Oh God – they’re at it again! I lose patience. This week astronomers announced they had found water on another planet. It’s a very important discovery, they tell us. We’re going to learn a lot. Like… how to construct a shower that runs at a constant temperature without wild, genital‑numbing fluctuations; or how to keep next door’s cat from peeing on the geraniums. No? Silly me.          They don’t actually tell us what we’re going to learn that’s so important. They probably have some problems with that – because this planet they’re talking about it 63 light years away, or in real terms, 598,500,000,000,000 kilometres. Pioneer 10, the rocket that was…

TODAY is the seventh of the seventh of the seventh (07/07/07) and as I said a month ago, something was bound to happen. Well, it has. There has been a terrorist attack on Australian and American military forces, right here in Townsville. And I’m it. I’m not the most dangerous terrorist in the world and my target is not civilians, or iconic buildings or even soldiers, sailors or airmen. It’s idiots. In this case the idiots who are mismanaging our language. Have you ever heard of Talisman Saber? Well, maybe… it’s the name of a joint military exercise between American and Australian military forces. It’s just finished, and Townsville was…

WHAT happened to breakfast? They used to be meals! With courses! Bacon and eggs; followed by toast; coffee. In winter, porridge; followed by toast and coffee. Or my mum would make pancakes, which is the most time-consuming breakfast in the world (if you’re the one making the pancakes) but the quickest to eat. She never stopped. There were four of us children, like fledging pelicans – all mouth and demand – into which she shovelled pancakes. Now breakfasts don’t exist. Well, yes… we eat something (usually out of packet) and we call it breakfast, but that’s not the same thing. Breakfast isn’t an item of food. Breakfast is a period…

DO you know what check-pants are? I didn’t, and I have a pair. I thought it was my secret, but no… it appears everyone in the world has check pants. Everyone over 25 years, that is. They have nothing to with checks, as in the pattern. They’re the trousers you had before you were 25, that you keep handy so you can drag them out and try them on, in the sad and forlorn hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll fit again. Of course, they never do. I’ve had mine since 1972. There was a day in 1983 when I almost managed to get the zip all the way up,…

THEY used to say you could count a man’s worries by the keys that he carries. Now you just count his passwords. I never knew I had so much to protect. When it was keys I only ever had one, and that was for the car. I didn’t even own a house key. Now I have passwords, and if passwords were keys (in a way I suppose they are) then I’d be so weighed down I couldn’t even crawl out of the house. I didn’t know I had so much that needed passwords. I have bank accounts, email accounts, accounts with people who have sold me stuff and with people…