Pinky loves her very own Bruce Willis!

                              Bruce Willis                                        Bruce 'Scotto' Willis
                         Image credit: www.flickr.com


Growing up with parents who bred dogs and having personally owned nine members of the Canis Familiaris Genus Species, I've had my fair share of exposure and made some observations on their general behaviour. 

A dog will never sh#t in another dog’s hole. Neither will they steal another dog’s bone then p#ss on it. They may eat it but they won’t deliberately make it so undesirable that no other dog will want a piece of it. 

Not so in the human world.

As a relative newbie in the world of the Internet (read more on that…here ) it hasn’t taken me too long to figure out that there are more than a few nasty animals out there in the cyber-wilderness. 

There are the indolent Sloth Bears who hijack your site with misleading links to porn sites or malware, eg; Broken Controllers. 

Piranhas may swim below the surface of your computer stream in the form of viruses or worms. 

Poison Dart Frogs send you email messages or tweets containing vicious barbs so that when you click on them you expose your computer to all kinds of evil malware. 

I’ve even had sinister little spider monkeys (always a pretty girl with an innocent name and only one or two followers) favourite my Tweets in the hope that I will explore their link so that they can infiltrate my computer with malevolent Trojans. 

Why do they do it? Because they can; also to spam you with advertisements for pornography, weight loss programs and Spanish holiday homes, or worse… to hijack your computer. 

This is what Professor Mungleton warns could happen to you...

Upon arrival, there's something tempting like unlimited torrent downloads, promises to scan your computer for viruses, or pictures of stripping girlies or cats falling down, and you think "Oh, that looks fun" and you click on it and invite worms, trojans and viruses into your computer and suddenly your credit card has been used in Nigeria, you're on the Interpol watch list and your computer is part of a botnet attacking the US State Department. Not to mention the endless popup adverts and redirections you'll get.

Oh yes my friends, it is a bloodied jungle out there. 

But guess what? I am lucky to be married to my own “Bruce Scotto Willis”... a fully qualified, USB carrying, anti-virus warrior living right under my roof. 

How can I be sure he’s the right vigilante for the job?

Well folks, these are the bedroom remote-controls for the telly.

These are the family-room remote-controls for the telly.

 

These are the TV room remote-controls for the telly.

-If ‘Bruce Scotto Willis’ ever goes out of town I have to leave the telly running for the entire time as I have no fricking idea what any of those remotes are for!

              This is my geek’s yoyo collection.

This is just one of my geek’s three Deloreans. 

These are my geek's Pinball machine, Games machine and

the computer all of which he BUILT ENTIRELY BY HIMSELF! 

So Yippie-Kai-Yay Mother F#%kers! Bring it ooooon! 

I'm married to the Emperor of Geeks!

My ingenious geek has installed Avast Anti-Virus on my laptop and any time those dunce-hat, computer subversives attempt to infect my laptop with their filthy malware, a siren blasts and an “Alert Alert Alert” message ( just like that robot from Lost in Space) blares shutting it down quicker than you can say ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’.

So in the words of Bruce Scotto Willis; 

“Those hackers are just a fly in the ointment, Pinky. The monkey in the wrench. The pain in the ass.”

Please check out Professor Mungleton’s full post…here

Pinky and the family curse.

                Jonah- the 'good-looking' one according to my Cougar friends.

I don’t write much about my twenty-two year old son Jonah; this has something to do with the fact that he has threatened to sue the crap out of me if I so much as pen one word in regards to his activities and as he is close to completing his law degree -and I don’t want to lose the house- I usually refrain.

However, I heard from Jonah’s father on Thursday night that he had been involved in a car accident in the big smoke where he is attending university. It was only a wee bingle but Jonah was at fault and like all the Poinker children, he doesn’t have any insurance. “Lenny”, Jonah’s car copped the worst of it but thankfully it’s still driveable.

I phoned him this morning in order to glean more information.

“What sort of car was it that you ran into, Jonah? Was it an old one?” I ventured hopefully.

“Ah no Mum, it was an new Audi.” I could see the hairs stand up on the back of Scotto’s neck when I repeated in a dismayed squeal, ‘An Audi!’.

Thaddeus caused an accident a couple of years ago damaging his car, Hagar and Padraic both devastatingly wrote their cars off and now Jonah has finally succumbed to the family automobile curse.

