I NEED a hobby. Everyone says. It’s because I spend all my time tending the garden – and I hate gardening. And I spend it mending the house – and I hate do-it-yourself (I prefer a get-someone-to-do-it-for-you world). And because gardening and house-fixing don’t appeal to me I huff while I’m doing them. This has been interpreted by my family as a deep and abiding dissatisfaction with life. “You need a hobby,” they say. “Why don’t you go to TAFE and learn about car engines? That’d be useful.” See what they’re up to? They don’t really care whether I’m content with my lot. They want their cars fixed on the…

I AM being Looked After. My wife has flown to England for four weeks. She’s been gone for one of them. I expect to be dead by the time she returns. My children are Looking After me. I sound ungrateful and I shouldn’t. They are doing a magnificent job, but if you thought the phrase “killing him with kindness” was just a figure of speech, think again! I knew this would happen. Just before she went through Immigration she said to the gathered family: “Be good, and Look After Dad.” I don’t know if she exactly said it with capitals, but with capitals is how they’ve been doing it. I…

THE computer age is not what it’s cracked up to be. So we have the internet? So we have e-mail? So messages come screaming around the curve of the world at very nearly the speed of light? Does this mean the work gets done any faster? No. It means I learn that my sister in England has the flu before she has even taken the aspirin. It means I can write back with the message: “Take an aspirin,” before she’s had time to pop the tablet out of the packet. But the work goes on at exactly the same pace it always did. Possibly slower, because internet access in the…

I HAVE menu envy. It’s a relief to discover I’m not just a selfish bastard who is never satisfied with what he’s got. Apparently it is a well-known psychological phenomenon. Other people covet cars and lifestyles; I covet the food on my wife’s plate. On anyone’s plate. Not at home. But at home we both have the same thing and she always gives me the best bits because, she says, she loves me. But in a restaurant I scour the menu for the stuff that will pile higher, taste better and look prettier – and I always lose. It’s a medical condition. There’s no cure. Apart from always eating at…

I’VE just driven home from a committee meeting and I know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I’m going to travel the world seeking out committee members — from the harsh and icy tundra of the Russian arctic to the sand-blasted oases of the withering Sahara — and I’m going to poison them. All. I thought at first I’d only tear out their tongues, but they’d still bang the tables and wave their agenda papers and make guttural noises (some of them already do), so poisoning them is easier. It takes special qualities to be a committee member; something besides a love of your own…