About to visit Auckland? Read on…
If you’re thinking about visiting Auckland anytime soon, think again. The place has been overrun by the Hi-Viz Brigade, men and women whose weapon of choice is the orange road cone. These little pointy heads narrow lanes everywhere, block them in some cases. They choke traffic just about everywhere you drive in central Auckland.
(With apologies to that old song ‘a Gordon for me, a Gordon for me’ etc., here’s a Waitangi Day rendering about the flying pink phallus which hit Economic Development Minister Stephen Joyce):
A Dildo for thee
Was not meant to be,
A Dildo for Key
Was where it should be…
The other night we were sitting on a porch at another 60th birthday. These days the Big One is almost as common as that other rite of passage, funerals. It’s as if we party one minute and exit the next. On this warm night the other hallmark of our age was that we were sitting. In another room ’60s rock beckoned, reminding us that once, it was only the old folks who sat and watched while we danced…
To further promote my (Imperator Fish) blogsite, I have come up with a new marketing strategy, and I guarantee you will love it!
From next week onwards I will be providing a kitten visit service to workplaces. For a modest fee, you can get your hands on a boxful of adorable kittens.
Here’s how it works:
Just look at this street art – roses in Iran, Dali in Philadelphia. Any similarly stunning parallels here? Nope. 
In short we haven’t even picked up our paint brushes yet and we should if these two amazing transformations of concrete into colour show.
Years ago, my then partner, Jane, and I were blessed with perfect neighbours. In those days, neighbours like these were rare.
Today …?
News: Police called – Sikh student’s headphone wires protruding from his bag.
Saw someone suspicious on my morning walk today. I mean, who wears a red towel wrapped around their head for goodness sake – nobody I know. Had a woman with him and she laughs just that little bit too much. Sure sign something’s up. She might be one of his harem. Could be his sex slave – could be his hostage! So I did the only decent thing – called 111.
Went shopping for a hat-rack the other day. No big deal, this was a need rather than a want – my hats had multiplied in direct proportion to my vanishing hair.
I rang a store which stocks everything from rope to paints and plants, and asked for a hat-rack.
“No we don’t sell any” said a South African accent a little too emphatically, the way some people do when they want you off the line.
“Really?”
“I’ll put you through to hardware” she said, and was gone, though Hardware was displeased.
Auckland lawyer, veterinarian and author has published his new book, Animals, Welfare and the Law. It encompasses ethics, history and the law, so it’s a weighty read for those of us who routinely plough through fiction. But Mr Robertson has not overlooked the dark – but often comical moments in the long history of animals and humans. Some of these include the criminal trials of animals…