Lulu at least is safe. She already smashed up the family four wheel drive when she was about four years old.

We had just returned from dropping her brothers to school when Lulu resolved to chuck a full-blown wobbly and stubbornly refused to get out of the car. After ten minutes of listening to her screaming at me and humourlessly watching her thrash around in the back seat, I lost my patience.

“Right! You can stay in the car then you naughty little girl!” I sternly announced.

I walked inside the house planning on giving her a five minute timeout when suddenly I heard her screaming.

Rushing outside I was horrified to witness the truck rolling slowly backwards out of the garage down the slightly sloped driveway. Paralysed with fear, I was certain the brick garden edging would bring it to a standstill but instead it trundled right over the bricks. 

 Gaining momentum the monster truck bowled over a well-established palm tree while continuing to head towards the gully separating our house and the Newmans’ next door.

All the time I could see little Lulu’s terrified face pressed up against the window. As if in slow motion it barrelled backwards down the six foot gully where it finally came to rest. Flying to the truck and opening the door I grabbed my precious, little stunt driver and thanked God she was perfectly fine.

Much to the entertainment of the block of units next door, the four wheel drive had to be extricated from the gully via a crane and although the damage to the vehicle was minimal, Pinky’s opinion of herself as a responsible, careful mother was permanently damaged. 

I’d broken one of the Golden Rules of child-rearing, Never leave a child alone in a car!

My own record as a driver is pretty spotless (despite what other lying folk may tell you) except for one accident when someone ran into the back of my Volvo. (Yes…stop laughing okay. So Pinky used to be a Volvo driver… get over it!)

I had seven year old Thaddeus and baby Lulu in the car with me at the time. Thaddeus was taken to hospital in the back of an ambulance as a precaution because he'd hit his forehead on the dashboard. He seemed fine but as soon as they put a neck brace on him he went into shock out of sheer fear. Poor little bloke.

“I had a bit of a rear-ender! You’ll have to come and get the car.” I hurriedly informed my then husband on the phone. 

He was expecting a little ding in the bumper bar but this is what he found when he arrived at the scene. 

It was a write off… we don’t do things by half in the Poinker family.

Pinky wants to know where YOU were?

                             Elsa from "Born Free"

                                          Image credit: www.tumblr.com

(This is one for the oldies... you know who you are!)

Where were you when Louis Armstrong walked on the moon? 

Okay… I know it was Neil, but most of the people who read my blog are so young that even their parents were probably too young to remember the lunar landing. There are a few of you reading however, that have managed to cling to the remnants of life, bravely beating off senility and even worse, the grim reaper. 

You’d have to be at least fifty years old to possess a living memory of the moon landing, and even my husband, Scotto, was still three years away from becoming an embryo when it occurred.

Little Pinky was a tender eight years old and sitting with the entire school watching a tiny black and white telly in the play shed when the ‘great step for mankind’ took place. I recall one of the girls in my class, Beryl Stuart, telling everyone how her Auntie Phyllis knew for a fact, that as soon as that astronaut bloke stepped on to the lunar surface, the world was going to explode. 

Even at eight years of age I knew this was a load of codswallop, but her dark prophesy still unnerved the entire class a bit. Either Auntie Phyllis had a fantastic imagination or she was on LSD, is all I can think.

I was only two when JFK was assassinated so I don’t remember it, but I do recollect my mother crying at the news on television when Robert Kennedy was shot. At the time I couldn’t understand why she would be so upset about a man she’d never known but then I remembered her sobbing at the drive-in when Elsa the lion died in ‘Born Free’ and deduced that Senator Robert must have been a nice person.

Mum and I were on a holiday in Sydney in 1980 when we walked past the newspaper headlines heralding the death of John Lennon. We both cried in the street as I recall.

Cutting up and spray painting foam mattresses in order to create giant banana costumes for a kid's play is what I was focussed on when my mother rang me in shock in 1997 to tell me that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash. I didn’t believe her at the time; it was such an implausible scenario.

Three months later, sitting stunned in my lounge I listened to the news that Michael Hutchence had been found dead in his hotel room. When I heard the news of Michael Jackson’s passing on my car radio I had the same sense of loss. 

All three; Diana, Hutchence and Michael Jackson were of the same vintage as myself and I felt somehow connected to them. Although of course I didn’t know these people, they had helped to shape my identity, fashion sense and attitudes; they were in a sense, my peers. It’s sort of like losing a part of yourself; or a significant part of your life.

