in for a

treat this post.

I'm sitting here wondering what the heck is on the telly.

I can hear Mags reliving her childhood by gleefully watching Bonanza with the Cartwrights and Hoss (guess which one is Hoss?) and their heroically noble and good ways.

"Don't blame yours self man. When a man pulls a gun, you gotta shoot 'im. When he pulls a gun"

That could be true but to be fair the marginally infirm neighbour lil'Joe (back centre of picture - grew up to be the dad on Little House on the Prairie and that Angel programme with Della Reese - that may not be her name) shot the father of his one true love - who sounded and looked like she had been sniffing something stronger that smelling salts, who promptly rode off into the sunset leaving the handsome lil'Joe on his own, yet again I suspect.

A good woman, or a woman at all is hard to find in those parts.

And that is the first episode of Bonanza anyone in my family has watched in 30 years.

And people say TV is violent these days!

To make matters even more offensive,

the recently deceased father of lil'Joe's beloved looked like he was wearing

a men's incontinence pad, his trousers were hoisted so high.

This comment had Mags in spasms of silent laughter.

Gotta love 1950s fashion.

My personal link to Bonanza is

back in the day when I lived in California, some friends and I went for the weekend

to Lake Tahoe and Reno.

I got sick in Reno, man I was really sick.

On the way back to the South Bay, we drove past a sign saying the

Pondarosa Ranch

so we moseyed on over to the Ranch and

spent the day wandering around looking at half remembered TV film sets and photos

only to discover that the guy who was the manager of the Pondarosa at that time

was from Taupo!

That made perfect sense over our plastic cheese nachos cause

Lake Tahoe and Lake Taupo are very similar to look at

except all the flora and fauna are totally different and

you can't get plastic cheese nachos in Taupo

thank goodness.