I’d like to show you my vegetable garden, but we’ll need a boat. What’s more, we’ll need plenty of fuel. The garden is easy enough: it’s just the other side of the garage (or it was last night, anyway); but the veggies will be tricky. We might find the pumpkins on the other side of the road, but the lighter stuff, silver beet for instance, will be somewhere between here and Maggie Island by now. If they picked up a favourable current, there’s every chance my lettuces are being eaten in Lima as I write. That’s Lima, Peru. Hands up if you think we Mustn’t Complain About the Rain Because…

Amazing. I’ve been in the communications business for 48 years and I’m now having to learn how to communicate. With my wife. It’s essential to reconciliation; that is, if you want your conversations to be more meaningful than “pass the salt”. The problem is that we both thought we did. Communicate. Indeed, there’s no doubt that we communicated, but on the level of: “You swine! It’s all your fault.” And the problem, so the counsellor says, is that we’ve established our communication style across 31 years of marriage (30 years, if you count the year we’ve been married, but living apart), and that style won’t sustain us for another round…

We’re erecting mossie screens. My son-in-law and I. A bit of familial bonding. “Com’n give us a hand with the mossie screens,” he said. “We’ll have a beer after.” The mossie screens in question are nine metres from the ground. They involve a ladder, drill, screws, hammer, nails, saw, plane, lots of swearing that’s the colour of sunset over a volcano, and a son-in-law close to death. This doesn’t mean he fell off the ladder, or took his head off with the saw. It means I might have to kill him,  because he’s young and knows everything. All I’ve read over the years has led me to believe that as…

I’m eating breakfast. I’m sitting at a table, on a proper chair. I have a plate, a knife, two slices of toast and a cup of coffee. The cup is made of china. (I only mention these details in case anyone under 40 years old imagines breakfast is at the office desk with a plastic container of last night’s pasta and coffee‑to-go in a cardboard beaker). Surrounding my plate, knife, toast and coffee is an array of … stuff … I’m going to spread on my toast. Let me describe it to you: there is butter, which will go on first, but only if I’m having blackcurrant jam, the rhubarb…

I’m 65. It happened this morning: Saturday, January 3, 2009. Oh God. There’s been a terrible mistake. Yes, yes, I know the maths is correct, but I’m no more an old age pensioner than a bloke with a beard and a turban is necessarily a terrorist! I don’t want to be called “dear” by shop assistants; I don’t want waitresses to pat my hand; I don’t want people to talk loudly when they speak to me; I don’t want to grow vegetables, make models, join a club for people my own age, or wear underwear that looks like old sheets. I don’t even want to haul a caravan to any…