I think I’m going to pack this blogging thing in, on the grounds that it seems to be a complete and utter waste of my time – time, I might add, that I really do not have right at this moment.

I started this blog under duress, too many years ago to count now. It was suggested this might be a therapeutic outlet for some ‘anger issues’ I apparently had. What the fuck is wrong with anger anyway? What kind of fucked up world would it be if we’re all meant to march around with happy smiles on our faces (probably because we’re all drugged up to the eyeballs) being nice to each other? Fuck that. Anger is healthy; anger means we’re still alive and breathing. Anger is human.

Okay, so that proves the reason I started this blog is still there. I haven’t been ‘cured’; it hasn’t made me a different, more socially acceptable person. I am still, very much, me. So there’s reason number one not to bother with this blog any more.

There was a brief period there, once upon a time, when I actually enjoyed writing this. I kinda grew to like sharing my views on my fucked up family with my fellow social retards in cyber-world. And, believe it or not, I actually enjoyed it when my fellow retards played the game and shared their view of the world back at me. Sure, I would often mock said views from the privacy of my own bedroom, but that was just adding more fun elements to the game.

But now I ping these occasional missives out into the ether and what do I get back? Nothing. I get no comments, no arguments, no death threats – not even a deeply disturbed cyber-stalker wanting me to send him/her my soiled panties. Nope, I get nothing but silence – which is no fun at all and, quite frankly, I don’t do anything unless there is something in it for me.

So unless there are signs of life from out there; unless someone gives me something to sink my teeth into, that’s it for me – I’m done, I’m gone, I’m going back to the real world to get my kicks.

Besides, I have plenty of other things to be going on with – like having a brothel to open, for example; somewhere I can fence in all my useless slapper employees so I can punish them more easily when they piss me off.

See? Much more fun to be had in that than here in blogland.

Over and out,
Loretta West

There are some days when I suddenly feel much older than I actually am. Usually these are days when I am surrounded by people who want stuff from me I cannot give them; who think they know better than me how things should be and have the impertinence to tell me what is wrong with my world and how things should be made right. Back off, you people.

Like, for example, the whole internet thing; this whole ‘blog’ thing. I mean, so what if I haven’t posted for a while? Don’t give me grief about that, okay? For starters I’ve been working on my marriage – getting my husband exactly where I want him. Training your man to do the right thing, at the right time, in the right place, that takes time and practice and discipline and, quite frankly, updating my life story for the world is about the last thing on my mind when I’ve got all that going on in my head.

And yes, I know he, in cahoots with my very own Grandpa, betrayed me by starting a ‘business’ (if that is what you can call their shabby scam) without my knowledge – but he will suffer for that, all in good time.

And then there’s my mother – God help me. I mean, I’m the daughter, right? So I’m meant to be the one acting in the more childlike fashion of the two of us, right? But instead she’s the one getting into fights and organising orgies in prison, apparently to make a point about something only she truly understands. And surprise, surprise, Mum, there are people out there – a certain po-faced bitch with a teeny, tiny bit of power and a huge chip on her shoulder, as it turns out – who don’t see the funny side of this sort of thing. Apparently this sort of thing doesn’t and shouldn’t happen in a New Zealand prison – and, instead, prisoners should stick to screwing each other when the lights go out at night and not in the visiting room. And so it’s off to Christchurch for Cheryl West – banished to the Southern wastelands – a punishment, some might argue, that is worse than death.

Speaking of worse than death, I have managed to inherit, for my sins, a group of hookers who make the Tool Guys look like a crack team of dedicated professionals. The job is not difficult, for fuck’s sake: meet guy – fuck guy – take money off guy – give money to me. How hard is that? But no, all I get in return for my not-inconsiderable management skills is grief and anguish. Is it any wonder I’ve been tetchier than usual lately – when surrounded by all this uselessness?

Because here is the New World Order of the Wests, as far as I see it:

Mum is gone. She is out of the picture for the foreseeable future, because you don’t get sent to Christchurch and expect to come back in a hurry. Even Cheryl will find it difficult to be an interfering cow from down there, so we’re on our own as far as she is concerned. The Queen is no more, but life goes on, so get used to it and make the most of it. I know I certainly will.

In her absence, Pascalle may think she is the moral centre of the universe, but I know for a fact it will only be a matter of time before she does something phenomenally stupid to break her own rules. She will then fall apart and it will inevitably be me who has to pick up the pieces. I so can’t wait. But until then I will continue to ignore her, the most I possibly can.

