I was about to share my insights on potting geraniums, but you must wait. I've been diverted.
We have had an ugly rash of ''significant number'' anniversaries and birthdays. An ''S'' number is, of course, anything past 25 that ends in a 0. (If we counted in Dog Years, we'd all be dead.) I'm partied out, my liver groaning, for friends who have now earned their entry in Who's Through.
Such anniversaries make one remember the good old days when we were young innocents in naive relationships.
Back then, if a bloke was accidentally touched on some intimate part, he knew to cough and then roll on to his side. Should the doctor inquire, ''Do you have mutual satisfaction?'' the puzzled response was: ''No need for the sales pitch sport, I'm sticking with Prudential.''
The wedding anniversary friends met as teenagers. I could happily have stolen John Hodge's funny ''how I met my wife'' speech for this column, but he struck a single off-note.
He said he'd lurked amongst the Van Dyke coffee lounge trendies, because its ''famous corned beef sandwiches'' were buttered by the prettiest girl in Dunedin. I buy ''prettiest girl'' - that's still self-evident - but was the corned beef sandwich really all the go in this town's beatnik days?
I'd hate to have this wrong, with the citizenry still agitated by this newspaper's Coffee Lounge Remembrance Week (Roy Colbert and Dave Cannan have a lot to answer for).
Up here in Arrowtown, cafe ''society'' has many newbies, so we don't always know our friends' full life stories.
A while back, at the saintly Gupta Jones' big number party, I discovered he'd made a motza when appointed as the official supplier of condoms to Papua New Guinea. All were to be in good working order.
Gupta is a self-made man (it's good of him to accept the blame), and he's proof of the dangers of travel abroad. When visiting Australia recently, he found himself breath tested by the Gold Coast fuzz. They're getting desperate in Oz - Gupta was driving a golf cart.
Honestly, the Popemobile's next?The month's other big number party was for Barry Litten, Australian rock star. I didn't know his full discography, but while watching the party's Countdown show videos of Bazza in his mullet and striped trousers, I began to feel uneasy.
He was the drummer with the famed Jimmy and the Boys, and I recalled they were a bit odd.
I did what the golf club's membership panel should have done, and googled Bazza, Jimmy, et al. The politest bio I found described them as a ''shock rock and new wave'' band. I'd best not alarm you with exact details of how they shocked.
But I sympathised when the delightful Mrs Litten said her parents didn't talk to her for a very long time when they discovered who she was going out with.
I cast stones when in a poor position to do so. My first real girlfriend's parents were so appalled by me, they sent her off to live with relatives.
They'd been pretty frosty about the bird on my bike being their daughter, and even less impressed that my residence was the grey duffle coat in which I ate, drank and slept.
However, the straw that snapped the parents' back was my becoming a journalist.
Frankly, I thought this a bit rich. Her father was a car salesman, although to be fair, he was in new, not used. My own dad, who spoke kindly of all, remarked that he thought them a touch snooty. And after all, son, Churchill was a journalist too, so pull up your socks and get on with it.
All right, that's all the society news I can cope with. Back to the geraniums, and here's my tip. I've discovered it's best to just bang them in a pot, put them in a sunny spot, and leave matters to God. You'll find he's very conscientious.
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
