'The curse of the stolen hog bristles'

We have all heard of skeletons in the cupboard. Well prepare to discover all your ancestors heinous crimes courtesy of a web site instigated by the famous Old Bailey court house in London. Just punch in a name and be ready for a shock. I did just that and am completely mortified and ashamed to declare that on 10th June 1801 a certain Thomas Glasse was indicted for feloniously stealing, ‘three pounds weight of hogs bristles to the value of eight shillings.’ Now I am convinced that in this world things tend to catch up with you. It’s a case of an eye for an eye or in this instance a bristle for a bristle. When I considered the ramifications of such a dastardly crime, I came to the awful conclusion that the injured party, a certain, ’John Allen, brush maker’, could well have been of a mind, in his moment of distress, to lay a hex on future generations of the Glasse family.
Being a Glasse it was my job to see us through the dilemma.
I spent some time reflecting.
It is a bald fact that as men get older their hair has a habit of fleeing the cranium. This phenomenon is often counteracted by ever increasing, voluminous amounts of bristles sprouting forth upon the eyebrows. If you happened to be driving in our little New Zealand town of Whakatane last week you may have witnessed an attack upon a local officer of the law (who just happens to be my son in law) Apparently his eyebrows had become so bushy that his whole family wrestled him to the ground and well and truly plucked him like a chicken. Was he a victim of the curse of the hogs bristles? It got me thinking.
Has my brother Rotundo (named after my Italian Mother’s maiden name) fallen foul of something that happened over two hundred years ago?
Under the pretext of checking a suspicious looking mole just behind his left ear, I was staggered to see veritable bush reserves flowing from his auditory canal. Copious clumps of unruly ear fuz appeared to be multiplying faster than the mangroves in Ohiwa harbour. I realised that Rotundo was so concerned with the diminishing foliage on his head that he had not noticed the increasing hairiness elsewhere. The situation was desperate. I sent a coded message to the family, ‘We need to spend a day at the orifice, hair today, gone tomorrow’ The family took immediate action, purchased a weed whacker from the hardware store, ambushed the hairy one and proceeded to blaze a trail through the undergrowth. It was like venturing where men fear to tread, we discovered things that were missing, presumed dead. Rotty’s school cap, half a pair of sun glasses, a man with a stop/go sign, an ear wig and a sizable piece of Ruby Wax.
As we hacked our way toward my brother’s brain, for no apparent reason, our thoughts went to Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
Imagine how delighted we were when both ears were completely free of bristly impediments and by shining a penlight into his, now naked lughole, we could illuminate the clock on the opposite wall. The battle was almost done but one further challenge presented itself. Nothing gets up peoples noses more than hairs. Many famous identities have had moderately hairy noses, Nostraldamus, Snozzal Durante, Goobychev to name a few. Rotundo, had enough wiggly spiders legs up there to furnish Ruud the bug man with a whole season of TV shows. They just had to go. With the immortal words, ‘Beam me up Snotty’ on our lips, we got to work. As each follicle was tweazered out tears fell from my brother’s eyes, visible proof that at last he can breathe easy, released from the curse of the stolen hogs bristles.

