Unexpected Endings

We have watched, with some sadness the demolition of a Hotel we once owned.
The demolition is due to the Christchurch Earthquake.

It can be viewed here, if you should wish to see it's demise;
http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_gid=113826&gallery_id=113832

We watched as our former bedrooms, and living space was demolished.
I never really enjoyed living in this old Hotel, but I felt a sadness to see it's destruction, after all this time.
There were a lot of amusing stories connected to this Hotel, and some of them were ours.
There were a lot of sad storied connected to this Hotel, and a few of them were our, though most, were not.

A lot of our former friends and acquaintances from our time there, are now dead.
It seems strange to realise some of them were younger than we are now, when they passed away.

The Hotel had a different name, when we owned it. I am sure the change of name did not change the fundamental personality of the Hotel. It was a Country Hotel, in a village which was close to an Agricultural College.

A lot of wealthy farmers sent their offspring to attend this College for a year or so, hoping they would gain some maturity, before they might assume some responsibility on the Family Farm.
There were also overseas students, often of mature age, who were sent to the College to learn skills to take home to their native countriies.

Many acts of seeming idiocy were enacted by the students of this College. Reason would question the thinking behind much of this destructive and vandalistic behaviour. One would almost question the sanity of these students, whose level of intelligence should have been above such acts of sheer lunacy.

I have always hoped that the students who stole, from our kitchen fridge,  a Roast Leg of Lamb, complete with Oven Pan, and also stole a whole Roll of Dog Meat, ate the Dog Meat, under cover of darkness and lived to suffer the pain, and indigestion such "offal" food would cause!

As to the students who stole a whole toilet,~ ie, cistern plus pan, ~I hope they suffered from lack of 'facilities' in later life, and paid the price of being 'caught short'! I hope it scarred one of the theives as they manoevered it out of the small toilet window. Sadly, we never found any traces of blood on the window, or the garden walls. We always wonderd if some local Cow Cocky found the pan in one of his paddocks, but we never did find out where it ended.


This was one of the most played songs on the Jukebox in that Hotel.
The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, Marianne Faithfull.