What’s the collective noun for a collection of calendars? A coalition of calendars? A congregation of calendars? A cumulation of calendars? Whatever it is, we now have one. Because – woo hoo! – into our Lush Places letterbox last week arrived not one, but two calendars featuring shirtless fire blokes.
I had previously lamented that the fire blokes’ calendar Greg had ordered for me featured, disappointingly, entirely clad fire blokes. He had ordered this calendar so that we could hang it next to the girly calendar Blokesy Stokesy, who lives right around the bend, had given him for Christmas.
Doing so would demonstrate that the employers who haphazardly run Lush Places (us) are equal opportunity oglers. You could not make the complaint that the ladies featured on Greg’s calendar are over-clad. They are wearing only their birthday suits, as they used to say in the olden days.
Deirdre from Porirua emailed to say that she was “alarmed to hear that you do not have the calendar you so deserve!” It so happened that she had ordered two hunky shirtless fire blokes calendars and would be happy to pop them in the post.
They arrived with a note that included a genius suggestion of what might be altered on the girly one. “May I suggest that you apply nice sticky plasters to the sticky-out bits.” She included an illustration of how one might apply said sticky plasters to best effect. This is a most excellent idea. A photograph could be taken and sent to Blokesy to wind him up. Winding people up is a popular game played with enthusiasm by country folk.
This game involves, for example, telling your right-wing neighbours and mates – in other words, all of them – that you are commies. Admittedly, post-election this has rather lost its sting. The right wingers just look smug. We will have to come up with another taunt. All suggestions are welcome.
I gave the second of Deirdre’s shirtless fire hunks calendar to Blokesy’s partner, Janet. She put it on his pillow. That’s not a bad start to another year of playing the game that is the Wind Up.
Our collection of calendars, in addition to the clad and barely clad fire blokes, now includes a contribution from our neighbour, Lucy, aged 6. It features her drawing of two daffodils in a vase. They look like tiny cheerful yellow and orange windmills. It is very good. Then – praise be – the day before the hunks arrived, we discovered an unsolicited calendar in our letterbox. It depicts famous New Zealand landscapes – Miss January is Wairarapa’s Castlepoint Lighthouse – and scripture. Joshua 1.9: “Be strong and courageous. The Lord God will be with you wherever you go.” This is good to know. You have to be strong and courageous to clamber up the steps to that lighthouse on a wildly windy day, which is most days at Castlepoint. Hangeth on to thy toupée, saith the Lord.
Our unexpected surfeit of calendars has given me an idea for my latest money-spinning plan, given that the petting zoo has now been under construction for six years without a single guinea pen being built. Miles the sheep farmer long ago put the kibosh on another of my money-spinning ideas, which was to charge kids a tenner apiece for a ride on one of our pet sheep. Health and Safety would come after me, he reckoned.
Health and Safety were not around in the days when that ruffian Blokesy was a kid in Kaitaia. He and his mates used to play head-butting games, wearing a motor bike helmet, with Sam the ram.
I will offer a gentler country experience. I will open a calendar museum. I reckon I could charge top dollar for such a unique “experience”. I could charge an extra, say 50 cents, for a guest appearance by Blokesy kitted out as a topless fire bloke.
