WHATEVER happened to gurgling? Babies are supposed to gurgle. It’s in the books. Watch any movie – any movie with a baby in it. They gurgle and chuckle and make other endearing noises. They don’t snarl. My granddaughter snarls. When you go too near her bone. She’s 11 months old, for God’s sake. She hardly has any teeth worth giving the name. They’re just white marks on her gums, but they can still serrate your finger like a stamp. If I ever lose the tin opener I’ll just give the tins to her to play with. None of this is what I had in mind. I planned to spend the…

SHE arrived. My Mum. I think she’s 82. But that might be kilos. Or chins. She came trundling through customs in a wheelchair with her hair all a-scribble and her chest out like an old square-rigger with its square sails a-billowing. We gave her the baby to hold. Our granddaughter; her great-granddaughter. She squeezed it to her ample bosom and we’re still looking for it. We found a handkerchief, a hairbrush, a piece of toast and her late husband, but no baby. Interesting really. The baby so small and the great-grandmother so large – but the differences stopped there. They both gurgle, they both shake all over when they laugh,…

I AM chucking my bicycle on the tip. I was going to sell it, but if I sell it someone else will ride it and it’s important to me that no-one does. I used to ride it when I first arrived In Australia. Then I discovered Australian drivers treat cyclists the same way they treat cane toads — something to aim at on long journeys to relieve the boredom — so I gave it up. I don’t entirely blame the drivers. Nowadays cyclists make such attractive targets. They wear clothes so bright they bring on instant blindness; and in their desperate endeavour to be seen (thereby reducing the risk of…

I WANT to kill someone. I am suffering from telephone rage – again! The problem with telephone rage is that — luckily, perhaps — it renders killing people almost impossible. Although you do get through an awful lot of phones. It’s reaching the stage where I have to lock myself in a room and eat the key in case my wife should walk in accidentally and in a blind fury I take out my wrath on her, poor thing. Telephone rage is not new. All that is new is the cruel and perverted way in which the most unlikely organisations wreak it on you. I have just rung SPER. SPER…

WHEN I first arrived in Australia I filled in a form giving my country of birth as Great Britain. The woman at the immigration desk carefully crossed out the ‘Great’. Several times. With lots of lines. After that I wrote ‘United Kingdom’ and the man at immigration wanted to know if I hadn’t heard about the fuss the Scots and the Welsh were making about getting their independence. Do Australian immigration officials do this to the people of all nations. I guess they don’t. What kind of pithy riposte can you make to someone who tells you they’re from France, or Namibia? And besides, there wouldn’t be the will. Aussies…