I WANT my toothbrush, but it’s in a box. Which is where my wife is going to be if she doesn’t stop packing. We don’t move for a month yet, for God’s sake, but my entire life is in a box. Not just the life I lead now, but the lives I’ve led for the past six decades. They’re all piled up in the lounge room, which is itself in a series of boxes, like some mythological creature that has disappeared up its own backside. And somewhere in there is my toothbrush. Now I think of it as up something’s backside I’m not sure I want it any more, but that’s…

I HAVE some advice. If you’re going to have children — or if you’ve had them already — have the first one put down. Most vets will do it for about $50, I believe, and it’s worth the expense. Don’t get me wrong. I have a first child and he’s very nice. I can hear myself standing in court one day saying: “He’s a good boy really, your Honour.” And, of course, he is. Underneath. The problem is that if you have the first one put down there’s a possibility the second one will become the first one and you’ll end up charged with infanticide and no children at all,…

LOOK, an automatic teller is no big deal. I’m 60, and I can use one. By all the natural laws of the world no-one over 60 can work anything with buttons, unless it’s your fly, and sometimes not even then. But for once in my life I am grateful for the electronic world. You insert your card into the machine, you punch in four digits, it asks you what you want to do, you tell it — and it’s usually withdrawing money — and it does it. It takes me less than 30 seconds. There are people out there who can take three days. Forget road rage and telephone rage.…

I AM selling my house. More precisely, my wife is trying to sell our house. I am trying to pretend it’s not happening. So far three couples have looked at it. None of them liked it. Good! I like it and I don’t want to move. Do you know how much work there is in selling a house? And I don’t mean all the mucking around with solicitors and finding a new place. I mean off-loading the old one. My house is full of little jobs. There’s the knob off the drawer, the window that was smashed by the garden rake in 1999 and has had cardboard in it since,…

TOMORROW is February 29. It’s a leap year. We need them to keep the calendar straight. If we didn’t have them our calendar would go wrong by one day every four years. In 720 years time we’d be celebrating Christmas in winter, like they do in the northern hemisphere, which sounds very sensible to me, but in 720 years time I probably won’t care. But I do care about it being a leap year because February 29 is the one day in every four years when women can ask me to marry them. I am ever hopeful. I have already asked most of them to marry me and they haven’t,…