Axe woman, we are reliably informed by Radio NZ Hastings, New Zealand, has threatened a store owner over a bread fight. The scene of the crime we are told is Duke Street. Duke Street is in a small suburb called Mahora in the town of Hastings. Hastings is in the North Island of New Zealand which everyone knows is as close to paradise as our marble in space can get. Thanks to Google Maps which has so many interesting features such as photos of odd-ball people doing odd things in odd places, we can all goggle at the probable shop where it all went down in far away New Zealand.
In typical New Zealand style, where privacy is more important than anybody's need to know everything interesting, the report did not reveal the exact name of the shop - but fiddling around with Google Maps we can draw some conclusions as Duke Street is almost as small as paradise itself and there are only two shops there. They are both in the same corner store area and one wonders about the competition for customers, as the only other shop in Duke Street appears to be in direct competition for greasy chips.
Axe woman the second act of a bread absurdity
The true life axe woman was only the second act in an absurdity that shakes my faith in paradise somewhat. A man entered into an argument with the shop owner.
Now in New Zealand, that corner store that sells milk, bread, comfort food and Indian Takeaways is known as a Dairy. Or in other words - the only place in paradise where you can buy more than one packet of cigarettes a year without the thought police monitoring your spending habits. But I digress - this man went to a Dairy to buy some bread and ended up beating up the owner of said store, leaving him with two black eyes.
He then fled - presumably with his loaf.
If the bread obsessive assailant is hoping to avoid being arrested by the local police - his cowardly dash for freedom will probably be short lived as his partner is now in custody. How do you resolve a bread dispute in paradise? Well, it appears that grabbing an axe and threatening the bread seller with his life is a reasonable option if you are a female and you spend a lot of time reading comics in the "Thor" series and get into the rather bloody character named 'Blood Axe.' Maybe that is not the real reason why she grabbed her axe and rushed off to the Dairy threatening a dirty deed - but the mind boggles to think of any other reasonable explanation.
Bread versus hamburgers in paradise
The furor over the loaf of bread would be understandable perhaps if the man had rather ordered a hamburger. This because in New Zealand hamburgers often come with a somewhat unappealing combination of pineapple, apricot jam and beetroot. If he had ordered a burger with no beetroot and just a sprinkling of halal mince meat and the owner had dished up the unfortunate beetroot and apricot jam instead, the enraged response could be viewed with sympathy by almost any jury in paradise. But - no. It seems that the food rage was all about a plain loaf of bread.
Two people have just ruined their day and their future because they lost their temper. Another person is traumatized and probably wishing his life career had kept him far from paradise.
The moral of this story is that there is no paradise. There is no place safe from thugs and thuggish behavior. Nevertheless, it should be noted that New Zealand might be the closest place to paradise you will find on our planet. I arrive at this conclusion as the story managed to make it onto prime time news on a day when the rest of the world is discussing the imminent outbreak of World War Three, the conspiracy of the rogue planet Niburu which is trying to crash into Earth, and other apocalyptic forecasts, including Donald Trump's imminent demise by the collective willpower of the American Democrats.
