I can’t imagine why anyone would wish to visit the City of Snails – please don’t, we have enough people – but for those who must, Mrs Smith has some sensible tips on driving in Auckland traffic here.

I’m an Xtra email address holder, and since yesterday I’ve been bombarded hourly with junk email originating from various .de and other domains spoofing a service@paypal.co.nz address. The emails don’t include my full name or a PayPal user-name but are individually addressed to my Xtra email address and claim I haven’t updated the privacy policy: “Failure to accept the updated PayPal User Agreement and Privacy Policy within 3 days will result in limited access to your PayPal account. If your account is limited, you will no longer be able to receive or send payments.” The emails all include the same fraudulent “PayPal security updates” link. I don’t have a .co.nz PayPal account but I do have one with the .com, and a careless user could easily click on the link if not vigilant. If you have a PayPal account, check the security tips on the website and forward spoof emails with the header information to spoof@paypal.com.

What has happened to Harry Hutton?

He has been missing since November 9, after leaving for a bunjee-jumping trip to Chechnya. His commentariat are very worried.

No more killer facts.

No more loving tributes to the likes of George Best.

George Best, the bon vivant, has died. He would generally start the day with kippers and a pint of Scotch. During the morning he would drink three or four pints of beer. He would have a bottle of wine with his lunch, then a quart of ale to tide him through the afternoon. After dinner he would drink a bottle of champagne, then half a bottle of Scotch before bed. And, would you believe it, he's dead.

If you ask me, he was in danger of becoming an alcoholic.

This Q&A from Christmas Eve 2004 gives some clue to his real character: "What is your favourite song? The fourth movement of Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, 'O, vast Rondure swimming in space...' (The poem is by Walt Whitman.) And 'Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie'."

This sounds like him. Clearly women liked him for his sense of humour.

Go in peace, Harry.

How many grains of rice does it take before you hit Level 50? It took me 790, beating my wife’s score of 800, thank Richard Dawkins. Not that we’re competitive. Or you.

This year’s touring bands/singers include (their name is followed by the year of their debut record): the Beach Boys (1962), Joe Cocker (1968), Elton John (1968), Crosby Stills and Nash (1969), America (1971), Bryan Ferry (1972), Joan Armatrading (1972), the Police (1978) and the Cure (1978).

Next year kicks off with Sonic Youth (1984), Split Enz (1973) and Rod Stewart (1964)…

Here's one for mediaphiles: The geatest paper in the world has moved to a new home and provides a great multimedia tour. It's worth it for the rooftop panorama (click the picture) alone.

Personally I don't think papers need flash offices or that this is the best use of valuable and increasingly scarce resources - but it aint half nice.

The article by Nicolai Ouroussoff is worth a read too.

The Economist reports on the tricky issue of sex-related classified ads in newspapers – it is legal in England to buy and sell sex, but soliciting is forbidden, as are brothels (defined as places where more than one prostitute works), so:

The Newspaper Society advises its members not to accept adverts for massage parlours if there is reason to believe that sex is going on. But blind eyes are being turned on an epic scale.

Which means, according to the Poppy Project, a charity that tries to rescue women caught in sex-trafficking, that the mainstream media are conniving in a covert legitimisation of this awful industry. And:

New media have pushed prostitution right into the home: on Punternet, a website for buyers of sex, dozens of men each day post cheery reviews of women as if they were books on Amazon.com.

Which is where it gets really mucky. This new area of internet reviews is inherently unreliable, isn’t it – how seriously do you take those anonymous restaurant reviews, for example? But sex reviews – eww. I’ve been to the site so you don’t have to – but I bet you will – and what’s striking is how many of these English men have such, ah, specialised tastes and requirements. If one of them wants to have sex with two hookers ending with him being sodomised by one of them wearing a strap-on, here’s a guide to who may oblige, what it will cost and whether it qualifies as GF sex. (This seems to be “girlfriend sex” – so one wonders why these guys don’t just get girlfriends. At £300 an hour for two temporary “girlfriends”, or £120 for one, wouldn’t it be cheaper? And, well, nicer?)

The strap-on reminded me of the last time I saw Peter Plumley Walker – you remember, the cricket umpire whose bound and gagged body was found below the Huka Falls in 1989 after a bondage/domination session had gone wrong. We were sitting around after dinner at our mutual friends’ house, and somehow the conversation got onto S&M. Being a naïve lad from the provinces, I said, “What’s wrong with just fucking?” There was an awkward silence, and our hosts changed the subject. Years later, I found out they were into it too.

So I asked my mentor in sexual and most other matters, a Distinguished Poet of a Certain Age, “Is everyone else into this and I'm the odd man out?”

He replied, “Not at all. I once went to bed with a woman who wanted me to whip her before the main event. I found it didn’t really suit me.”

The woman in question was English, as was poor old Peter. So is it just an English thing? I’m sure Mrs Smith will have a view. What do other readers think?

I've just come across this video interview on Wallstrip (motto: Stock culture meets pop culture) with Fake Steve Jobs, aka Dan Lyons. Who says business has to be dull. The guy's a hoot. Broadband needed, of course.

This press release has just arrived from the Frank Sargeson Trust: it may be of interest to readers seeking literary inspiration, or just a second-hand bed.

The double bed from the Sargeson Centre flat, a furnished residence for New Zealand writers in central Auckland, is to be auctioned at the annual general meeting of the Auckland Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors. The bed, which has been replaced by a new model, was in continuous use in the Sargeson Centre flat from 1987 until 2006.

The retired Sargeson Centre bed is an artefact of unique distinction. No other bed in New Zealand has been slept in by so many distinguished writers. Among its authorised occupants since 1987 have been: Diane Brown, Ken Catran, Geoff Chapple, Catherine Chidgey, Marilyn Duckworth, Alan Duff, Riemke Ensing, Karyn Hay, Kevin Ireland, Janet Frame, Toa Fraser, Charlotte Grimshaw, Kapka Kassabova, Michael King, Shonagh Koea, Jack Lasenby, Vincent O’Sullivan, Emily Perkins, Sarah Quigley, Stephen Stratford, Chad Taylor and Judith White. The retired Sargeson Centre bed thus contains traces of all these, and other writers’ DNA, making it a literary incubator of enormous significance.

The auction will be held on 7 December, at 6pm, in the Common Room of the English Department of the University of Auckland. Associate Professor Bernard Brown, poet, treasurer of the Auckland Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors and auctioneer, expects bidding for the Sargeson Centre bed to be brisk. “Any aspiring writer who sleeps in the bed could not help but absorb some of its extraordinary properties,” Associate Professor Brown says. “Its provenance is unique. Poems, plays, short stories and entire novels have been devised between its sheets. So even a quick nap in the bed could prove inspirational.”

Graeme Lay, secretary of the Frank Sargeson Trust, reports that the Sargeson Centre bed was earlier offered to New Zealand art authorities as the nation’s representative installation for the 2007 Venice Biennale, but this offer was ignored. “Venice’s loss,” Lay adds, “can be some blessed bidder’s gain, at the NZSA auction on 7 December.”

Listen to prolific octogenarian writer Russell Hoban being interviewed on Ian McMillan’s excellent BBC Radio Three programme ‘The Verb’, talking about his strange new novel, My Tango With Barbara Strozzi, which I’m currently reading. Like most of Hoban’s recent books, it’s set in a very tactile London and is full of artful twists and turns. Hoban explains his characteristically oblique character naming conventions here.