Letter to the Editor - or Not.

A friend in England sent me the following letter. In fact, he's sent me so much material, I may have to start referring to him as The English Office.

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Shown below is an actual letter that was sent to a bank by an 86 year-old woman. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times.

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Dear Sir:

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, but when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.

From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by check, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. Be aware that it is an OFFENSE under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contract which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, at MY convenience, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:

IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR

#1. To make an appointment to see me

#2. To query a missing payment.

# 3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.

#4 To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am .

#5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.

#6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

#7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated to you at a later date to that Authorized Contact mentioned earlier.

#8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7

#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.

#10. This is a second reminder to press* for English.

While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call. Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous New Year?

Your Humble Client

And remember: Don't make old People mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

************

Don't 'cha just want to invite this woman to Christmas? I reckon she'd be a hoot.

However a quick Google check on this landed me on the Lie Pie, a website that tells me that if you invited the writer of this letter to your Christmas table you wouldn't be dining with an 86 year old woman with a killer attitude. Just another pissed off customer.

Regardless, I reckon the author of this letter would be an entertaining addition to any dinner party.

I forgot to ask him how many lives he thought he had left.

I recently met a guy who has climbed Everest, been crushed by an iceberg (eight broken ribs, a broken sternum and a ten hour helicopter flight) AND been in a helicopter crash.

I should also point out that none of these incidences were related, except for the fact he was the common denominator.

I guess that pretty much rules out all possibility of him ever winning Lotto.

There is the possibility that only people who come from farms will find this amusing.

I was having a drink with an old friend who was in town the other day. Today he's a successful cameraman/producer with awards coming out his ears, but he started out earning a crust as a farm hand and a fencer before picking up a camera. And every once and a while we get reminded of this.

We were sitting there, nattering away, when my phone rang.

Or, I should say, barked.

His eyes lit up. 'Is that your ringtone?'

'Yup.'

He held the phone closer, listened intently and then asked, 'Is it a Huntaway?'

More testament to the fact that you can take the bloke out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the bloke.

I have a hunch...

...that Gaddafi was really good at playing hide-and-go-seek as a kid.I think the fact that he looked too scary to be found would have worked in his favour.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover.

A friend of mine sent me these.

Awkward Family Photo, you now have competition from Soviet Dating.com
I'd like to introduce Mr-Casual-Soviet Dude.
Or then there's Mr No-Really,-I'm-a-Talent-Spotter.
Ladies, ladies, ladies try and resist Mr I'm-a-Devil-on-the-Inside?
Unless of course Mr I-Will-Protect-You-for-Eternity-and-Beyond floats your boat?

But then, I'm just confusing you with Mr I'm-Actually-A-Bear, am I not ?

And now here's the scary part.

It's not a dating website.

These pictures are from an East German archive of the secret Stasi handbook of disguise.

The agents were on a course on the 'art of disguising'.They were learning how to blend in to society i.e these not only are these pictures serious, these men were deadly.

It just goes to show just because it may look like a goose, sound like a goose and smell like a goose - it doesn't necessary mean that it's a goose.

Does anyone else have any ideas ?

A friend in England sent me this photo. It was titled, 'Why raincoats are yellow'.

And from where I'm sitting, I think that photo is testament to a great reason.

But I want to know why?

She lost at a game of strip poker ?

Went to have a naked spa with her bloke and her friends thought they'd be funny and steal her clothes ?

She woke up in her dream ?

One thing's for sure, I bet this woman hates the internet.

Guest post from The Fruitcake

For those of you basking in summer, you may not know that currently Mother Nature is icing New Zealand.

An Antarctic blast, which the Metservice is describing a one in fifty year event, is currently bitchslapping the country. It's been greeted with delight by those regions who never get to see snow while others, understandably, are a little snow weary.

In light of this, my mother sent me this email last night. (I must admit, I do swell with pride when I can put the words, 'my mother' and 'email' in the same sentence. She is such a clever clogs. Even though I'd put ten dollars on the fact she'd rather a slate and chalk).

