Alive: aboveground, animate, animated, breathing, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, capable of life, chipper, conscious, endowed with life, enjoying health, enlivened, eupeptic, existent, fine, fit, fit and fine, full of beans, healthful, healthy, in condition, in fine fettle, in fine whack, in good case, in good health, in good shape, in health, in high feather, in mint condition, in shape, in the flesh, in the pink, inspirited, instinct with life, live, living, long-lived, quick, tenacious of life, very much alive, viable, vital, vivified, zoetic.

Kicking: sticking the boot in. Still alive after 11 years and 11 collections of columns, Joe Bennett sticks the boot into Beckhamania, golf umbrellas, beer ads, Hillary Clinton, all sorts of bureaucrats, and a fatso from the Middle East who flies halfway round the world to shoot our deer.

But he writes loving stuff, too, about fish and postcards and Pavarotti and butter and dead dogs.

From his fastness in Lyttelton, New Zealand's best-loved columnist once again dissects the weird, wide and sometimes less than wonderful world with peerless wit and concision.