Why am writing about such a depressing subject on a Friday night, I hear you bleat plaintively.

Probably because I’m sitting at home with my dogs lying all over me watching ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ and contemplating my mortality. 

I’m getting old and I’ve only just realised it. I’ve been waking up lately in a cold sweat, mentally calculating how many ‘good’ years I have left... and it ain’t many.

So I’ve made a few resolutions that will ensure I enjoy the final decades of my life.

Firstly, I am not going to worry about getting fat anymore. I’m going to just buy larger sized clothing and I won’t give a pig’s a#se. I’ve had enough of salads, cans of tuna and crackers. It’s time to chow down.

Secondly, if I feel like being a grumpy old b#tch, then I’ll be one. When that twelve year old at the chemist asks me if I’ve ever taken Panadol before I’ll give him a piece of my Pinky mind.

Thirdly, I’m going to start doing old lady things like going on cruises, talking to myself, squinting over my glasses, groaning when I get out of a chair, declaring loudly that Rap and Hip Hop music is a load of sh#t , asking strangers in the shopping aisle to read labels for me and farting at will.

Look out peeps… Granny Poinker is heading your way!

PS: Please leave a comment if you remember where you were at any of those times mentioned above. I’d love to reminisce.

Nobody Listens to Pinky.

                                     Bloody Mary

                                               

 Image credit: creepypasta.wikia.com

“So as part of this unit we will be learning about Mary MacKillop.” I said to my grade four students today.

“Awwww!” came the collective moans of dismay.

“We learnt all about her last year Mrs P,” they insisted.

Hmmmm, I thought, that’s good, maybe we can get through that part of the unit quickly then.

“Okay, hands up and tell me what you know.”

Three hands went up. 

“She was Australia’s first saint.” 

“She started the first Catholic school in Australia.”

It was going well until the final enthusiastic answer, 

“She was there when they saw the rock moved away from Jesus’ tomb!”

At least it wasn’t as bad as Rach’s class next door who asked her if Mary MacKillop was the same Mary who appeared when you turn the lights off in the bathroom and say,’ Bloody Mary’ three times into the mirror.

In the middle session I gave a very comprehensive (even if I say so myself) science lesson about friction. We went out to the car park and examined the tread on the tyres, (by the way Mrs Robertson, you need new tyres) and even did an exciting experiment involving rolling canisters along different surfaces and measuring the distance they travelled. It was all written up, tabled and aptly diagrammed in their books.

“So guys, what did we learn about friction today?” I asked optimistically during the afternoon session. Little Jacinta tentatively raised her hand,

“Um… if you cut up a pizza then each piece is called a friction?”

The only way you can be almost sure kids are actually listening is to say, 

“Look me in the eyes and repeat after me…” Even then there’s only a slight chance it’s sinking in.

Not that I can talk. I was dreadful at listening and even when I was eighteen I recall an incident which sent my father into a well-justified apoplectic fit.

Mum and Dad were going out for dinner and my boyfriend was over for the evening.

“Pinky, I want you to listen very carefully,” said my father gravely. “A man is going to phone me tonight to ask if the job at the hospital is on or off. He doesn’t have a home phone so I can’t call him back. Please make sure you answer the phone and give him the message.”

“Yeah, sure,” I murmured, waving him off dismissively.

“It’s very important Pinky,” Dad stressed, “We are turning the electricity supply off to all the operating theatres at the hospital just so we can do this job tomorrow morning. You must tell him the job is on, okay?”

“Yep, sure Dad, bye.”

About an hour later, while my boyfriend and I were watching the telly, the phone rang.

“Just ignore it,” I flippantly remarked.

“But it might be that bloke your father wanted you to give a message to.”

“Oh yeah… that’s right. I’ll be back in a sec.” I was a bit annoyed at this inconvenient chore taking me away from 'The Sullivans', but I slouched over to the bothersome phone and picked it up.

“Hi… yes he lives here… he had to go out but he gave me a message for you,” I paused suddenly, realising I didn’t know what the hell the message was supposed to be.

“Well…?” the bloke on the line queried. “Is the job on or off?”

“Ummm… It’s off.” I blurted, hedging my bets, I mean to say there was a fifty/fifty chance that ‘off’ was the correct response.

