We face possibly the biggest challenge of the year in the coming week. Forget moving house. Forget the baby’s arrival. We have to tidy the desk. A new computer is coming. Yep, a multimedia Pentium system, which should be state of the art for at least 15 minutes.

It’s been a good 10 years since I actually bought a newcomputer on the cutting edge of technology. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to wipe out my savings with one purchase.

Why is it that whenever you’re carrying a large amount of money, or an important document, you keep imagining that it’s crawling out of your pocket? You feel obligated to reach in and push it further down into the pocket - thereby risking accidentally pulling it out as your hand comes out again. You can’t win.

My mother is a pauser. On the phone to her, those moments of silence which at a party would spell instant death are commonplace. But you can tell I work in computers; all I can think about is the wasted bandwidth. An open line, between her place and mine. Broadcasting static. What a waste.

(My mum read that entry, and boy did she take it seriously!)

The winter has arrived in Australia. Well, okay, so those of you in the northern states probably haven’t even noticed. But we down here in Melbourne certainly have, I can tell you. I’m glad I’ve already had my winter haircut. If I have a haircut after it starts to get cold, for the first few days afterwards my ears are liable to freeze off.

Not that it gets terribly cold. It’s not the icy bitterly cold thirty-below-zero freeze-your-balls-off Abominable Snowman weather they get in parts of the northern hemisphere. It doesn’t even snow. Well, not in the cities, anyway. It’s the kind of wimpy winter weather that gives Australia its reputation for having a warm climate.

I’m a parent now, so I’m obligated to start making stories up about walking to school in the dark to tell my son. It’s a shame I can’t think of any. I do remember some kind of social group we formed that involved meeting everybody in the same carriage of the same train every morning, but that doesn’t have a suitable amount of suffering. I can’t even make out that I had to walk six miles through the snow dressed in an old potato sack. Maybe I’ll just have to lie.

Last week I was reminded of some of the other aspects of my childhood. We once lived in a block of flats where one of the neighbours would use stale wafer biscuits to bribe all the kids to go play somewhere else.

But what I really remember was the spy clubs. After I’d got hold of every Usborne book that involved detectives, codes, invisible ink and schoolyard espionage, there was a phase of trying to recruit my fellow classmates for spy rings. It never worked of course. The walkie talkies always broke down, there was nothing that important that it had to be sent in code, and every time we tried to give our agents numbers like in Get Smart everyone wanted to be 007.

This went so far that when I got a new desk for my bedroom I carefully placed it so as not to have my back to the window. Imagine, ten years old and I thought I was head of ASIO.

They often say that life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. I discovered during the birth that this is not entirely true. Attached to the placenta was the following leaflet:

Okay, I know you’ve all been waiting to hear about this. Well okay, so a few of you have shown a passing interest. All right, so one person asked when it happened. Here’s the birth report. I’m not completely knowledgable on all the correct terminology, so forgive me if it sounds a little muddled.

It all started yesterday morning, around 1am, when L’s contraptions started getting strong. Yes, the utensil was contrapting. By 10am they were getting regular, so we called the hospital. They said to go in, so we did. The cab driver looked very relieved that the waters didn’t smash during the ride, leaving antibiotic fluid all over his seats. Especially when he drove through the Burke Road roadworks. Bump bump bump…

The nurse used a monitor to measure the heartbeat of the feet. The contraptions continued, and a doctor came around just after 1pm, and said the cervix was 4cm dilapidated. To get things moving, the doctor burst the mum’s brains, and labour began in earnest.

Once the cervix was fully dilapidated, pushing began. With the help of two midwives (a good cop/bad cop team if ever I met one), as each contraption came, L pushed for all she was worth. I haven’t seen anyone that sweaty since the Hard Yakka overalls commercial.

After a while we thought we could see the top of the head, and sure enough, a few contraptions later, the head came out. Following the head, the rest of the baby, with the umbrella cord, which I got to cut. Lucky they had left-handed scissors handy.

They gave baby Isaac (it means "he laughs") a little oxygen to get the blue blood out of his cheeks. Then the placemat (or afterburn) arrived, looking red and horrible. We made sure we got a picture of it, just to shock the chemist. And the celebrations commenced.

(NB. Need to investigate the possibility
that a midwife with personal odour
problems is called a midwiffy.)

Okay, it’s Sunday night. I spurn the Eurovision Song Contest and pump up the Led Zeppelin. I wipe the screen with my promotional DHL static wipe thing, and sit down at the keyboard. But am I inspired? To be honest, no.

Actually, it’s lucky that I made it. With the baby almost overdue(*), it’s impossible to plan beyond the next ten minutes. Sure, I planned to do the drying-up, take a quick visit into bogland, and then come and write this. But at any minute, the scheduled program could be cancelled, and the 1995 Home To Hospital Dash could be on.

(*) Depending on what date estimate you believe.

I didn’t think that nervousness about the imminent arrival was affecting me. Until last Tuesday night, when I entered the bathroom.

• The plan: to brush my teeth.
• The execution: Pick up the shaver, turn it on, start shaving.

Hmmm. I was halfway through shaving when L asked: "What are you doing?" I stopped. I turned it off. And stared at it. I think I’m going out of my mind.

So anyway, no, the baby hasn’t arrived yet. And no amount of shouting "Isaac! Get down here!" has worked yet. I guess it’s like waiting for a bus. You know it’s going to appear eventually. You’re just not sure exactly when.

Well, today it happens - all phone numbers in my little part of the world, Melbourne, grow by a digit. A nine in front of every one. The government’s communications authority, Austel, claim it’s all to allow more phones, better services - all the usual stuff that Austel usually claim.

But is that the real reason? I’ve uncovered a plot by major telephone manufacturers to lobby to have phone numbers made longer, so that the buttons on their phones wear out sooner, and have to be replaced. If the average family makes two calls a day, and instead of dialling a 7 digit local number, dials 8 digits, that’s 730 extra buttons pressed on that family’s phone in one year. And they’re almost all "9". Will our telephones stand up to that sort of treatment? Time will tell.

I don’t really mind, actually. I just think it’s a shame that our home phone number, which at the moment is nearly symmetrical, and very easy to remember, will have these qualities shattered by adding a 9. Oh well. At least it’s given me a chance to make a new answering machine message. And maybe we’ll stop getting calls for the video rental place.