violin strings plucking up a scale.

“What the . . . what the <expletive deleted> is THAT?” I said, pointing a quivering finger.

“Drain the blood, meat tastes better,” responded Andrew as if that explained the matter.

This was my gentle introduction to a world of killing sheds, gut holes, knocking on the ‘ead, projectile pus and anal probing. I am now accustomed to eating breakfast while Margaret drains a doe’s abcess, or sitting on the living room sofa shooting possums out the window when the milking’s done. It has got to the stage where I’m all: ‘Dead deer? Pass the knife. And the steel’.

Given the way I have embraced country life, I was gutted (when Margaret or Craig are involved, it is important to point out that this is not in a literal sense) that I wasn’t allowed partake in the duck shooting. As a female, I was present in a purely supportive capacity: food preparation and provision, construction and materials, transport and logistics, underwear technician and specific totty.

I got over it fairly quickly when I realized how much hanging around is involved in duck shooting, allied with the ambient temperature in South Island at this time of year.

Yesterday, the Duck Shooters, their support team and associated groupies, went to cut broom to conceal the blind - or mai mai as it is called in these parts. Afterwards, the Duck Shooters modeled their camouflage suits, which essentially make them look like mouldy Yetis.

The Duck Shooters set off at 05:00 this morning. I was supposed to cook breakfast and massage Andrew’s trigger finger but, well, I was asleep.

Since Andrew wouldn’t pose for an official portrait in his Yeti suit, I am going to have to go with this one featuring only the pants:-

Terrifying: Andrew’s killer instinct

[You were warned about the graphic images.]

 

Duck cemetery

 

Morty and Bambi: Craig’s dog confuses deer for duck

 

In keeping with the horrifying theme: abalone mince. Actually tastes pretty good

Champion duck caller

Arrived in South Island this morning for duck shooting. Andrew’s a lot more excited than I am. It’s in his genes; his mother once won a duck calling competition