Dad’s first anxious question when he walked in the door was naturally to ask if the phone call had been dealt with.

“Yes Dad,” I drawled indifferently, “I told him the job was off.”

The look of murderous fury on my father’s face would have sent Charles Manson scuttling away to hide under his mother’s skirts. Even my boyfriend (the traitor) just stood shaking his head at me in disgust.

After a volatile and vociferous sermon on how much of a f#cking idiot child I was, and how I was the reason they'd invented the pill, my father was forced to drive around the suburb the bloke lived in all night. Dad had to scan driveways for the bloke’s car so that he could inform him that the job was indeed on, not off.

I’d be a liar if I said I have improved my listening skills since then. Just ask Scotto. 

He often tenderly takes my pointy little chin between his thumb and forefinger, gazes into my face and says, “Now look me in the eyes, and repeat after me…”

Pinky's Advice: If you can't do it... teach it!

                   Pinky fends off a couple of thespians. (Mark, Alan and Pinky!)

Amateur theatre did become a bit of a sporadic hobby for me throughout my adult years, despite the shaky start outlined in yesterday’s post. 

Let’s see... from the age of twenty-five until I was about forty I played a scheming servant; a psychotic baby-killer, a cruel and hypocritical religious fanatic, the self-absorbed director of an aged nursing home, a bossy theatre director, the child-hating socialite wife of an affable but hen-pecked husband, a bogan, a dishonest lawyer, a snobby factory boss hiding a terrible secret… are you beginning to see a pattern here?

When I lived in Sydney in my early twenties I joined a theatre group and was granted the role of a servant girl in a play called “The Chocolate Soldier”. My first entrance on stage was to run in and animatedly shout, 

‘The soldiers are coming! The soldiers are coming!”

I’d decided to wear a pair of ancient court shoes I’d discovered in the boot of my car as part of my costume. They had been on their way to the dump but seemed to suit the era of the play and I was on a budget.

On the highly anticipated opening night I lunged onto stage hollering my lines with all the dramatic flair I could muster, thrilled to be performing on stage in the big smoke (albeit amateur theatre). 

My spectacular theatrics unintentionally extended to slipping over in my worn shoes and landing flat on my bum. Naturally the audience found this to be hilariously funny and it took us a while to establish that the play wasn’t actually intended to be a comedy. The director was not impressed.

The same thing occurred the following night and the night after that. I wasn’t actually falling over by now as I’d managed to anticipate the moment my shoes were going to lose traction, but it was clearly apparent each time that I’d slipped and skidded and there was always a loud titter from the audience.

“Pinky,” sighed the director, “would you please do something about those shoes!”

On the final night the director’s wife brought in another pair for me to wear. My entrance was as smooth as a Nancy Kerrigan swivel but as I was exiting the stage I suddenly felt the elastic snap on my voluminous petticoat. 

I was forced to ungracefully hobble from the stage clutching the mass of heavy, white Broderie Anglaise in an attempt to drag it off with me, much to the amused delight of the spectators.

I went to auditions for the same theatre group’s very next production but unfortunately I didn’t make the grade. I can’t think why.

One time and one time only, did I manage to score the role of the leading lady. I was to play the role of Deirdre in “Deirdre of the Sorrows”; an ancient Irish princess who roams the Irish wilderness and tragically falls in love with the wrong bloke. Forced to marry the horrible, wretched old King instead, she melodramatically stabs herself to death at the finale. 

Not only did I have to come up with a passable Irish accent, I had to bring some credibility to a heart-breaking death scene. Three comments about my performance remain with me until this day.

Director: “Pinky, you look and sound like you have colic when you’re stabbing yourself. Can you work on that please?”

‘Friend’: “I felt so sorry for you having to wear that ugly costume, Pinky.”

Mother: “I don’t know how you remember all those lines, Pinky!” (This is one of the most back-handed compliments any pseudo-actor will ever hear.)

My swan song in the world of grease paint was to play an old crone (surprise, surprise) in the T. S. Eliot verse drama, “Murder in the Cathedral”. 

The director decided to costume the Women’s Chorus in itchy, thick cloaks made of what I imagine were horse blankets. Not a very sensible choice in the North Queensland Summer I can assure you. 

