STICKERS! OH STICKERS! WHEN DID MY LOVE FOR YOU WANE?

Nobody cares once you've bought it. GET IT OFF!

Why do we collect things? I think blokes do it more than the superior sex. Women are probably doing something useful and important with their time. But there can't be too many lads out there who haven't started a collection of something some time or other.

STARTING a collection and HAVING an actual collection are two quite different things, of course.

I once started collecting Smurfs, for example. This was, as they say, back in the day. Way back. Back when Smurfs were around the first time. Back when service stations weren't yet flash enough to have Quick Stops, or ATMs, or Wild Bean Cafes, but they HAD started giving away drinking glasses with every fill over $20.

BP must have been right at the forefront of service station evolution in that era, leapfrogging brands like Shell and Europa. (That's right kids, there used to be service stations called Europa) BP were giving away more than mere glasses and moving onto Smurfs. Now that I think of it, they weren't actually giving them away, they were just selling them. Why a gas station should suddenly decide to stock little, blue, rubber figurines alongside their Bars Bugs and wiper blades is not exactly clear, but stock them they did. I was into it.

I wanted those Smurfs. I wanted them all. The golfing one. The cricketing one. The girl one. The much coveted, red-pantsed Papa. The slightly less coveted, Smurf Normal. Every week, for at least 5 weeks, I'd collect up my meagre pocket money, mount my trusty steed and pedal it down to BP to select the next member of my burgeoning Smurf legion.

Then I got sick of Smurfs and spent the next month making huts in the long grass in the empty section next door. So it never really became a collection at all - especially once I accidentally broke Astronaut Smurf's helmet off and essentially ended up with two Smurf Normals. (Probably two more than anybody really needs, to be honest)

That's how it goes with most collections; you start them, but not many are determined enough to complete them. Occasionally some weirdo, nerdy obsessive finally manages it. Guitars. Cars. Stamps. Spoons. Crockery. You see them from time to time on the telly. Part of you thinks, "What a dork!" while a more secret part of you grudgingly admits, "Good effort."

At one point, I think I thought my sticker collection would achieve such heady heights. Some sad-sack current affairs show with a human interest gap to fill would knock on my door, having heard of room after room festooned with thousands of rare and valuable stickers. I'd tour them through my stickery galleries, demonstrating how important it is to keep the stickers on their backing sheets, pointing out my prized fluro orange Smiley Face, circa 1986.

I was really into stickers - it didn't matter what they were, I kept them all. Radio station bumper stickers. A&P Show Entrant Pass stickers. Rolls of Fragile stickers stolen from Dad's work. If it was a word or a picture and it had an adhesive behind, I collected it. Then one fateful day, and while the specific memory isn't all that clear, I think it happened quite suddenly, I got out my collection, my ENTIRE collection, and given that it all fit in one resealable plastic bag thought, "This is stupid. What's the point?"

Sadly, as often happens at the end of a long-term relationship, from that moment on my feelings toward stickers began to sour. All at once, stickers seemed annoying. Pointless. Almost hardly worth collecting at all. Maybe that's why now, as a reasonably well-rounded 38 year-old grown-up man, I still harbour a slightly irrational sticker aversion.

Hardly surprising given how many we encounter in stupid, unnecessary and inconvenient places. Why are they on CD covers, for instance? I know which songs are on that CD, that's why I wanted that CD. Even if I wasn't quite sure, I think I could manage the hassle of turning the CD over to check the track listing on the back. Don't cover the cover with a stupid sticker! Someone worked long and hard on that picture.

Red dots. Not a bad idea for a sale, but if the only place to stick your red dot is over the size of the garment I'm considering trying on, DON'T DO IT! Purple pegs? Now you're talking.

Glasses, vases and other crockery. What is the point of having really classy wineglasses, if you can't peel that bloody ugly gold brand name off them. Or even worse, you try to remove it and only get the top of it off, leaving behind a smeared, gloopy white smudge. In this instance, eucalyptus oil may be your only hope.

And what's with people who don't remove the stickers that ARE removable? I'm not even sure people care about their big-screen TV's energy efficiency when they're BUYING it. Their guests certainly don't want to see an energy-star rainbow while they're WATCHING it. As for those sneaky clear stickers on the screens of things, TAKE THEM OFF. I'm talking to you here, Mum. While your DVD player's screen may be at some minute risk of being scratched during shipping, I think you'll find that risk drops dramatically once it's safely installed IN YOUR TV CABINET. Besides, which would you prefer... a tiny scratch you can't really see or a stupid bunch of bubbles and bumps under a piece of ill-fitting plastic?

