EVERY week I try to be funny. Sometimes I fail, I know. But I try. Not this week. I am about to spend my first Christmas on my own in 63 years. I managed to have my leg broken by a drunken cyclist back in 1949, and spent Christmas and my birthday in hospital, in traction, but my mum and dad and big sister were there, and the local Rotary Club choir, a Santa Claus who smelled of iodine, and lots of other sick kids, too, and I seem to remember we had a nice time. I came close in 1977, when I was 33 years old and sailing a…

I’VE bought a new bed. One day soon I hope to sleep in it. Meanwhile I am on the sofa, it’s 3am, and I am writing this as a warning to others. Why aren’t I in the bedroom? Because the bloody bed is in the bedroom. In pieces. There are more bits to this bed than there are bones in a kipper, and they are strewn across the bedroom floor, streaked with blood and hair and bits of skin. This is what comes of trusting experts. Actually, maybe not. I have assumed that people who make flat-pack furniture employ experts to design it, but that’s clearly nonsense. Not experts in…

I THINK I’ll try Zen Buddhism. I’m not sure about the philosophical values, but I like their gardens. I’m sick of trying to grow vegetables; raking pebbles will make a nice change. And if I get bored I can always introduce a carefully placed carrot. Bought from a shop, let me stress. I am giving up growing food. Raking rocks into calming patterns will be less stressful. And there is more nutrition in rocks than exists in all the vegetables I have ever eaten from my garden. It’s not that I can’t grow them. You can grow anything in a North Queensland garden. But eating them is a different matter. To…

FLYING to Townsville. From Brisbane. It’s only an hour. I can sit for an hour, even if I am sandwiched between a sumo wrestler on one side and a fridge with a perm on the other. How come they have two armrests each and I don’t have any? That can’t be right. And how am I supposed to adopt the brace position? This is the bit where, in the event of a crash, you rest your arms on your knees and your head on your arms. You do this because, when the crash comes, death will be instant as your neck snaps; or your head will be driven in to…

WHAT about going to the lavatory? That’s not the only issue, but it’s a significant one. There’s also: how do they get their food; where do they sleep; do they have wives and families? I mean, lighthouse keepers had at least the basics, like an armchair and a bed. Sure, the rooms never had any corners and sleeping must have been tricky with the light going off and on, off an on, all night; but at least they could get out and walk about a bit and have a pee into the ocean, so long as they didn’t do it to windward. But if you work in crane that’s not…