I had coffee with one of our managers, and we swapped stories about Caesar's conquest of Gaul, Josephus' account of the Jewish war against the Romans, and children's culture. I did some filing, and then I had coffee with my husband. I followed…

Which IMHO perhaps helps explain some of the social and class divides that have fractured communities and isolated individuals…

I was not as frightened as…

He is the Rolling Stone Magazine to our Hunter S Thompsons...

I heartily concur!

Me Too. Y'all can write.

I am riveted.
What a great bunch of stories we have.

I heartily concur! Even though the subject lends itself to stories of a more downbeat manner, just the way that people are telling them is making for some really good reading. With every ending is a new beginning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDuxOI-FGlg&mode=related&search=

The Teachers wanted to get to know us and so started with that most boring of questions, "What do you do?" Except we were kids and so the…

High school was mostly a war of attrition for me, but at least I made it to the end. On my last day I made a point of picking up a school leaving certificate. The office administrator was perplexed, wondering why (like most others in my class) I…

I got to sleep with his young wife

Ewww....that's the kind of thing best kept to oneself, as in too much information!

Forever tainted by Rai Hai...

Er ... not enough information perhaps Michael. I'm not above a little mischief (I was going to 'fess up sooner, but to…

OMG, I have a leaving-Timaru story.

It's good to see you are getting over your sensitivity about being from there Russell, and are now able to talk about your origins.

Don't. Just don't.

OMG, I have a leaving-Timaru story.

It's good to see you are getting over your sensitivity about being from there Russell, and are now able to talk about your origins.

It was more the "remedial reading lessons" I was worried about.

apparently most news media is written for a reading age of 12. what struck me about harry potter was that it was written in a similarly simple style.

i thought at the time that rowling had written the books…

you're kidding! you mean there's at least one person i didn't get the spoilers to before the they read the book!!

It was more the "remedial reading lessons" I was worried about.

The outcome was never in doubt.

I got to sleep with his young wife

Ewww....that's the kind of thing best kept to oneself, as in too much information!

Forever tainted by Rai Hai...

Anyway, an ending to Bastards I Have Known:
I started working for Rainton Haistie (in the mid 80's) because I had lost my life…

I've ended the last HP and can stop hiding from Che Tibby on the buses again.

you're kidding! you mean there's at least one person i didn't get the spoilers to before the they read the book!!

better reconsider my comms plans...

I got busted trying to nonchalantly carry the additional luggage (mostly vinyl records) onto the plane like it was really nothing,

Snap. Nonchalantly toting my handluggage that had about 30kg of excess baggage. Mostly if I recall, crockery & glass.

The guy showing us onto the plain was not deceived. But…

A soccer comp at Timaru in the early '90s. The team were staying at the Hydro or the Grand (both as bad as each other) and a few of us popped into the…

(The late Kevin Smith subsequently related to me an account of this that still makes me cringe.)

My mum used to give him lifts home from rehersals. That guy could really tell a story.

Sheesh Emma, your ending sounds like a better beginning.

Yeah, sorry, I'm either an optimist or…

The year I left Timaru ...

OMG, I have a leaving-Timaru story.

I was sent there for a rather challenging year to the Christchurch Star's branch office, near the end of which I scored a job as deputy editor of Rip It Up. On my final day, my boss took…

The scare had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.

I've ended the last HP and can stop hiding from Che Tibby on the buses again.

And that's an ending in itself, he's a big fulla, Che.

I didn't feel lost or like I was in a crazy new place. Auckland felt normal. It felt like the city I was supposed to live in. Soon enough I had a posse, stuff to do, places to be.

This is scarily exactly how I feel about Christchurch. Moving here…

Looking back with adult eyes I think I understood why they did it, one step further form the pawnshop and some control over their lives. I don't think either my mother or my father really grasped the consequences though. At the time they had…

It's 2005. Brother Jack died, an old man, in 1989. Dad's car was sold just before his own 90th birthday.

"Dad sit down and read…

I was all packed up (well nearly) and as ready as I was ever going to be to leave my koibito, my sweetheart Tokyo. I was snoozing across several chairs at one in the morning in my favourite cafe cum…

I was walking home along Clyde Street, the long straight one that goes from the Bridge Street bridge to the university, when some guys in a passing car threw the slushy remains of a cup of Sprite at me. It was obvious what this meant: Hamilton was actively…

Over the next two weeks I would come to relish that space, and feel Very Very Grown-Up in there, but that night, despite knowing that my parents were just down the hall and only a phone call away, I was terrified.

I don't want that to be the last sentence.…

Even death, which is as final as we know how to get, is only final for someone else. For us, the death of someone else is not the end of the person, their memory…

I spent the best part of my childhood on Waiheke Island. Our dirt cheap 3/4 acre section was covered in fruit trees and had a waterfall and swimming hole (where I caught my first eel). We had chickens, relied on rainwater and cooked with a wood/coal burning stove.…

Until, that is, one night when I dreamed that it…

And most always, they lead to new beginnings of some sort

Agree with that – when one of my closest friends died of cancer a few years back we were all on tenderhooks waiting for the 'call-up' to go and see him in the hospice to bid our farewells and…

Actually, it wasn't so much of a great leap as a slow drift, until the final moment when I decided I could take the Catholic church…

We'd lost touch for the first first year I spent away from home drinking and enjoying college life to the full. Carelessness on my part.

One of our standard roster of questions at job interviews goes something like "Tell us about an experience that didn't end well and how you would approach it differently in the future" etc...

Anyway, it's…

Do all endings have a defining moment?

Sometimes, but it often doesn't reveal itself as an ending until a some time has passed.

Any premature attempt to draw a line in the sand is usually met with fate throwing something in your face just to prove you wrong.

I worked the Easter Show one year, running the stall where every player wins a prize. You had to pop a balloon or three with one of our blunt darts, and the balloons were only half full and the darts often bounced…

but it still felt kind of odd

That it does... I ran into my ex on the street outside the District Court some years after the split. So I said "Hi – say, let's get divorced..." after a little thought she said "OK".

A bit like when me met. kinda.

He was actually called Father Christmas where I came from. I was a quite smart 6 yo when, having seen the old fraud in the South Canterbury Farmers, I worked it all out. You whisper your wishes in his ear, and he later…