Whenever I went to stay with my grandparents in their old farmhouse, which was situated at the end of a five mile unpaved driveway, which in turn was off a second rate lane which in turn was off a second rate road which in turn was off the main road in a town which time had forgotten, I would always have to park my Land Rover about half a mile away from the house itself and walk the rest of the distance. Whenever I took people there for the first time, their jaws would drop when I pulled up my Land Rover next the carcass of a cow called Bessie, who had died generations ago but nobody felt it necessary to bury, “let nature do it,” was my grandfather’s answer when asked, and he would continue, “If I had to bury every cow on the farm that died, then we would be nothing but a cemetery and wouldn’t be a farm.”

“What do rabbits and humans have in common?”

I looked at my friend rather perplexed. At first, I didn’t understand his question and then when I took a stab at answering it, I got even more confused. I repeated the question back to him. “Yes,” he replied, “what do rabbits and humans have in common?” I decided not to engage my brain and instead treat the question with the disgust it deserved.

“Nothing!” I replied and then went back to the ham sandwich I was eating and quite enjoying until he had asked me that asinine question.

“We have a lot of rain here in June.”

“Oh dear,” I replied, “I came here with the intention of seeing if this was a place to move to and according to everything I read, it doesn’t rain a lot during the year.”

“That’s correct,” continued the real estate agent as we walked around the large house with seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, 2 half bathrooms and a beautifully large kitchen, fully equipped with an AGA stove and other such high quality appliances, situated in the side of a mountain overlooking the bright blue Pacific Ocean.

“It doesn’t rain at any other time of the year, just in June.” I felt somewhat relieved.

Olivia died yesterday at age of 56, about a year after receiving the devastating news from her doctor of a disease that was ravaging her body.

Olivia was, and in my opinion still is, one of the most beautiful people anyone has ever met. She had her entire life to live for. She was excited. She was going marry the love of her life in October 2026, after decades of living alone. Her fiancé wasn’t at her bedside when she passed way in the company of her parents and siblings and indeed, some neighbours.

About a year ago while preparing dinner for Paul her fiancé, she was in the kitchen of her small apartment trimming a brisket, when she dropped the knife she was using. Thinking nothing of it, she picked it up again and began using it. She shook her head at her clumsiness and put it down to her excitement.

Over the years I have collected club memberships as if they were going out of style. Akin to people who buy things because they’re on sale, whether they truly want them or not. Well, I collect memberships in a similar fashion.

I belong not just to one gym, but three. Why three, I am sometimes asked. Well, I reply that’s because I have three very good friends who call me up occasionally and ask if I want to go to the gym together, so they can have someone to talk to whether they are on the treadmill or the stationary bicycle. Because of the type of personality I have, I usually agree to accompany them, unless of course I have better offer.

They came from two completely different backgrounds. Erin grew up in New England in a large seven bedroom home, even though her parents only needed two. She was an only child. The other bedrooms gathered dust, though her father’s rationale was that, “one day I’ll come across an advertisement in the paper,” he proclaimed more than once at a dinner party, “that someone or the other would love to move to our glorious part of the country but couldn’t, because they had five children and everything he has been shown was for a much smaller family and I’ll jump up and say ah ha, I’m your saviour. Please move here I have a seven bedroom home and I’ll sell it to them at a premium.”

Every seat in the house was filled. Not only that, but there wasn’t any standing room either. The place was so packed that a fire marshal who happened to be in the crowd, clapped his hands and told people they had to leave at least the centre aisle open.

As he was doing that, someone sat in his seat and refused to move when asked to. “There isn’t any assigned seating,” the man, a small impish looking loser, who knew he probably needed to leave soon before the fire marshal a man of considerable heft with a frame of 6 foot 8 inches sat on him. He oozed out of the seat and slid along the floor disappearing through a connecting door which he soon found led to the boiler room. A scream a few seconds later brought smiles to the fire marshal’s face.

I live in a log cabin on an immense property. I’m not quite sure how many acres my property is, but let me tell you, its vast. I’ve never been asked to measure my property for the simple reason because there isn’t a single soul anywhere within a hundred miles of me, and I certainly have no intention of selling it.

People visit me occasionally, but I do not encourage them to do so. But once in a while, I’ll get someone drive onto my property to try and find out who lives here. That’s why I have a very long driveway, littered on both sides with the bones of animals that I’ve either shot or who have just died from old age. So, that unwelcomed visitors will eventually tire of not reaching the end of the driveway and let their imaginations grow wild to where they think the carcasses are of people who died years ago attempting the same trip.

Strange things happen in the jungle at night. Leopards sometimes lose their spots, only to find them the next dawn when they catch the jackals trying to run off with them. While tigers’ stripes get broader and eventually become one big wide stripe and the blue parrot which is a rare breed of bird, drives by a hitchhiking mongoose.

“Ma!” shouted John, “Ma!” he shouted even louder when his mother didn’t come running into his room to see what the matter was that time.

For the past three or four years, ten year old John has woken up at 1am believing that it was indeed time to get up and go to school. Eventually, after the third of fourth time of shouting for his mother, Mildred opened the door to John’s room and poked her head in.

