Paul Thomas: Many a strange day has been sent to plague us

"May you live in interesting times" is supposedly an old Chinese curse to be flung at people who would prefer a quiet life in which nothing ever changes and acts of God are minor and infrequent.

But, say scholars in the field, it's a fake. Apparently the closest thing Confucius and Co came up with is, "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than a man in a chaotic period" which, no matter how you look at it, can't be construed as a curse.

New research has fingered an obscure 1950s science fiction writer or one of Robert F. Kennedy's speechwriters as the author.

Whoever it was, the suspicion is that the Chinese curse background was invented to give it some oriental mystique and make sure people got the irony.

These are interesting times in the ironic, fake curse sense: strange, troubled, disconcertingly eventful.

Back in March I wrote about bird flu, prompted by the claim from a leading British microbiologist that a pandemic will kill two million Britons, roughly one in 30.

The threat of a pandemic has been a godsend for the doomsday industry whose crystal ball gazers often seem engaged in a contest to see who can come up with the bleakest scenario: I'll see your two million and raise you a four-year recession.

For those of us who lived through the Cold War with its ever-present threat of nuclear incineration, it's almost like old times.

Terror Inc stepped up its onslaught on the Western way of life but the London subway bombings and attacks on tourist targets in Egypt, Jordan and Bali were flea-bites compared with the insurgency's pitiless assault on their fellow - in some cases - Iraqis.

America now seems divided between those who still believe victory is achievable if they hang in there indefinitely (the Bush Administration) and those who want to cut and run as soon as possible regardless of the consequences, a somewhat larger body of opinion.

There is a fate worse than having your suffering ignored by the West and that's having the West come to your rescue. Meanwhile, the War on Terror continues to redefine the term "public relations disaster".

As the old lags at Guantanamo Bay enter their fifth year of detention without trial and we learn more about the CIA's circumvention of conventions prohibiting the use of torture, it emerges that Iraqi security forces actually captured terrorist mastermind and self-confessed mass murderer Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi last year. Failing to recognise a man whose face is on virtual permanent display in the global media, they promptly let him go.

We had a mid-year election campaign, the highlights of which were the leaders of the Exclusive Brethren stumbling into the media spotlight blinking like moles and the brawl over new Tauranga MP Bob Clarkson's left testicle.

There must be something in Tauranga's water that produces characters like Clarkson, who seems to have the sort of relationship with his left testicle that a ventriloquist has with his dummy, his nemesis the implacable and fabulously named Vivienne d'Or and, of course, his predecessor.

Incidentally, I understand there's no truth to the rumour that when Winston Peters arrived at Government House to be sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister greeted him with the words, "Is that a bauble in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?"

The sporting landscape was dominated by the Lions tour, which was in turn dominated by their captain Brian O'Driscoll's near-death experience.

With all the sound and fury generated by the incident, it almost escaped notice that O'Driscoll introduced into rugby folk-lore a mystery woman to rank alongside Susie the waitress, who supposedly poisoned the All Blacks before the 1995 World Cup final but whose existence has never been established, despite the best efforts of Laurie Mains and his posse of private detectives.

In his tour diary O'Driscoll claims that as he was suffering the torments of the damned somewhere in the bowels of Jade Stadium, a nurse tried to souvenir the shirt off his back.

But the New Zealand Rugby Union insists O'Driscoll was treated by the Lions' medical team and the stadium authorities insist there was no nurse on duty at the match.

Like Susie, this devil in disguise has vanished - if indeed she existed - without trace.

New Zealand then proceeded to enrage the gentlemen of the British press all over again by being granted the right to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup. We shouldn't have been surprised by their readiness to swallow the snake oil that lubricated Japan's bid, given that they repeatedly assure their readers that half the All Black team were snatched off various Pacific Island beaches by NZRU press gangs.

In April I wrote about the exciting new socio-sexual phenomenon of polyamorism, a daisy-chain arrangement in which participants have multiple partners, often of both genders, who themselves have multiple partners. It crossed my mind that polyamorics might turn out to be an urban myth, akin to the alligators that infest New York's sewers, but they popped up again this month in canvas, so they must be real.

Strange days indeed. All the more reason to have a happy Christmas.