Holio

  Queenstown, New Zealand
Sunday, June 4, 2006

These last few hours have been ones of steady recovery following last nights well timed re-union with an old buddy. One from way back in the travel 'prepping' days of '04, from the original 'BB Meetup' at Base Auckland, the original thread-starter, the man, the legend - Mr Stu Brookes finally made his way across the equator and over to Queenstown last night for a few scoops. The night was...how d'you say...colourful.

So today, as I slept deeply, and that very colour drained slowly from my lifeless shell, Jez took young Jon to get some firewood. Things are getting seriously chilly round here and it was time to stock the garage.

Since filming his big-screen debut, young Jeremy has been subjected to a serious 'sorting out'. It was with a long sigh of relief that Lyn-Marie finally took the clippers to his 'Hitler head' just the other day, rendering him fifteen years old again and a lot more hooligan-like. And now, with obvious regret, she refers to him with a smirk as 'the little skinhead'. In fact, he looks a right little yobbo and we've all noticed some hilarious but grave changes to his behaviour - in particular, the way he's slowly developing a shorter fuse and has started to allow a few extra swear words to slip in to his everyday vocabulary, the perfect round-off to his new chipper posture. I've noticed him smoking more than usual too, and with that kind of urgency, as if something's just about to kick off. Actually the whole transition has been highly amusing. The final straw for me was seeing him step out of his recently acquired dodgy looking black Audi. That one was a belter.



While we're on the subject of the little pimp, today was when we all got to witness what's commonly known as a 'Harris Classic'. I surfaced in the afternoon and headed outside to help unload the hefty batch of freshly sourced firewood. It was the expensive macrocarpa stuff too, and lots of it. I was curious as to the bill:

'Well the only thing really...was the price.'
'You're joking. Don't tell me they put it up AFTER you'd loaded all that lot?'
'Actually...it was free..'

And so the penny dropped. Jon and I did what many of us would do under the circumstances and fluttered karmic words his way as we unloaded the the car. But to no avail - we were caught right in the middle of a Harris Classic. Bad karma or not, the night was warm.