The performances were imaginatively staged in an actual Cathedral and the ‘women’ had to sit amongst the audience on the pews. Every now and then one of us would spontaneously leap out of our seat and loudly project our one or two lines of poetry, unnervingly startling any unwitting member of the audience who was unfortunate enough to be sitting beside us.

Our creative director (the late and great Jean-Pierre Voos) had procured a real horse to make a stagey entrance down the aisle in the middle of the performance. 

The nag managed to squeeze out an equine ablution every single night, filling the cathedral with the pungent aroma of horse manure. 

With the heat, the smell and the sheer boredom I swiftly deemed it was time I threw in the theatrical towel and seek greener pastures. Probably not a huge loss to the local amateur theatre scene methinks!

Pinky's Big Break

                                Pinky about eleven years old.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. When Pinky was a little girl she wanted to be a ballerina/movie star/pop singer/airline hostess. A bit unusual for an eight year old, eh? I don’t know any eight year olds like that...  LOMARFL (or is it LMFOLAFEL?).

When I was about eight years old our teacher Miss Lang, courageously decided to join forces with the class next door and hold a concert for all the parents on the last day of school for the year. I loved the last day of school mainly because of the limitless slices of watermelon we’d be allowed to eat. 

How easy it was to please kids back in those days. 

The idea of being a part of a performance concert on such an auspicious day had me in a pink fit of exhilaration.

I was definitely not one of Miss Lang’s favourite students due to an earlier incident where I educated the girls in my class on the intricacies of sexual intercourse… read here . 

In fact, she made it quite clear on many occasions how irritating she found me to be. I’m not sure if it was her curled lip or forced smiles when I regaled her with my interminably long narratives that gave it away but I’m sure you are all nodding knowingly at this point of the story. A lot of my teachers were of the same ilk and I really don’t know why.

However as I was a particularly loud, overly confident little girl, Miss Lang awarded me a leading role in the short moral play “The Fisherman and his Wife.” I was to play the materialistic, whiny and superficial character of the ‘wife’, but the subconscious typecasting of my teacher went over my innocent head as I had more lines than the two teacher’s pets, Lynette and Kaylene. Those two goody-goodies were allocated the role of princesses, but they only had a measly one line each so I was quite chuffed.

Until, that is, they brought a rather negative aspect of my starring role to everyone’s attention.

“Look at your picture in the book, Pinky!” the girls teased, pointing out an illustration of a strangely unattractive woman with a big wart on her chin and wearing a scarf.

“And you’re married to Bruce!” they squealed in catty mirth.

Poor little Bruce was playing the ‘fisherman’ and suddenly the sheen of my future stardom began to fade. I really didn’t want to be married to Bruce Helmbright in any manner of speaking. Number one, he spat when he talked, and number two, he had a weird name -when I think about this now I suppose ‘Helmbright’ indicated that his ancestors were either very clever or merely wore bright helmets- but nevertheless I couldn’t in a million years be married to a boy named ‘Bruce’.

Miss Lang would hear none of it and I was stuck with the role of the haggard old crone.

“Does anyone have any special talents?” asked Miss Lang hopefully when organising the recital programme.

“I learn ballet!” called out an eager Pinky with stars in her eyes.

Miss Lang looked at me doubtfully, “Can you show me what you can do, Pinky?”

Now I did learn ballet and had recently been a ‘bubble’ in a concert with about fifty other ‘bubbles’, so I had a costume and everything.

I unreservedly kicked off my shoes, strutted to the front of the class and improvised the most ridiculously dramatic dance you could ever conceive. Astonishingly I fooled Miss Lang and suddenly I was not only the leading lady of the class play, I was also the Prima Ballerina of the grade four recital, performing a dazzling solo (sans music) to which I reinvented the steps every time I practised it.

“Tracy Roberts reckons you made that dance up. She told us it’s a load of rubbish,” sniggered Lynette and Kaylene after my glittering rehearsal in front of the class one day. 

Tracy learned ballet at the same studio as me and had also been a ‘bubble’. The big loud mouth was spot on though; my off-the-cuff dance was a load of rubbish and deep down in my heart, I knew it.

The final day of school arrived. I’d crammed the blue sequinned ‘bubble’ costume into my school bag, my lines were learned for the play and I was a nervous bundle of zealous anticipation. The various parents had begun to arrive (not mine I might add, perhaps they knew better) and Miss Lang, in a highly stressed state, was startled by someone tugging on her arm.

