IT’s Friday, February 29, as I write. A Leap Year. I’m sitting by the phone. If the door bell should ring, I can hear it. I don’t know which one will go off first. If necessary I can open the door while listening to the phone. It’s highly likely I’ll have to do that because Ñ today being that rogue day that occurs only once every four years Ñ someone will probably ask me to marry them. My expectation is that it will be a woman. If you’re not aware, it’s on this day Ñ once every four years Ñ that women can ask men to marry them, instead of…

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I’m sorry. And if you think it’s an issue for a white Australian to be sorry Ñ you should try being a Pom. A long time ago, when I first started thinking about Aboriginal history and the need for an apology I even thought: not much to do with me really, I didn’t get here until 1989. I overlooked the inconvenient fact that it was my lot that started it. Not only here, but in every continent on the planet with the exception of Antarctica, and that was only because they couldn’t find anything on it that was worth stealing Ñ nor anyone to steal it from. They weren’t kidding…

I CAN’T help feeling a certain pride. Antisocial of me, I suppose, but I feel like one of Robin Hood’s merry men, cheating the Sherriff of Nottingham of his taxes. So the twin cities owe the government $10 million, do they? Or rather, we owe the government $10 million. You and me. Well, not me. I haven’t been fined for anything, so it’s you! You must feel a bit like Ned Kelly, and that can’t be bad. You and 160,000 other people. Come to think of, it’s unlikely that many five-year-olds have been caught speeding, or that many 90-year-olds have been drunk and disorderly. Not in public anyway. So if…

I HAVE gone off cyclists. I used to be one, and then I found cars. As a motorist I tried to treat cyclists with respect. I was horrified at the way cars screamed past cyclists with barely the thickness of a coat of paint between them, on blind bends, the crests of hills, double white lines. And if the road was too narrow to scream past them – they screamed over them. I even wrote sympathetically about cyclists, and the abuse they were subjected to by motorists, in this newspaper. I’ve changed my mind! Since then I have become a pedestrian. No, I have not been banned from driving; I…