Take the stickers off people! Free yourself from pointless extra information you didn't ask for. Do it now before it's too late. Banish your stickers and help me exorcise the demons of the failed collections of my past.

Yes, I can see that. That's why I put cat food in it

NUDIE RUDIE ROYALS

A nice enough set, but I wouldn't suck them

Any excuse to get their kit off and then complain someone's taken their photo.

As you may be able to detect, I'm not the world's greatest defender of the Royal Family's right to privacy. I just can't help thinking, if I was one of the most photographed women on the planet, maybe I'd think twice before getting my gazungas out in the sunshine.

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm pretty much the polar opposite of the most photographed woman in the world, and I still think twice before getting my gazungas out in the sunshine. It's not because I'm worried photos of my moobs might make the Mirror's front page (They wouldn't, by the way. They're impressive, but not worthy of headlines). I'm worried someone I know might see me. In fact, I'm also worried some teenagers I DON'T know might see me, laugh at me, then go on to do humorous jiggling impressions of me later that night at a party.

I get that everyone has a right to privacy. I'm not sure about the right to nude sunbathe though. And I'm even less sure about the right to play naked billiards. I think that's my issue here; the right to privacy doesn't guarantee the right to weirdness.

As voyeuristic as the great unwashed can be, I don't believe private acts interest us in the slightest. Ringing someone for a catchup is dull. Ringing them to call them "Squidgy" 53 times in the same conversation is... interesting. Hanging out by the pool with a mate in the south of France isn't that dodgy. When that mate isn't your husband, slightly more so. When he starts sucking on your toes though, that's dodgy as. As for the future king thinking it's sexy to compare himself to a tampon, while talking to woman who looks like a horse, this is the kind of thing we need to know, even if we really, REALLY don't want to.

It's easy for me to say, given I'm not a princess, (and perhaps never will be) but I'm thinking the best way to avoid nude photos of yourself going public is to avoid being nude. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of places being nude is probably pretty safe - in the shower, in bed, doing a radio show - but aboard a boat or on a balcony or by the pool (yes, even a "private" one) is all within camera range and is therefore just a dumb idea.

Why is it so essential to get your top off? If it's to avoid tan-lines, surely the royal budget can stretch to several different swimsuits of several different cuts. Why aren't you being more sunsmart anyway? If Kate was down here enjoying a harsh New Zealand summer, it wouldn't be the paparazzi she'd be trying to evade, it'd be gangs of concerned mums telling her to slip, slop, slap and wrap... oh, and then moisturise before she starts peeling.

"Wait just a sun-loving minute!" I hear many of the more liberal of you cry. "Being nude isn't weird! It's perfectly natural, and nothing to be ashamed of." Then don't be. The only reason Topless Kate is a story, is the threat of royal legal action over the impending publication of the pics. If nudie rudie sunbathing is nothing to be ashamed of, why sue? Why are topless photos any more embarrassing than the ones of you riding on the back of a truck that's been decorated to look like a boat? (It didn't look anything LIKE a boat, by the way. It looked like a truck decorated to look like a boat. Now THAT's embarrassing)

When you think about it, life as a royal is just a succession of embarrassing events. Before the "boat-truck", they were suspended up a 130 foot tree in Borneo by a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. Post "boat-truck", Wills and Kate were forced to board an ACTUAL boat sporting a full-sized sofa for them to park their royal arses on. It gets better, once in Tuvalu, they're carried from their plane on the shoulders of bunch of warriors. How is ANY of that more publishable than a bit of bare boob action?

Is it just Kate's funbags we're not allowed to lay eyes on? Or are there other body parts she's a bit sensitive about? I hope she doesn't have excessively knobbly elbows - they could be tricky to keep out of frame. Maybe there's an unsightly mole just above the left knee. Are bum shots kosher if she's in jeans? What about when she's wearing bike shorts? There are a lot of grey areas here... Actually, that's a point - can we publish pictures of her grey areas, or are they out of bounds too?

You can't have it both ways, Kate. Either be nude, and let people see you being nude, or don't be nude. Most of us choose not to be nude, but maybe we're not as liberated as you royals.