Kate

Look what I thought tonight.

‘Snow flakes, flattening themselves on my kitchen window.

Do they want to come inside, to be warm and dry?

Shouldn’t think so – that’ll make them dead.

They probably just drew the short straw – onto a window, slide down, that’s that, end of commitment, next please.

Can’t you just hear them - “Head Office never told us what very mucky windows we could encounter.”

“Think how clean we’ll leave them.”

“Pollyanna.”

“Pollyanna yourself. I’ve had my photo taken.”

“Why’d anyone want your photo? You’re just a smear down a glass slab.”

“He took a photo with a flash. That means – in case you didn’t know – he would get all my individual shapes. My own pattern will be captured – for ever –. He’ll very probably post it on Twitter and I’ll be immortal.”

As she slid into wet oblivion at the bottom of the window, she looked sideways. He was all crumpled and out of shape.

Smiling to herself, she gathered her sides to her middle, shut her eyes, and glided into history.’

I might make more of this, but can you see them sliding down the window?

my love

hteM xx

I LOVE that story, unfortunately I'd better head for the hills, cause she's going to have my guts for garters when she discovers I've posted it.

Serendipity...

Some months ago I was in Christchurch and, as it was An Occasion, a dinner out was appropriate. But where to go? All the usual haunts have been reduced to rubble.

Due to the fact that I am such an organised type, two days before I wanted to go out for dinner, I leapt on the phone and rang round the four remaining restaurants in town seeing if I could get in anywhere.

No, no, no and you’ve got to be kidding. At the place I really wanted to go to, I left a grovelling message leaving my name and number on the answer phone… and started contemplating dinner in Ashburton.

You can imagine how happily gobsmacked I was when they rang me back the following day and told me that, yes, they had one table left and they could squeeze us in at 8.30.

I was stunned at my luck.

So off we went and, ten minutes after we arrived at the restaurant, the chef/owner came over to our table. While the personal touch was very nice, didn't he have more important things to do? Like cook for the rest of the packed-to-the-gunnels restaurant?

And then it all fell into place.

Doing his best to (*cough*mask his disappointment) explain his presence he said, ‘Oh! I was just coming to make sure you’re not the other Kate Mylastname.’

‘Sorry, I’m another one. We’re common as mud. We’re everywhere'.

He then proceeded to try and convince us to purchase an extraordinarily expensive bottle of wine, before making a hasty retreat to his kitchen.

Sometimes, just sometimes, sharing the same name as the local restaurant critic does have its benefits.

Please pass me the sofa and a blankie.

In the last three weeks I have; flown over four thousand kilometres, driven about two thousand two hundred kilometres, drunk my body weight in Tattinger, been to hospital (the last two weren't related), been a ghost (a tan blanket ghost), been stranded by snow for three days and had my arrival at my uncle and aunt's announced by my cousin's husband with the words, 'I thought I could smell troll!'

Which could explain why I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr I.N. Fluenza may have just purchased some real estate in my body.

But I'm just holding out that his finance will fall through.

Question.

Do you think Barack Obama ever wakes up and thinks, 'I really can't be arsed going to work today?'

Isn't it a bit frivolous ?

So it appears there are plans to build a temporary cathedral in Christchurch.

Out of cardboard.

For those of you who haven't heard, a renowned Japanese architect by the name of Shigeru Ban, has designed the building. It's apparently to be made out of cardboard tubes, it has shipping containers for foundations, with a stained glass window and capacity for 700.

And the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Trust, run by the Prime Minister's office, has granted a $50,000 feasibility study which will include things like how the four million dollars needed for the project, would be raised.

The four million dollars?

Four million dollars to build a temporary structure?

Call me very ill informed and not very bright but could someone please explain to me why these people are considering spending enormous amounts of money on something that's going to be replaced?

If it was a hospital, a school or housing I would completely get it. But a temporary cathedral?

Nope, don't get it, don't get it at all.

And from what I can gather, it seems there are others who are equally mystified.