KEY POINTS:
I worry about some people who read this column. They are probably the same people who declare they never believe anything they read in newspapers, and are not interested in the gossip columns, but their behaviour belies their words.
Just before Christmas I wrote a column lamenting
my dear horse's transference of affection from me to the new bay mare we have acquired for my husband to ride. I deliberately wrote the first few paragraphs to mislead the reader - it initially looked as if it were my husband who'd been lured away by the charms of a younger, fitter, and saucier lady.
And judging by the feedback, that's what many readers believed. Either they didn't read far enough, or they didn't read properly. No matter, my friends tell me their phone lines were red hot with the gossipmongers wanting the full story.
Has he left her? How's she coping? Who's the other woman?
It's amusing, and some inquirers were genuinely concerned, with one or two ready to organise a bounty on the QC's head. But what really interested me was the number of women who've never met me, but conveyed a sense of "that will learn her!" schadenfreude.
Their badly disguised delight that I might have been dumped, and left in lonely misery, seemed to make them happy. Is this how they react to anyone's misfortune, or do my polarising columns set them off?
Well, I hate to spoil their fun, but for the record, I'm still blissfully happily married, and intend to remain in that state for the next 50 years.
This strange attitude reminds me of that sad bitterness which afflicts some people when they see an extremely beautiful woman (it's usually a woman) walk into a room.
Instead of celebrating the fact that a human can look gorgeous (and I don't mean the botox, gym-bunny, rich-bitch blondes whose grotesque self-love cancels out any smidgeon of beauty), they turn aside and sneer, "who does she think she is?"
If they tried the opposite tack - telling the person how wonderful she looks - they might find it gives them as much pleasure.
At Wellington Cup Day last year I'd watched a woman of about 65 who was beautifully groomed and serene as a swan, before I finally plucked up courage to tell her how much I admired the way she presented herself.
She was thrilled, and told me she'd spent all the morning dressing her disabled husband, she'd not had time to spend on her own appearance. It made her day to get a random compliment from a complete stranger.
Human behaviour never fails to render me speechless, which is how the TSB Arena staff in Wellington should have been on Tuesday night at the Leonard Cohen concert. I've waited 38 years to see Cohen in concert, and we paid good money to hear three hours of the legend singing and reciting his poetry. But would the ushers shut up? Not blimmin' likely, especially when Sam Hunt was on stage before Cohen came on.
This is a terrible venue at the best of times, but the rude people who arrived late and then brayed to each other at the bar just outside the open doors made it impossible to concentrate on Hunt's performance.
Then when these disrespectful and thoughtless patrons decided to grace the audience with their presence, the staff yabbered away in loud voices at the doorway, prompting numerous complaints. Not that they cared - "no we weren't" was one response to a patron telling them, gently, that they might stop making so much noise.
And what has happened to the modern Kiwi bladder? People were going in and out, back and forth, from 7.30 when Hunt came on, until 11.30 when Cohen finally allowed the cheering crowd to let him retire. Ban the ubiquitous water bottle.
If men and women can't last four hours without a toilet stop, then they'll have to go thirsty.
I think the human race is losing all vestige of manners. You'll know what I mean when I talk about the couple from hell as they pick away at each other with minor criticisms and deathly insults, delivered in front of everyone as if for effect.
Their lives are a misery, so like the catty women who got a momentary thrill out of thinking my marriage had collapsed, they get their jollies from making other people miserable.
Why they stay together is one of life's eternal mysteries, along with other puzzles like the silly clothes golfers wear, non-kink hoses that always kink, cats which jump on the laps of the one person who hates cats, and if you've read this properly, I'm sure you can send me other examples.