Nicole going to the ball

Global warming = Alarming Blog

Sorry ! I just cannot help myself.
This carbon credits thing has really got me going. Are we going to see cattle trucks adorned with native trees in planting boxes? Will dairy cows be saddled with bonsai trees?
Have we gone completely and absolutely bonkers. Okay, so our government, along with a few other guilt ridden, politically correct, absolutely bamboozled countries, decided to sign up on the Kyoto protocol and make their presence felt in Carbonhagen. Yes, we should be planning for an environmentally safe future. I am ready to concede that the world is going through a warming cycle (The emphasis on ‘cycle’) an observable fact that is also affecting other planets in our universe. However as always we Kiwis, without venturing to challenge the reasons why, will sit back and take what is dished up. I am not a meteorologist but I, along with a growing number of skeptics, have a feeling in my gut that we are being frightened into accepting huge changes and as always, if we conform, someone somewhere is going to make an obscene amount of money. Remember the carless days fiasco (oil barons made a fortune out of that) and who can forget the Y2K Millennium bug that convinced us the crash of computers would send us back into the stone age. Thankfully, one New Zealander had the knowledge and professional qualifications to stand up and be counted regarding the current fear mongering. I refer to Mr. Augie Auer, a well respected professor of atmospheric science who has sadly passed away. He co-founded the ‘NZ Climate Science Coalition along with a Mr. Owen McShane who made this statement at Augie Auer’s funeral:
“It’s very sad that Augie will not live to see the fulfillment of his conviction that good science will triumph over the false hype and over exaggerated propaganda about carbon dioxide being a pollutant and a cause of catastrophic global warming. When the day comes when science prevails, and there are many who predict that it will happen within the next five years, we will not forget the leadership shown by Augie Auer in the fight against the corruption of true science”.
Augie’s views aside, let us say that this country must do their bit to freshen up the atmosphere, sorry, I just do not get it. Maybe you do. The simplest of researches will show that a whopping thirty percent of this green and pleasant land, New Zealand, consists of carbon (co2) gobbling, forest. We are blessed with ten national parks covering over five million acres, a massive amount of trees in any ones language. Couple the Native forest with approximately a further five million acres of planted forest, not to mention every tree in every garden, every council park, every farm woodlot and the sea (yes, that also takes in carbon) that’s a veritable carbon munching machine. A couple of facts that are worth noting….. A fully grown pine tree is made up of approximately fifty percent water and fifty percent carbon. Apparently two and a half acres of radiata pine sequests twenty five tonnes of co2 per year. This strange word ‘sequests’ in this context basically means gobbles up. Okay so this is getting boring, my point is this, our little country is more than doing its bit, digesting millions of tonnes of carbon and belching out oodles of oxygen. Our carbon footprint is the size of a premature infant compared with ‘Big foot’ international industry. Are we being sucked in, taken for a ride? Would it not have been more sensible to challenge the main industrial polluters, notably China and the United States, to demonstrate a responsibly environmental attitude, prior to NZ capitulating to green pressure. To put it rather crudely, surely a tangible case for New Zealand to say, ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’. I cannot help thinking that the hidden agenda is almost totally political. You scratch my back and I’ll massage your political ego.

A reason to celebrate

This fellow died and went to Heaven. St. Peter welcomed him and began to show him around his new home. The fellow was suitably impressed with paradise all except for one confusing item. A huge high wall seemed to stretch for miles across Heaven. He asked St. Peter, what was the meaning of the seemingly impenetrable wall. ‘Shhh ! warned St Peter, ‘The Catholics live behind there, they think they are the only ones here’.
Someone once said, ‘We will be surprised who we see in Heaven’. In England it is not uncommon to receive an envelope with the bold letters O.H.M.S printed. This type of correspondence is usually from a Government department, the letters stand for On Her Majesties Service. Some wag suggested that this is what you are likely to receive when you reach the Pearly gates and you may not get in because up there those letters stand for Only Hindus Muslims and Sikhs.
Of course we do not have all the answers to things spiritual and although a popular saying goes, ‘this life is not a dress rehearsal’, it probably is. We may spend a lifetime trying to keep physically and mentally fit but I am convinced that it is not going to do us any harm to ask a few spiritual questions. I once picked up a hitch hiker and discovered he was a Muslim, we got so engrossed in religious tit for tat that he ended up staying the night at our home. We talked well into the night debating Christianity verses Islam, we eventually agreed to disagree, realizing that it was unlikely either one of us would convert to an opposite’s faith. Actually, the Bible says that true religion is caring for orphans and widows.
So we move on and focus on the second most important date on the Christian calendar,
Christmas.
A close Christian friend of mine, announced that from this year forward, he was giving up on Christmas. I could see his point of view. Lots of pagan rituals make up the trappings of Christmas. Plus as we all know it is a money making commercialized bonanza. One of his arguments was that the shepherds could not have been in the fields watching their flocks at that time of year because it was winter. This and numerous other facts apparently prove that the birth of Christ was not on December the 25th. He may be right although I was told that it was the Temple shepherds who looked after the sacrificial lambs. If this is true they could have been outside in all weathers, all seasons. Putting speculation and theology aside, I see it this way, we are now moving into the year 2010. Not big news until you ask why is it 2010. Definitely amazing when you consider that our date system begins at the birth of Jesus Christ. Not from Alexander the Great, not from Genghis Khan, Margaret Thatcher, Galileo, Aristotle or Winston Churchill. This means that whatever the exact date of Christ’s birth, it really is of little consequence when you consider, His birth changed mankind, gave us all hope and has impacted the globe to such an extent that there are, today, over two billion Christian believers. Now that’s worth celebrating.
So Maureen and I will continue to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. As with other years it’s going to be extra special with all four of our children’s families including eleven grandchildren gathering together. We will probably eat too much, there will be a Christmas tree, presents for the children, definitely a glass of wine or two and there will be a moment when all the laughter and chatter stops, all the plastic glitter of human tradition is put aside, a moment to give thanks for God’s provision, love and most of all for Jesus, the reason for the season.

