GUESS what starts on Monday? You might want to get your diary out for this… It’s Local Government Week. Why on earth we’d want a special week devoted to local government, I can’t imagine. We are, after all, stuck with local government for 52 weeks of the year anyway! I mean, what possible benefits could accrue to anyone from having a Local Government Week? Will our councillors go door knocking with collection tins to raise money in a desperate bid to keep the rates down? Will they let us off the rates for the week, to help us celebrate? I don’t think so. It is, of course, a waste of…

HARRY Martin has courage. He wants to see a feeding program set up for the lorikeets in Flinders Mall. I have experience of lorikeets. Lorikeets are carnivorous. Not many people know that. They are closely related to vultures, except vultures wait till you’re dead before they strip your bones of flesh. It would be like filling the city’s ponds (if we have any) with piranhas. Unless Harry has a primitive streak, of course, and when he says “feeding program” he means strapping the sacrifice down and retreating to a safe distance. But I’ve met Harry. He’s a nice bloke and he’s well intentioned. I’ve also fed lorikeets. I’ve fed king…

IT was a scene that is all too rare these days. A man walked into a women’s fashion shop in search of a birthday present for his mother. After the usual browsing he spotted a jumper that he thought would be just right: right size, right style and perhaps the right colour. He took it to the shop assistant. “What colour would you say this is?” he asked. She pondered for a moment. “Sage?” she offered. “Maybe,” he said, “but I thought it was more avocado.” The shop assistant nodded vigorously. “Yes, avocado is closer.” Then she looked at the jumper’s price ticket. “Let’s just see what it says here.”…

I AM so stupid I can’t even boil an egg. My wife says. The world is full of people who are so stupid they can’t boil an egg. Have you ever met anyone who can…? No…? That’s my point exactly. It’s a common expression of scornful dismissal. I don’t include, of course, those people who boil eggs until you can play golf with them. That’s easy. Where I live the people who can’t boil an egg include my son’s partner, the next-door neighbour, my mother, and most of the checkout staff at our local supermarket. And my wife. But in her case it’s because the phone rang, the eggs were too…

WE are a species of contradictions. You need to meet my wife to understand this. Or go to a Harry Potter movie. It’s like this… we live in the most technologically advanced age in the history of humans (And probably in the history of dolphins, newts and any other species). We can turn the most basic building blocks of life into diagrams of spirals with little balls whizzing round them. We can take moving pictures of Aunt Ethel, hurl them into space (which is best place for them) and bounce them back down to the rest of our relatives in less time than it took for me to type the…