LOVE, like sex, needs variety. So I am shaving my head. To make me more loveable; not more sexy. I know, it’s ridiculous; but you’ve got to try, haven’t you? I suspected our relationship was in limbo when the pyjamas came out. Actually it wasn’t so much the pyjamas as the colour. Lime-green pyjamas (made of flannelette) are more of a warning than a fashion statement. They say “don’t touch” in much the same way as a rattlesnake’s rattle, a skunk’s smell and a psychopath’s axe. I’ve seen them before, these pyjamas. The last time was when I threatened to burn them. I ripped them away (not from off my…

Mothers’ Day is May 14. That’s the Sunday after tomorrow. I’m telling you because you probably didn’t know. And you probably didn’t know because it seems there’s no one out there who’s prepared to tell you. Oh, they tell you it’s coming. The posters are everywhere. But the actual date is a closely guarded secret. Clearly, the posters are designed by women. They deliberately leave the date off in the hope you’ll miss it, giving them license to make your life hell for the next 12 months, and ensuring that every other anniversary is not only seared into your brain with a hot poker, but is also very expensive. Or…

If you see a pumpkin – tread on it. But do it early. Otherwise they get so big you just hurt your foot. I only issue this pumpkin alert because I believe this is the year they may take over. It’s a well known fact that pumpkins are aliens, lurking in the guise of vegetables (actually, they’re fruit). Unsuspecting gardeners wander through pumpkin patches looking for one to eat, but instead the pumpkins drag you down and suck your brains out. The small ones wriggle in through your ear and you spend the rest of your life as a pumpkin clone. If you’re alert to the problem you can spot…

There is an unwritten law in our house that says plastic containers are someone else’s responsibility. We don’t have a cupboard for our plastic containers. If we did it would need to be the size of a ship container, because our entire kitchen is some kind of weird plastic-attracting magnet, but that’s not the point. The point is that plastic containers never, ever get beyond the draining board, and even that far is a tortuously slow journey filled with recriminations and divorce lawyers. No one ever wants to wash them up; and when, as the result of some acrimonious vilification on the part of a partner, they finally do get…

I KNOW where Australians get their strength of character from. It’s supposed to be from the tough time they had trying to tear a living from the harsh and unforgiving terrain, but it’s not. It’s from Easter egg hunts. Most societies have rites of passage, like chucking yourself at the ground from a high tower with only vines wrapped round your ankles, or laying on a mound of red ants or — incredible, but apparently true — bludgeoning your willy with a rock, but here in modern Australia we have Easter egg hunts. Elsewhere in the world Easter egg hunts have nothing to do with passing from innocence to adulthood.…