Much Ado About Nothing

or Thank-You Daddy, For Teaching Me How To Throw A Punch

My God. It was a four-hour drive! I would never have gone, if I had known how long it would take to drive there. Imagine having a holiday house, so far away from Auckland, and no helicopter pad! Fools. Nonetheless, a magnificent location.


Nice, but needs a chopper pad
By the time I arrived, they had already sent the most sober to get more alcohol (an hour to a decent liquor outlet! An hour! Again, why no helicopter?). By Mrs L’s reckoning, they are spending about four hundred dollars a day on booze, which is quite a modest amount, until one realises that they have been there for almost two weeks. My liver is frightfully impressed.

I had fun, I suppose. It was the type of mildly-enjoyable fiasco that was inevitable when a group of JAFAs are trapped in a small house, with nothing to do but drink.

I remember now why I usually refuse Mrs L’s invitations to her bach parties. The place is infested with grabby-handed King’s Old Boys. They have all left their wives, or claim to be in the process of doing so, and think a few bottles of Pol Roger is an opportunity for a quick roll in the sand dunes.

My father, a belligerent misogynist, had always hoped for boys, but instead got stuck with two girls (yes, I have a sister. Ugh. More about her another time, perhaps). Still, he decided to make the best of a bad deal, and taught us both how to ride horses, fire a gun, and how to throw a punch. Truly useful skills, and at least things I proved to be fairly good at, unlike the execrable tennis lessons my mother forced me to take.

Thus, late Thursday night, Mr G attempted the simultaneous tongue-in-the-mouth, hand-down-the-knickers manoeuvre; once I had wriggled loose, he received a swift right hook. What a fine black eye he sports! Magnificent colours, quite my best work. Of course, he was so drunk, he doesn’t remember a thing, and thinks he gained the injury falling down the stairs. One wonders if he also blames the stairs for his bruised nuts. Ha ha. Serves him right. Stupid bastard drives a BMW.

Anyway. Came home early. There is only so much of nature one can tolerate.