August 15th
Brent and I are LAND OWNERS.
August 16th
Jess and I took The Phantom and Persil for a bit of a
trek.
I rode Persil, who was as happy as a clam. The contrast
between Persil’s mood and The Phantom’s could
not have been more marked.
Phantom was in no mood for Persil’s good humour
and great attitude; he stomped along sulkily refusing to
walk out properly, swishing his tail with annoyance. He
spent the majority of his time trying to bite Persil on
the bum.
“I don’t know what has got into him” I
said, “he’s been great lately – full
of fun and energy - but today?” I shook my head.
We rode on till we got to a river. Persil sploshed
into the water and seemed ready to trek on upstream, boldly
going where no horse has been before, leaving Phantom to
sulk.
Finally we turned to go home and Jess cantered on up a
small hill in front. I held Persil back which was fortunate
as all 
of
a sudden The Phantom let loose the most enormous buck I’ve
ever seen and poor Jess slid gracefully to the ground. I
have to say that Jess’s superior riding skills prevented
her from doing what I would have done which is to fly off
like a pilot in an ejector seat.
“Houston, we have a problem”, said Persil
continuing his NASA space theme.
The vision of that buck and Jess clinging to his side
like a limpet will be forever burned on my mind.
Fortunately she was not hurt and she got straight back
on The Phantom who got more and more loony – he refused
to walk – jig jogging and tossing his head around
so much that he was able to throw his bridle off three
times!
Finally we decided I should get on him and try to see
what his problem was.
We swapped horses much to Persil’s delight – he
loves Jess.
“Ahh”, said the Phantom, immediately relaxing
and walking sensibly, “I can’t believe you
would rather ride that little Aussie Tosser, over me – I
mean HELLO”, and he puffed out his chest and sighed
happily.
August
17th
The Phantom got a serious lecture from me.
I rode him out and tested him at every pace up and down
hill. He was perfectly well behaved, cruising around as
if butter wouldn’t melt…
“You are the only one for me…” he sang.
“No, seriously,” he said Later as I groomed
him, “It was a great hoof stand wasn’t it”.
I gave him THE LOOK, it shut him up immediately.
August 18th
I forced an apology letter out of The Phantom to send
to Jess.
He wasn’t talking to me so the first couple of attempts
came via Persil.
Dear Jess,
Sorry about being such a horrible Gobshite,
I am what I am. Persil is a much better, and more handsome
horse than I will ever be and he can jump higher than
me too.
Yours Sincerely
The Phantom
I looked at Persil sternly, “Did he really say that?” Persil
shuffled his hooves and studied the ground, “Um,” he
said, “It’s what he meant”.
I sent him back to gather another heartfelt apology.
Dear Jess,
I promise not to be such a bad boy in the
future if you promise to bring carrots for myself and
my very handsome best friend Persil Beaucoup but not
for Nibbler because he is a big Fatty Boombah.
Sincerely
The Phantom
“Persil,” I said, “you added to this
too didn’t you”.
He looked suitably shamefaced, but this time I marched
down the paddock to gather the apology myself.
“I did not mean to put my front brakes
on, suddenly causing my fender to upend with the resulting,
and inevitable displacement of your rear end. I forgot
myself and may the fleas of a thousand camels infest
my mane if I ever do such a thing again”.
“Phantom,” I said, “you’ve got
your hooves crossed haven’t you”.
He uncrossed his back hooves and continued, “I’m
deeply, deeply apologetic about getting my gear off
repeatedly in a public place”;
this caused Persil to guffaw loudly behind me.
“Phantom…” He opened his eyes wide
and looked at me endearingly,
“and I truly promise never ever to be
such a naughty boy in your presence and to keep at
least one hoof on the ground at all times except when
jumping or galloping or in such time as I may be lying
on the ground, dead or alive and, um, can I mention
carrots?”
“No you certainly can not”.
“Oh, ok then, um, and I do solemnly
declare my undying love for you especially when you
come equipped with large apples”.
I glared at him but realised this was probably the best
we would get, so I headed back to type it up and send it
to Jess.
August
19th
Brent – clearly an International Man of Mystery,
tells me he could lay the electrical cable to the new house,
and further more, while he is driving the large digger
machine, he could also dig a trench to pop trees in while
he is at it.
“Have you ever driven one of those digger things?” I
asked.
“No”, he said, but he knows someone who has.
Which is interesting because I know someone who has skied
all over the South Island, yet when I tried skiing down
a small slope, I managed to do most of it backwards, upside
down in the air or on my substantial butt.
August 20th
I have to write a business proposal for some design work
I very much want to do.
As it is a business proposal, I’ll need to use a
certain amount of ‘Corporatese’.
Zeuss, the resident expert in this complicated language,
was keen to help. He had just run in, damp with
morning dew with his tail was puffed out into a ridiculous
brush.
“Give me that,” he said, as he saw me struggling
with the correct sort of business language.
I’d written; ' I’d like to put in a proposal
to do the designwork including web design and graphic design
and photography….'
Zeuss snorted at my attempt to be professional. He made
a few adjustments and handed it back to me…
'It is more important than ever to
(using the latest in multimedia technology) invest in
and manage the standards in method of empowerment. What
do you think a deliverable provides access to? Components
globally give rise to outsourcers. As our company President
states in a recent memo about the technology, “The
shared release cycles will succeed."
Our quality-assured disclosures will create
the drag and drop light at the end of the tunnel. We've
got to do it in the 90% solutions of the quality-oriented
solutions. Having first verified that a resource signs
up for the long-term material, a careful examination
of the workgroup reveals that soup-to-nuts source initiates
high core competencies. Can we indeed say that the Java-based
challenges sign off on the web browsing tools ? Due to
multimedia and the principle-centered voice response
system, what has changed is the pace of change'.
I read it twice and turned to Zeuss,”Zeuss, this
doesn’t make sense”.
“Exactly”, he said.
“But they’ll have no idea what it is I wish
to do”.
“And the problem with that is?”
“Well, surely they need to know what I can actually
do”.
“They’ll read between the lines”, he
said, “and you can be sure it will impress the socks
off them”, he yawned, stretched and dozed off.
Taking advice from a cat is probably not going to work
for me.
August 21st
My cell phone has been missing for 3 weeks.
I asked the cats if they’d seen it and Flossom said
she’d seen Zeuss sending a txt message just the other
day.
Of course the House God denied all knowledge.
I rang Telecon and gained a list of all calls made since
the day it went AWOL.
It made interesting, if not incriminating reading.
Calls made included the following places…
In the face of what seems to be overwhelming evidence
I confronted Zeuss.
He asked me to put my queries in writing and he would
forward them to the appropriate official. Then he curled
up in an impenetrable ball and went to sleep.
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