EXTENDED LEAVE

I refuse to use the 'R' word, never intended to retire and never will, so let's just call it 'extended leave'.

Welcome to our blog site where You will find John's scriblings, Maureen's art and a few bits and pieces that are of no significance to anybody.

To tell you the truth, we are re-thinking the whole jolly business!!
Christmas has crept up on us and as I put pen to paper, not a single card has been written, not a tree felled and not a cake baked. We have received some cards, I had no idea that the local bank liked us enough to wish us Seasons Greetings and a prosperous New Year. I am surprised they missed our anniversary and birthdays. You begin to realise that the whole world has gone completely balmy when you receive a, ‘Have a happy Christmas’, greeting, from someone who will actually be sharing Christmas day with you. The whole business has become stressful to the max. Do we send Great Uncle Boris one out of the budget pack or an expensive one with lovely words? Who actually reads the words? It crosses our minds that maybe we should follow our English friends’ example and support a worthwhile cause. Will anyone notice that we have spent a small fortune on a card supporting the ‘Outer Mongolia, dumb animals trust, for the preservation of three legged Yaks’, I doubt it.
Then there is the dreaded Christmas card entrapment. Although we have not actually seen this lovely couple since the eighties, for two decades Christmas cards have been religiously dispatched between New Zealand and the USA. Hallmark have made a fortune out of us.
I am now beginning to doubt that the couple in question are still with us. I am thinking that their annual festive card is now in the hands of a ghost writer. Over recent years their Christmas greetings have given a strong hint that we are not first on their ‘people to keep in touch with’ list. They actually missed us out in 2003, although we sent them a very expensive card which had a lot of glittery stuff and played jingle bells when opened. We wiped them out in 2004 but were surprised to receive one from them, a very small card in a used envelope, we think it was the same envelope that had contained the jingle bells card. They did write a Christmas message, something about their Afghan hound dieing after attacking and eating our musical card. Apparently the poor animal was allergic to the glittery stuff and succumbed to a fatal attack of tinsel-itus. They signed their names as Mr. and Mrs. which seemed quite formal. Of course we sent them one in 2005 because they remembered us the year before. We removed them from the list in 2006 but were horrified when we got one from them. It arrived too late for us to reciprocate prior to Christmas. I remember we opened the card together and you know those times when a husband and wife say the same word at the same time… well, ‘bastards’!! was probably a bit strong. Anyway, just to pee them off we sent them an Easter card. That seems to have done the trick, a shame to loose touch with such good friends….
I am a bit concerned about the Santa Claus business. Having told our Grandchildren not to talk to strangers, I have a twinge of concern when forcing them to sit on the lap of a strange, big fat , bearded, red person. Something is telling me Oh Oh Oh . I did hear about a small child who went into Farmers and was asked by Santa what he wanted for Christmas …he told him. The very same day the child met Santa in The Warehouse, same question, same answer. That evening the child and his mum happened to be at a Christmas party. Once again Santa asked the child what he wanted for Christmas. The child was growing weary of all this and spoke to Santa in a loud voice,
‘I’ve told you what I want three times, why don’t you write it down’.
It’s true, there are so many Santa’s about there is a real danger of kids becoming Claus-trophobic.

So another Christmas and into a New Year. Have a good one and try not to over indulge.
God bless you and your family as you celebrate the birth of Jesus, the greatest gift of all.