Van is doing God knows what (apart from being useless at work, as always) and I have no interest in finding out. This situation works for me and long may it last.

Jethro – exactly the same as Van. No idea what dodgy shit he’s balls-deep in right now – and I have no desire to find out.

Grandpa – the betrayer. He and Ngaire – I shudder every time I think about them, so I try very hard not to think about them.

Judd, I must confess, is actually being okay – but only because he’s not interfering in my life. This is good. This is the way it should be.

I suppose I should count Dad in this little wrap-up of West-world as it stands, but really he is a distant memory these days. He’ll be off howling at the moon somewhere, and good luck to him I say – because he doesn’t exist here anymore.

Because this is the New Order (not the band) and the landscape we tread our path through here is very much of our own making. Me, I have things I need to do. I have businesses to run; I have a daughter to feed and clothe; I have a husband to torment.

I have gone back to basics and that suits me just fine.

Just don’t get in my way.

In the absence of those who make the rules, do the rules still exist?

Now there’s something worth thinking about.

If the legally elected government of New Zealand buggered off, overnight – if we woke up and there was no government and no police and no jumped up little bureaucrats and no anyone to enforce the laws of this land, would the laws of the land still exist?

I’d argue that, in a power vacuum (which is a place where the power is gone, not some sort of vacuum cleaner, by the way) it is a total free-for-all and may the best woman win.

And that woman is me.

My mother created a power vacuum when she copped to the murder charge. Sure, the word is she’s having second thoughts about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re left out here, on our own, making our own way in the world. She’s not getting out any time soon and we need to wake up to that fact and make plans accordingly.

When you have no moral authority telling you how to live your life; when you have some power-tripping spinner trying to tell you how to live your life; and when you have a useless husband who is of absolutely no use in your life…

When that’s the hand you’re dealt with, then pardon my French but I am absolutely going to do what it fucking takes to survive and fuck the rest of them.

Needs must.

If, one day in the future, someone makes the big mistake of coming up to me and saying “hey, today’s your wedding day, happy anniversary” here’s what will spring into my mind, just before I smack them:

Pascalle screaming – but not in a good way.

Gunshots – from outside.

There’s an image of me, running out of the house, looking over the balcony. I see Pascalle, and for some unknown reason she’s lying in the garden – and I’m thinking WTF? And then I see there’s blood on her.

And I see Mum – she’s kinda fallen back on the stairs, and she’s sort of holding her ear – I guess because one of the gunshots had just whistled past it. And she’s looking – confused, is the best word. And she looks up at me, for just a second, before these cops appear from nowhere and just, sort of, engulf her.

And I have no idea what the fuck just happened, until I step right up to the handrail, and I look down and there’s Gerard, lying on his back, there’s a gun on the ground beside him and there’s blood just pissing out his neck. And suddenly there are people all over him too, trying to stop the blood.

I guess the reason some things become clichés is because they are such a common experience, shared by so many people, and when people are asked to describe the event they all end up saying the same thing – and thus the cliché is born. But maybe sometimes the cliché is actually the truth because that’s the way it does happen. The cliché in this case is that everything starts playing out in slo-motion. And that’s the sure way it was for me. It’s like your brain is struggling to cope with so many messages that it has to slow everything down, just to take them all in.

Then reality comes rushing back in and everything is just screaming and shouting and shit all over the show.

And the upshot of all this is one dead cop and, now, Mum pleading guilty to murder – unheard of, in this family. Okay, sure, this is our first actual murder charge, but the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty and even then there’s always the appeal’ that has served this family so well through the generations should still apply here, right?

But not any more, apparently; and certainly not to my mother, Cheryl West, the patron saint of falling on her own sword.

Good one, Mum.

There is blood on the stairs.

Not that anyone can get near it to clean it up because there are roped off areas and people in uniforms telling us we can’t go in there.

No, ‘roped off’ isn’t right. I mean it’s what they’ve done, to keep people, to keep us, out – they have cordoned off the house – but the ‘rope’ isn’t actually rope. It’s plastic tape. They’ve ‘taped off’ the area is, I s’pose, more accurate, but it doesn’t sound as final as ‘roped off’. ‘Roped off’ to me, has a much stronger ‘keep the fuck out’ vibe out about it, which is exactly how it feels.

Not that anyone is in a hurry to go in, to clean off the blood.