“Miss Lang! I think Pinky is sick. She’s laying under the desk and won’t come out.”

Miss Lang, controlling her panic like a trooper cajoled me out from my hidey hole.

“What’s the matter Pinky? Surely you can’t be sick.” She had a bit of an impatient tone in her voice as I recall. “The play is on in ten minutes and then you have your dance straight after that. The whole of grade four is depending on you.”

And just to prove my integrity that I was indeed very sick, I vomited all over the desk, the floor and my blue sequinned ‘bubble’ costume. 

The obligatory bucket of sawdust was urgently called out for, the concert was cancelled at the last minute and Miss Lang probably never bothered to orchestrate another concert ever again. Who’d be a teacher eh?

What won't Pinky bring out of the closet?

                                              Image credit: tech.uk.msn.com 

Whenever I buy something new I have to leave it in the cupboard (still in its pristine wrapping) for at least two weeks… at least. Shoes, clothing, books, perfume… it doesn’t matter what the item is, I just don’t like to use it until it has served its mandatory sentence of quarantine.

Scotto is the exact opposite to me and has regularly been observed ripping his old shirt off in the shop and putting the new one on before we’ve exited the place of purchase. He’s weird.

This idiosyncrasy of mine has backfired on me at times; for example, when I bought a formal dress to marry Scotto in I left it hanging in the cupboard for three months. I finally took it out a week before the big day, tried it on, hated its guts and attempted to return it to the store of purchase.

The boutique owner- let’s just call her ‘Brolga’- accused me of fraudulently wearing the dress and unpleasantly refused me a store credit.

“I think this has been worn!” she sneered. “Do you think I’m stupid? Who would have a dress in their cupboard for three months and not wear it?”

Er… me.

The b#stard five hundred dollar dress sat in the cupboard for another five years before I finally gave it away to one of Lulu’s budding fashion designer friends to cut into little pieces.

I’ve actually been banned from that particular shop because of a few angrily exchanged letters but we won’t go into that.

Sometimes I’ll stand in front of my wardrobe complaining bitterly to Scotto that I have nothing to wear. “What about that long-sleeved shirt you bought at Christmas, Pinky?” he will suggest helpfully.

“Aaah no, it’s not ready to come out yet. It’s only May.” I’ll nonsensically reply.

Even when I bought my car, Golden Boy, I didn’t really drive it anywhere for an entire fortnight. I’d open the garage door, walk around it admiringly, then drive to the shop in the old Holden Commodore.

If anyone gives me a gift voucher I hang on to it for at least a couple of months and then whatever I end up buying is cordoned off for a further period of seclusion. My birthday is in September and often I won’t actually use my present until my next birthday rolls around.

I think part of this Pinky peculiarity stems from the fact that I generally hate new things. Firstly, because I expect perfection and I’m so often disappointed and secondly, I hate reading a new set of instructions.

More than one brand new vacuum cleaner has been destroyed after I’ve thrown the useless mongrel across the room in frustration at its dismal lack of suction power. I suppose you can’t expect too much from a thirty-nine dollar vacuum cleaner but the man in the shop had made certain promises and I was hopeful.

Cheapness, could also be another reason for my oddity. I’ve been known to persevere with a hairdryer that exasperatedly cuts out every thirty seconds when it becomes overheated while a perfectly good brand new one sits patiently in its unopened box in my cupboard. I want to get that last cent’s worth out of the old one you see.

Stabbing myself in the eye with an ancient, caked mascara while its fresh, packaged cousin sits good-naturedly in my bathroom drawer, is part of my day.

Shoes are undoubtedly the worst victims. Unspoiled and virginal shoes will remain ensconced in their boxes at the foot of my wardrobe until their disgustingly worn out predecessors finally call it a day and snap in half. Only then will the unsullied, spotless footwear be awarded liberty. Even today as I clattered around in my sandals with both heels falling off; continually checking behind me as I walked to see who was following me because of the echo they created, my only thought was, “I wonder if Scotto has any superglue at home I can use to fix these.”

I’m such a cheapskate I’d probably still be using a pre-paid Nokia 101 if Scotto hadn’t been such a techno-Nazi, forcing me to upgrade my phone every two years.

Yesterday, Hagar presented me with a lovely Lorna-Jane bag containing two new shirts for Mother’s Day. Oh well… they should be ready to come out of the closet by next May.