Mr. Useless

My Dear Princess & Dear Fellows,

We're currently experiencing a heatwave which we are choosing to blame on the Australians. Apparently a big lot of super-heated hot air floated our way across the Tasman Sea, presumably from all their barbecues. 

Consequently, I am typing this in my knickers with 4 fans aimed at me. Punky is lying flat on the bed and Jasper is splayed across the floor. 

It's the sort of hot where, if you are forced to stray out of the "fan zone" for food or drink or wee reasons, you find yourself enervated, panting and floppy.

So we are all feeling a bit useless. 

Funnily enough, Lemon told me today that when she was in Rarotonga, the guy running the resort they were staying at was also Mr. Useless. No really, that was his actual name.

"Mr. Useless?" her boys kept saying.

"Yes boy?" Mr. Useless would reply.

The boys had no actual request or question. They just wanted to know if they called him Useless he would actually answer. He always did.

As it turns out, Mr. Useless was a mine of information. He explained that a lot of Maori words originally came from The Cook Islands. "Even Aotearoa is a Cook Island word. And it doesn't mean 'Land of the Long White Cloud' at all!'" 

He went on to explain that it actually means "gift" or "blessing". 

"I'm not sure why they changed it," he said. "They went a bit soft in the head maybe." 

"I swear that's what he said," claimed Lemon.

My contribution to the conversation was to teach her some Scottish words. Today we learned "skoosh" and "pimpsy" and "craic". She thought that last one was a bit suspect.

"I can't go home and say I had good crack with Symon," she went on. "They'll put me in rehab."

A few days ago I taught her about "going the messages" which she liked. She told me that she had tried using the phrase at home, but her boys misinterpreted it completely.

"They thought I meant I was going for a shit," she went on.

It's not all my fault. Apparently their father uses the euphemism, "I'm off to study," whenever he's about to crap. "Study hard," the boys will say encouragingly.

So I had a good laugh at work today. So good in fact that I ended up not doing any work. Mr. Useless strikes again.

S.

p.s. Another random Lemon fact. Back in the day, South Africans did not use "floppy disks" like we did. No. They had "stiffies". 

And if you now want to be an IT developer working in South Africa in the 90's, me too.