Well, I've had a dandy weekend. Masterton’s Dick Smiths Electronic store has shifted southward into a BIGGER, BRIGHTER, BETTER (or so they tell us) store down the south end of Masterton. Since firms everywhere else in New Zealand are moving northwards to Auckland, I find this southwards migration a mildly heartening occurrence.

The firm has made a two block move to a shop immediately opposite a raised pedestrian crossing on the main street. I've always wondered about the wisdom of having a shop opposite a raised pedestrian crossing. After all, it is virtually impossible to see all the tempting bargains in a nearby shop window when one is rocketing roofwards as the car hits a raised crossing. (And the average driver never sees raised pedestrian crossings before it's too late.) So there goes all the trade from motorised window-shoppers.

Anyway, in celebration of their move to the launching pad of half of Masterton’s car occupants, the shop ran a SALE. It was not just a sale, nor a Sale. It was a SALE. There were all sorts of useless things on sale at ridiculous prices. I was tempted to buy a bag for the laptop. It was half price. At that saving it was really tempting, but since I don’t have a laptop I decided against it.

But they did have other exciting things. They had memory sticks at great prices. Memory sticks are little things you stick into little openings on your computer called USB ports. Now, since these memory sticks are going into a port you would be excused for thinking they would be called memory ships.

Nope, they are memory sticks. Although, sometimes, they are known as micro drives. Now, since you sail a ship into a port rather than drive, this doesn’t help the computer novice either, of course. Er … where was I…?

Anyway, the shop had these cheap memory sticks for sale. They are great little things that hold 128megabytes of data and make floppy disks look like anorexic filing cabinets. So I bought two, just in case I can find 256megabytes of data that I want to store on them. Of course, by the time I have typed 256 megabytes worth of data to go onto the memory sticks, my carpal tunnel will be so bad I won’t be able to hold the little darn things in my hand to stick ‘em into my computer. But, hey, they were cheap!

I did lots of other exciting things on the weekend, too. I went for a walk around Lake Henley and found myself the prime attraction for a cloud of little flying insects. I’m not sure whether they were feeding off micro-oganistic insects that my passage was disturbing, or whether they were just migrating and using me as convenient protection against the unwelcome attention of birds. Either way, with the cloud of insects hovering in front of my face, I felt like an uncomfortable bride in an insect veil. And I didn’t even get the consolation of wedding presents or a bit of honeymoon nooky to make up for it!

I also shocked the life out of a young lady in a café I visited this weekend. I told her I was a Graphologist and could analyse handwriting, so she wrote something for me to analyse. It’s great fun doing this. After you’ve hit home about four times telling them specific personality traits they have, they suddenly realise that you can analyse their personality from their handwriting! And the mouth of this young lass dropped open really wide when I told her that she should work in the beauty industry.

“I’m booked to start a beauty course next year!” she said looking at me as if I were a cross-dressing witch.

Of course I only told her the nice things I saw about her in her writing, never the less complimentary things I could see. I’m not silly! Her handwriting told me she had an ego the size of a house. And she had a nearly full teapot in her hand at that time… It’s because I notice these things, and that I’m a coward that I’m still alive.

And I wish to stay that way.