I HAVE just been shopping. For a plumbing joint. A simple elbow for a small job I am doing at home. Not even a brass joint. A plastic one. Usual cost $2.60. This one cost me $465. I don’t know where I went wrong. Was it getting married? Was it having children? Was it allowing my children to have children? Was it going shopping with my wife? All of these things, I suspect; but especially the latter. The plumber is in the middle of an industrial estate. I — we — went there on a Saturday morning just before it shut, at 11am. The rest of the industrial estate was…

I HAVE just watched a truly dreadful little movie: There’s Something About Mary. I know most people thought it was very funny and I feel sorry for them. But actually the movie was not the thing that stuck in my mind (well, only in the way diced carrot gets stuck in the throat). It was the bit at the beginning where the board of censors says this movie has “medium-level coarse language” and “sexual references” and that those aged 14 and younger can only see it with their mum and dad. These are, of course, instructions for a different planet. On this one the reverse would be true: if you’re…

WE’RE going away today. For a week. Well, four days actually. It was supposed to be a week but Something Came Up. It happens every time. There are people in the world who organise their holidays 12 months in advance. They frighten me. Their supreme confidence that nothing can go wrong seems to frighten everything. Even the gods. Because nothing does go wrong! They block out the dates in their calendar with indelible pen and the world shuffles around a bit to accommodate them. Wars change dates; volcanoes tighten their buttocks. It’s just another example of confidence breeding success, but I can’t do it. I book a holiday tentatively. It’s…

WE put Granny in a home, but she escaped. It never occurred to us that she could, much less that she would. All the stuff you read; all the advice people chuck at you about whether to do the unthinkable and coax Granny into a home, always ends right there – with granny and your conscience comfortably settled. You agonise for months; you argue, possibly; you perform a few mental gymnastics; and you do it. And in no time the old lady becomes a place you visit now and then, like Magnetic Island but much less attractive and not so… petite. You don’t expect a phone call saying she’s escaped.…

MY wife returned from England this weekend. She’d been away two months. I thought I’d change the sheets. It’s easy. I’ve changed sheets before. I knew it would please her, coming home jet-lagged after 30 hours on a plane to a bed freshly made with crisp, ironed sheets. Ironed? I’ve never ironed sheets. I never will again, either, now I know what’s involved. They don’t make ironing boards for sheets. The bloke in the shop said there was no market for them. But while my wife’s been away I’ve discovered they don’t make ironing boards for shirts, either, and no-one can tell me there’s no market for them. Only handkerchiefs…