Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it...
Once upon a time there was a lovely little girl of 11, whose cruel parents sent her to boarding school in Dunedin.
Ignore the fact that the lovely little girl had been brought up on a diet of Enid Blyton and was just gagging to get stuck into some merry scrapes and midnight feasts.
Anyway, when that lovely little girl got to boarding school, she was very much in awe of the prefects whose bosoms bulged with badges and who reeked of authority.
The lovely little girl could understand what the head prefect, the head boarder and the sports captain did, but what about the sacristan?After a few weeks, she plucked up courage to ask another girl.
"The sacristan is in charge of God," was the reply.
Gosh. That seemed an awfully big job. So, the 11-year-old never dared to speak a single word to the sacristan. Until this week.
Now a much less lovely middle-aged woman, she trotted along to the breast screening truck at Frankton and discovered that the sacristan has got an even more important job these days and is the radiographer for all the bouncy bits of women in Otago and Southland.
Go along and get screened, for goodness' sake. Call on 0800 270-200. It's only looking for one type of cancer, but all cancers are greedy and mean.
One has just gobbled up my beautiful sister-in-law. Well, my former sister-in-law.
She said that divorcing my brother didn't mean she stopped being my sister-in-law and that there was no escape.
But now she has escaped me and I am much the sadder for it.
Still, life goes on and so does the fierce fighting at the Arrowtown School PTA Trivia Quiz.
This week, I took along my friend Michael Williams from Sydney.
He's got a bit of a compulsive shopping disorder, and bought $40 worth of raffle tickets, but didn't win so much as a frozen chicken or bag of coal.
Determined to buy something, he bid like a lunatic in the auction and was quite surprised to find he had bought $500 worth of legal advice generously donated by MacTodd.
Ironic, really, as he is a "silk" in NSW, a high-powered barrister who really ought to be able to do his own legal work.
And so many of you claim to have known the answers to those trivia questions from last week.
Dale Dagg insists she even got the Japanese islands right in the quiz.
The stupid old Sharp Pencils won again, and I am quite sure nobody likes them at all now.
The Number Ones have slipped to Number 3, but at least we won a Central dry-cleaning voucher.
That was for getting the seventh commandment nearly right.
It was actually the adultery one, but as no other team, not even the Sharp Pencils knew it, we got the prize for being nearest with the recommendation not to covet your neighbour's ass.
It is rather weighty and worthy and if it hadn't been recommended by so many people, I would have used it to replace a missing chair leg or something.
I'll let you know if it is worth the battle.
In the meantime, I dipped into Simon Barnes' very light and lovely The Horsey Life, mainly because I loved the dedication: "To all the horsey ladies in my life, especially the one I married".
With my big teeth and hairy legs, I knew he was writing it for me. Barnes is the chief sportswriter for The Times and very funny. He buys a rather ugly mare and falls in love with her. That's all, but he makes it so much more.