I figured I'd get in first an publish my moob before anyone else can. Gross, eh?

MAN VS CHILD (HOME... BUT NOT ALONE)

If you look carefully, you'll find items from each of the major food groups

The Domestic Manager has upped and left me. Not permanently. At least, I hope not. Geez, maybe she has... No, surely I would have noticed if she'd left me for good, although being a bloke, active listening isn't one of my strong suits. Now I think of it, me being a terrible listener would itself be a great reason for calling it quits. But no, I'm pretty sure she's just gone to a work conference in Sydney for a week.

(Either that, or she's left the country with someone CALLED Sydney)

Whatever. The upshot is, I've been left completely and utterly alone, with no-one to fend for me or to protect me in the urban wilderness. She's literally failed to provide me with the necessaries of life. Now I am cold. I am hungry. And I am very, very afraid.

I'm cold because there seems to be some sort of latent Scottish ancestry in my gene-pool that prohibits me from turning on the heater when I'm the only person in the house. I'm hungry because it turns out eating 2-minute noodles straight from the packet isn't actually as nutritious as it sounds. I'm afraid because I am currently under attack from two of the most devastating weapons of mass-destruction known to mankind; my children.

I'm exaggerating of course - I know how to cook 2-minute noodles (although I've always been mystified it still takes 2 minutes even when you do them in the microwave). In fact, since the Domestic Manager deserted me, I've gone to the trouble of cooking a few real dinners. Nachos counts as a "real" dinner if you serve it with a salad, right?

I'm not exaggerating about the kids though, or the fact I'm currently fearing for my life. Don't let their ages fool you. At 11 and 8, that's a combined experience of 19 years of concerted psychological warfare and they have an impressive arsenal at their disposal as a result.

They began the assault with perhaps the most obvious, yet potentially the most lethal tactic: germ warfare. Domestic Manager hadn't even left the house before the smaller, blonder one started running a temperature and complaining of a headache. The demoralising effect of this on the adult population can't be overstated. Domestic Manager leaves, feeling like a bad mother, abandoning her brood. (Which she kind of was) Hapless father is enveloped in a darkening cloud of impending doom. Only Monday and uncertainty and doubt are already setting in. Of course, small blonde recovers completely for Nana to deliver her to school. When Dad picks her up though, complete relapse. Headache. Stomach ache. Then ultimately, inevitably... spew.

Now here's where my children (or "the insurgents" as I've come to know them) really stepped up the hostilities. To capitalise on the impact of their virulent opening germ-based salvo, they proceeded to bombard me with the more conventional, but no less deadly, SCHOOL COMMITMENTS. Oh, and I'm not talking, "commitment" singular... Oh no, no, no. We're dealing with two concerts (both at night), an all-day band festival and something called a "student led conference".

While my attendance is not required at the band festival, I am faced with the logistics of a 7:15AM drop-off and an 8:30PM pickup. However, the 2 concerts were "must see". It gets better. One of the concerts featured a combined choir of FIVE-HUNDRED primary school kids and Suzanne Prentice. And it was on a Monday night. And the interval lasted over 40 minutes (longer than either of the halves). Best of all, it featured the aforementioned upchucking blonde.

Miraculously, or suspiciously, depending on how you look at it, once again a recovery was made in the nick of time for the performance. Sick again next day, of course. Far to ill to go to school... even on the day of the Student Led Conference. Student Led Conferences are the evolution of what used to be parent-teacher interviews. Disturbingly, as the name implies, the teacher is no longer really required. The parent still is though, you better believe it. The parent is led by the student for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES (yes, about the length of an interval at a Kids for Kids concert).

So this is where the insurgents shot themselves in the foot.

By being too sick to go to school, there is now no student to lead the conference. What a bugger, eh? Here's where the fight-back begins in earnest. I'm adding an actual doctor's appointment to the equation now, see how you like that, Blondey!

Am I a bad dad? Do I sound somewhat callous and flippant when discussing the health and well-being of my progeny? Is my attitude toward parenting a little too adversarial? Perhaps. But then, perhaps they should have thought of that before they started it.

It's not just me, right? 40 minutes is WAY too long for an interval

PLEASE DON'T READ THIS, CHARLOTTE

Don't look now, Charlotte...

