Jim Bunny Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

This is about a rogue bra, a hotel baron, a tarnished reputation, ponds of greywater on the floor, mobile phones and common sense.

All the ingredients for an industrial strength moan. We all enjoy a moan – so come for the ride. My bitching and bellyaching might make you feel better about your lot.

It starts with a bloke called Conrad Nicholson Hilton Snr who ran pubs. There are more than 584 Hilton branded hotels across six of the seven continents, so he was pretty good at it.

Now, apart from being good at stocking a mini fridge, tucking in the corners of bed sheets, and making squillions, Conrad was a profound chap.

Quote: 'We have no greater God-given responsibility than that of extending a helping hand to our fellow man”. Noble stuff, but he did back the talk with the walk? Last year his charity donated NZ$700 million to the impoverished and disadvantaged. That would have paid for a pretty flash stadium for the Tauranga Domain, which has got to happen. And with the change, a museum on Cliff Road, which should have happened. But let's not stir the pot.

But perhaps Hilton Snr's deepest utterance, his most meaningful gift to mankind, at least in my mind, was this titbit. 'Remember to tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub.” Doesn't everyone? Did we need be reminded? It should be the eleventh commandment, and violators sentenced to an eternity in Hamilton.

Consequences

But it seems not to have occurred to many fellow gym bunnies that if you leave the shower curtain outside during a shower, there will be consequences. Any water that strikes the shower curtain will drain onto the floor. I thought any adult could figure that. At worst there will be a flood of Ark proportions, and at best there's still an unholy mess that the next user has to wade through. They never mop up, they just walk out with impunity and leave us to wallow in. Lovely!

I asked one offender if he would do this at home? He just said: 'I'm not at home”. Very droll! He won that with a good comeback.

Perhaps all the other animals in his farmyard behave the same way. I wonder what the floors like in their throne room? No, I don't want to wonder.

And all that before we concern ourselves with athlete's foot, wart viruses and a nasty bag of HPV viruses that flourish in the wetness of shared showering facilities at a gym. And something nasty called methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, which is resistant to antibiotics. Very nasty. The body's ripped, shame about the viruses.

Any-hoo, I suspect Conrad was thinking big picture when he made the shower curtain in the bathtub comment – when a bank collapses, when a car company goes belly up, when an airline folds, it's always because someone didn't attend to the small stuff first. Someone didn't tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub.

A white lacy bra

I ‘didn't tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub' when I grabbed my blue Nike gear bag from the shelves after a gym workout and headed for the infested swamp that is the shower. I opened the bag to get the body wash and there it was…a white lacy bra. And it didn't belong to this bloke. Right kind of bag, an identical bag, but I had grabbed the wrong bag. I hadn't paid attention, didn't attend to the small things...didn't tuck the shower curtain.

I get back into my kit and do the walk of shame with some unsuspecting women's bag to the front desk. I looked guilty, behaved guilty, and was found guilty, because the receptionist didn't quite buy into my explanation about how I came to be rifling through a female member's gear bag.

Oh the shame! I went to the gym for a workout and emerged with a very public fetish disorder and Conrad's wisdom ringing in my head.

For weeks after I walked sheepishly into the gym, sure they were still gossiping about the dodgy old guy who hankers for lacy white bras. Well, I don't. I prefer pastel ones.

Now let's forget the metal heads, the dead lifters, who drop weights from a great height, sending seismic shocks through the gym. No-one's impressed.

Gym protocols

And if you research gym protocols – something you could do if stuck in traffic on Hewletts Rd – there's not a fitness establishment in the world that condones idle mobile phone activity in a gym. Okay – here are two schools of thought. Mobiles can be a tool for workouts, but there is no place for Facetiming while on the treadmill. I remonstrated with one young ‘offender', who after five minutes of tortoise-like walking had called two mates to explain she was having a ‘workout'. Workout? The only thing working out were her fingers and her yappy gums.

'RUDE!” she fired back at my rolling eyes and deep sighing. Uh uh – only one rude person here young lady.

Now you can understand the big issues impacting my life this week. I hope it makes you feel better.