With my crossbow, I shot the albatross

A Woman's Weekly Story 2009

In Glen Eden, West Auckland, Adele Curran, 42, was watering pot plants on the deck in January. Suddenly, a crossbow arrow fired by her neighbour whizzed through the air and embedded itself 3cm into her skull. As Women’s Weekly readers so graphically see, it wedged between her right eye socket and nose. At first Adele thought a bird had flown into her, an albatross perhaps? Then it hit her and she saw the bolt’s shaft sticking out of her head. “I could feel the blood going down my face and in my nose and throat”. Said her father John, evoking something nautical rather than botanical, “There was a lot of blood on the deck and she was screaming and screaming.”

It was indeed all hands on deck. Her heroic son and the wonderful St. John’s Ambulance people saved the day and the amazing surgeons saved her eye after weeks of operations.

And good on her, like Jade Goody the Patron Saint of Exploiting Ill Fortune, for getting money for this. Goody died today. RIP.

As for the neighbour, he was only playing with his new toy, a Christmas gift from his wife, readily available in New Zealand from your local hardware shop, when it suddenly went off. A fool and his bolt are soon shot, as the saying goes.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10562885

Schoolgirls

It was back to school for the high schoolers last Thursday, though you would not think so from their uniformed presence in the malls on Friday. I’m continually disturbed in Melbourne by the sight of schoolgirls in their uniforms. Over the holidays, they took their smock-like summer uniforms and turned them into figure-hugging, breast-spilling, hip-hugging, thigh-declaring porno garments. I wonder how long it will take the nuns and other teachers to notice. It took me all of 5 minutes and my eyes were glued to this sea of competing anatomical features, the effect enhanced by the fact that it was 43 degrees in the shade and wet, wet, wet. Uniform surgery has a long history, but it usually related to shortening and lengthening hems in line with fashion. Those were the days when the nuns sadistically (not at all scophilically) presided over knicker inspection to check the girls wore regulation navy blue high-gusset knickers. But what I saw this week was crazy and the g-string (if that) has replaced the high gusset for sure. Recent Melbourne visitors Paris Hilton and Madonna have a lot to answer for. They may have been children at the end of last year but this year they are full-blooded, blossomed, blown and succulent (this word is chosen as a tribute to Harold Pinter, who I miss). Feminists everywhere unite and tell me what I should do.

But I’m innocent. I just love the lyrics to that old song: “She started a heatwave/ By letting her feet wave”.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

The contrast between Aussie and Kiwi is the main theme of this entry. For my mother, the best way to judge is to compare the Kiwi and Aussie versions of ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ Mother swears that this comparison provides evidence that NZQA has reduced the IQ of Kiwis even, alas, in comparison to the Aussies, who she thinks seem smart in comparison (maybe it’s the heat? Or the omega-rich smoked salmon?). I was forced to watch the Kiwi version last time I was in New Zealand, and it comes from the same cringe-making school of thought as John Key shaking rugby players’ hands. I think I can say without fear of upsetting anyone much that Rudd is more intelligent than Key. I must not be subject to ‘cultural cringe’, but the NZ version of ‘Millionaire’ and its foppish idiot host (fire Mike Hosking’s stylist now) ought to be banished to Mururoa Atoll and blown up.

The same might be said for my own reality TV debut this month on ‘Location, Location, Location’ (new season 2009 on TV1, times as yet unknown). You will learn from my bit part in it that all real estate agents are parasites whose only desire in life is a Louis Vuitton handbag, but I guess you probably knew that already. I expect to get heavily edited as I was rather playing up to the camera, uttering lines that would be more appropriate on ‘Sex and the City’ than primetime reality dross. Selling a house is supposed to trigger a nervous breakdown, which makes entertaining viewing, not a rush of one-liners. The producers of the show asked me if I knew anyone with a leaky home for their new documentary (waggishly called ‘Leakation Leakation Leakation’) and I nearly dobbed in one or two of you for TV stardom/ shame. Such appearances are nothing compared with the drongos on New Zealand Millionaire. I advise you to switch off all reality game shows and watch ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ instead (and forgive the segment that makes you think of Gloucester in King Lear) where you learn more about the aforementioned gameshow than watching the programme itself.

What the Dickens?

Dickensian bureaucracy remains in force in Australia. Hundreds of people are employed in collecting signatures on forms X and Y then filing them and losing them so you have to represent them. This is the country that restructuring/ rationalisation and particularly Rogernomics forgot in the 80s and 90s. Government departments and businesses still employ millions of people to stand around and stamp papers and lose them. As is usually the case in a bureaucracy, inefficiency is king. This is true here in all avenues of life, whether you want to import a car, rent a house, set up a bank account or get on the payroll or the external drive at your new job. You even have to sign a form (and I don’t mean just a custom’s declaration) if you want to post a parcel to New Zealand, for God’s sake. Consequently I never leave home without my clutch of papers in a plastic-pocket file as I’m never sure what data I’m going to need from day to day. Everything has numbers and passwords. Australia is still in the age of the Pickwick Papers, while I can see now that Rogernomics made New Zealand meaner and leaner. That process has not happened here. My worry is that if they learn that leaner and meaner is more efficient, and twig that there is a depression on too, then there is double the potential for mass unemployment.

"Scrattle, srattle, scrattle"