Scott Kara: Sopranos blues but holiday bliss

Hope you got your fix of The Sopranos last night, because it's the only one you're likely to get until next year. Or is it? Going by the feedback from a story I wrote last weekend about the final season of The Sopranos being cut short, the diehard fans have a simple solution - download the remaining episodes.

I won't be trying it - hey, I'm still on dial-up at home - but the overwhelming message from fans is that they'll bypass TV2.

This from Andrew: "Sopranos off air? Not for us, we just download it and watch it. So keep it up TVNZ, keep up the in-house squabbling, and keep living in the past."

And Adam says: "I think what TVNZ have to realise is that there are ways of getting episodes off the internet. And, if it is another six or seven months before they play the balance of the episodes a lot of people would have already seen them."

But what about those who don't download shows and movies?

You could start by getting broadband perhaps, or else maybe a word or two to TVNZ about not making rash programming decisions - let's face it, no one was expecting The Sopranos to end so abruptly. Maybe it's just as well the show has finished, with school holidays starting tomorrow and the kids staying up a bit later. It's a grown-ups' show after all, but crikey, last week's Luxury Lounge episode was pretty raunchy, with Christopher's cocaine-fuelled antics with a hooker and lots of flesh on show at Bada Bing.

I remember the first time I was sent to bed because of TV nudity. I was about 8, and Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs was on.

It was only a brief eye-popper of some boobs (bosoms is what I called them back then).

The order to go to bed from mum and dad was polite, but swift. They should have seen it coming because in the previous scene Sam Neill was getting his trousers ripped off by the woman in question.

So it's the final day of the school term tomorrow. I remember it as a day of celebration and one when you could get away with anything, although I was a bit of a goodie-goodie at school.

But I knew a chap by the name of Lance Friday (yes, it is his real name) who was a handful at the best of times and, with the excitement of school holidays upon him, even more of a menace. We thought his mimicking of teachers, incoherent yabbering and aimless classroom wandering was hilarious. No doubt the teachers thought otherwise.

The school holidays were great. Mud-caked knees, broken windows from backyard cricket, hooning through Pukekura Park in New Plymouth on our bikes when you weren't allowed to.

Mid-teens, we'd cruise the beaches in the blue Escort my sister and I shared.

Those were the days.

When I was a bit older - seventh form - my folks were away and I was home alone. Let's party. It was fun, but it soon turned to disaster. A good mate, Blair, came off his bike when he went down to get some fish and chips (ouch), the carpet got severely stained (whoops), and the microwave plate broke and ended up in the swimming pool (stupid idiot).

It wasn't all teenage rebellion because I spent many of my holidays working on my grandparents' farm, which my uncle looked after.

Bacon and eggs with fried bread was breakfast every day except Sunday, when it was spaghetti on toast. It tasted even better when you'd been up since 5.30am milking, setting up electric fences, and hosing down the cowshed.

Then there was the haymaking and shearing. Hard yakka, but the parties afterwards made it all worthwhile.

Yes, my friends, those were the days.

And you have fun these school holidays too now, you hear?