I'm serious. If you're Charlotte Dawson, I really don't think you should go any further. As far as I am aware, I'm not a troll - although one ear does stick out slightly suspiciously. However, as this glog will reveal, Charlotte, I'm not particularly sympathetic to your cause, so please stop here. I don't want to be responsible for any further emotional torment.

You see, I too have been bullied, although not recently. Let's see, how long would it be since Patrick Lowry last smacked me in the head? I'm thinking fourth form... so about... ah, yes, only about 24 YEARS AGO! Actually, now I picture him, he genuinely may have been part-troll - turned-up pig-nose, crazy mop of unnaturally black hair (fur?)... definitely not New Zealand's next top model. I have no compunction in naming him publicly because
1) it was 24 YEARS AGO
b) not really sure that many people are reading this
and thirdly) he used to smack me in the head

I actually don't blame Patrick for his bullying because I probably had it coming. Patrick was big, stupid and ugly (not sure about smelly, but for the sake of argument, let's say he was) and I reminded him of that loudly, publicly and regularly. In fact, when I put it like that maybe I was bullying HIM... hmmm. Still, you don't punch someone just for stating the obvious do you?

My point here is, and yes there really is one, in my book, being thumped qualifies as bullying. Being told to stick your head in a toaster does not. (Charlotte, seriously, why are you still reading?) What's more, being told to stick your head in a toaster by someone you don't even know over the internet is something so insignificant, it very nearly hasn't even happened at all.

I have another example of bullying experienced first-hand, roughly around the same time as the Patrick Lowry stuff was happening to my ACTUAL head. This example is named Manaroa. Manaroa is not the location of the bullying, but the perpetrator. Unlike Mr. Lowry, I cannot out him completely, as I have no knowledge of Manaroa's surname. It is more than possible he has no use for a last name in the same way Beyonce, Kimbra and the Hulk need no further embellishment. Manaroa's only distinguishing troll-features were massive lips. (I'm not certain if trolls really possess massive lips, but I made fun of Patrick's appearance so it seems only fair)

The details surrounding Manaroa's particular mien of bullying are sketchy to me now, all these years on. I think it was some form of extortion... he was demanding either my lunch, my money or possibly my virginity in exchange for not throwing me down the bank into the lake. (I'm almost definitely lying about the virginity option, just go with it though)

Why I refused, I cannot say. Was I making some heroic, anti-bullying statement? Had I already spent my money? You can rest assured by now my lunch was well digested, and try as I might, nobody really seemed interested in my virginity. I'll say this for Manaroa though, the guy knew how to follow through on his threats. I can't rule out the possibility I may have made a few troll-lip taunts while pleading my case, which probably didn't help my cause at all. Just goes to show, no-one likes a smart-arse... especially not Patrick Lowry and Manaroa.

While the bank was steep and muddy, the lake was not especially deep and I lived to insult other bullies another day. Once again though, spending the rest of my walk home emptying mud out of my shoes and leaves out of my school bag was real proof of real bullying. A Twitter feed which has since been half-deleted doesn't take nearly as long to dry out in front of the heater.

Charlotte, if you're still with us by this point, you're even more of a masochist than I already had you pegged for. Stop it. Stop reading. I'm certainly not the first person over the last few days to offer you the same bit of obvious advice. If a troll suggested I should kill myself via Twitter, I probably wouldn't even notice. Mind you, I do follow some pretty weird shit. (Pebbles Hooper for example. What's that about?) If your celebrity is so reliant on staying in touch with your Tweeps, it could be worth hiring someone to filter it for you. If not, delete your account. It's not like it's Facebook or anything.

Why would you spend hour after hour reading horrible things about yourself? How can you take "Stick your head in the toaster" seriously? Who even owns a toaster that can fit a bagel, let alone a whole head?

Of course, the ultimate lesson here is for me, not you, Charlotte. (I've given up hoping you won't read the whole thing) Ignoring the bullies actually works. Even the real ones. I didn't have to tell Patrick he was ugly - everyone could already see that. As for Manaroa OneName, why didn't I just cross the road the moment I saw him? Because I've got a smart mouth and I can't resist opening it, that's why. Sometimes, just because the joke is there to be made, doesn't mean you should make it. I learned that lesson the hard way Charlotte, surely you're smart enough to realise the trolls out there just never did.

The stuff of cyber nightmares!