“Have you ever been driven anywhere by Karen?”
“No, I haven’t,” my friend john answered and then added, “wait a minute. Yes, I have,” and he laughed, “up a wall. Yes, Karen has driven me up a wall on many occasions.”

“I’m being serious. Yes, I know she drives everyone up a wall, but I’m talking about in her car or any other vehicle, when she’s the driver.”
John thought for a second and then replied sarcastically, “I don’t know why I’m thinking. I know for a fact she hasn’t and I don’t think she ever will, after what I’ve heard about her driving skills or lack thereof.” John looked at me intently, “why are you asking the question?” He paused and then added, “don’t tell me you have.”

“What are you doing out here, you’re halfway to France?”

I looked at my friend John and shook my head. “First of all, I’m not half way to France, I’m only about half a mile off the beach and secondly, didn’t you read the article today in the local rag?”

“What article and what local rag?” I felt my friend had decided to continue his backwards slide from quasi adulthood back to his infancy, where he scolded everyone who tried to get him to talk. His parents had threatened to throw him out of the house at age 5 because he wouldn’t stop stealing his father’s cigarettes. But then what was worse, was lighting them with a gold-plated Ronson lighter that was his grandfather’s during World War One, when it failed to stop a German bullet and ended his life. In all the thirty odd years I’ve never known John to have a real job. And that’s no lie. His logic was simple. He had not asked to be born and therefore it wasn’t up to him to earn a living. It was up to his parents while they were alive to pay him, and then after that the State. But taking part in his own future wasn’t of any interest to him.

During late autumn, from somewhere around the end of October until late March early April, Barry hibernated. He hated that time of the year. Barry prided himself with having the best and largest vegetable garden in the entire neighbourhood. Now he sat indoors sometimes with his nose pressed against the window making marks which his wife Gertrude would then have to rub out, she had given up asking and then pleading with himself to stop looking at the light frost which morphed into heavy frost and then finally gave way to snow squalls followed invariably by heavy blizzard like conditions.

A word of warning to the readers of my column. Whatever you do, never seriously date a TV anchor.

Why do I say that? Well, simply because when we went back to my home after our tenth date she used the pretence of having an after-dinner drink as the reason, though that was not correct.

I had decided on terminating the relationship before this because every time we went out to dinner, she attracted a crowd while I attracted the crazy people. What I mean is that once we had sat down, people from surrounding tables would come up to us ignoring me and introduce themselves to her which she loved. They then took photographs with her and would you believe it in some cases ask me to step aside so I wouldn’t be in the pictures. I felt like saying ‘hey what about me? I’m a famous writer,’ but I don’t think that would’ve mattered. They wanted pictures with this 30 year old blonde bombshell who they saw on their TV screens every night reading the news, while some may have read my columns but hadn’t put two and two together or if they had, it didn’t add up to much.

As far back as I can remember, on the first Saturday of every month, right throughout the year, John and I went to the Lazy Daisy Diner on Upton Street, which was about 2 miles from where we both grew up. It didn’t matter if it rained, snowed, or if there was a typhoon, we just knew we would we had to show up at exactly 8am on those Saturdays.

Our favourite waitress, Evelyn, was always there to greet us. It was as if she knew we would be there and dammit, so would she. Evelyn was a character, as was everyone who worked there or frequented the diner, regardless of the time of day. I guess they thought that John and I fitted in very well with the other characters, that either worked or frequented the diner.

Ever since I first met my friend Andrew 35 years ago, I always felt there was something not quite right with him. For instance, he would show up for classes which generally started at 9, around 7.30 in the morning. And when I made the mistake of asking him why, his answer was baffling.

“That’s it! I’m done! I’m out of here. It’s like I’ve been living in a wind tunnel for the last 4 months.”

Those were the last words said to me by my very good friend, Tom, before he left the high school track where we walked and jogged on and off for the last 25 years. I never heard from Tom again, until I received a letter from his attorney letting me know that Tom had suffered a fatal accident. He had fallen off a cliff in one of his Blue Zones.

Upon reading the letter I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. Seriously. I knew Tom better than anyone else in this world. Better than his wife or his seven children. Better than his dog, or mine for that matter, even though we used to go on long walks up in the hills. just he and I and our two dogs, Butch and Cassidy.

Growing up in a family of high performers Stuart changed his mind on a daily basis as to what he wanted to be when he grew up. His siblings, he was one of four, two girls and two boys, made it their daily chore to come up with a new job in order to one up their other siblings. Stuart unfortunately was the youngest and so he had to wait his turn to see if he could come up with a job that outdid the others.

As he grew older, his choice of a profession became more and more exotic, until he reached his final years in high school and his favourite teacher one day asked everyone in turn to stand up in and tell the class what it was they were going to do in life. One was going to be an astronaut, while another a teacher obviously hoping that by saying that they would get extra marks on the final exam and nope, it didn’t work they still failed. Another wanted to be a vet and treat all the sick animals in the world for free, that got several rounds of applause from the other students while David, who was Stuart’s best friend decided that everything everyone said before was pie in the sky and that he was the only one to come up with something more practical.