From time to time there’s a story so big on the news that it dominates everything else in the western world. Something you’ll remember in decades to come, and tell your offspring exactly where you were when you heard the news. For me it’s been the death of John Lennon (on the telly when I got home from school), the Julian Knight (on the telly after watching some late-night show) and Martin Bryant (watching from Seattle, USA) massacres, the outbreak of the Gulf War (at part time job in a shop), and… well, that’s about it.

And today’s death of Princess Diana - that was definitely one of those. We were waiting at a tram stop in Richmond, listening to a radio on outside a shop. You just don’t know what to think, except Wow. Shit. Eek.

A few minutes later we were with or near other people, who didn’t know yet. I felt almost compelled to mention it. "By the way…" But you don’t want to say anything - you don’t want to be the person to break the bad news. TV has trained professionals who do that.

There was something missing when I got into the city today. The City Weekly! It’s a weekly magazine handed out at the station every Thursday morning, but today the hander-outerers were nowhere to be seen. gasp.

How would I survive without my Thursday morning fix of city gossip? Without Kate Langbroek’s usually amusing column? Without the completely silly fashions they seem to find every week?

And most importantly, what about the quirky feature they have every week? Last week it was the cheapest and most expensive of everything they could find (eg hamburgers, pets, cakes, etc)… previously they’ve surveyed the junk on people’s desks and the ritual that is footy tipping… What would it be this week? How could I find out? Where was this essential CBD mag with the initials so very similar to TCWF?

Thankfully I found one at lunchtime. Otherwise there might have been a major crisis. Chanting office workers might have converged on parliament, demanding their TCW!

Today was my birthday. Along with Don Bradman and Mother Teresa. I invited them out for drinks to celebrate, but apparently they were both busy. I think someone else in the office had a birthday too, because I heard people singing it from behind some partitions somewhere.

It was just the immediate family doing the birthday cake thing after dinner tonight. It’s a bit of a worry when you can’t blow out all the candles in one go anymore. Next year I think I’ll go into training for it to make sure I’m ready.

The real celebration for my birthday has been delayed a week, until my brother-in-law gets here for his visit, with a bundle of presents from overseas rellies in his suitcase. I hope he knows what they are; I can just imagine him getting quizzed in airports…

"Are you carrying anything belonging to another person?"

"Err… yeah, kind of… some packages…"

"Do you know what’s inside these packages?"

"Not really, they’re a surprise…"

"Just come with us please sir, this will only take a minute."

It was a pretty crappy weekend as far as the weather goes, so we didn’t get out very much. I spent some of Sunday sorting through all my tax stuff to take to the accountant tonight. (Yes, I have an accountant. Don’t give me shit about it. This isn’t the sleevenotes of Neil’s Heavy Concept Album or something.)

Why is it that when it comes to tax time, all those receipts and other bits and pieces that you thought you’d filed so carefully away during the past year, somehow go missing and you can’t find all the ones you thought you had? I was sure there’d be more charity receipts and stuff.

In the end I found everything, but that’s not the amazing bit. The amazing bit is that it’s only August and I’ve got it all organised - usually I’m skidding along the October deadline before I get around to it.

That modem I won
arrived today. It is a 33600 bps model - not a 300 bps model like in my dream/nightmare!

Less than twenty-four hours after I posted the above entry online, paper towel had re-appeared in the bathroom at work. Never underestimate the power of the Net!

From time to time people ask me "what ever happened about…" If you’ve been wondering about various things I’ve talked about, but haven’t mentioned in some weeks, here’s a summary:

• Neighbours (13/8) - much quieter since the second time I woke up the mother by knocking on the door at 3 in the morning asking for the son’s TV to be turned down. He seems to be sleeping better now, judging from the snoring I can hear through the floor, which sometimes sounds not unlike how I imagine a dozing buffalo might sound.

• Dead possum on the power line (30/4) - still hanging in there, decomposing slowly.

• Work (12/8) - despite assurances to the contrary, it’s pretty quiet at the moment.

• Glenhuntly Variety Store closing down sale (19/7) - Still trading.

It would seem that, having given up on the idea of the paperless office, the company I work at is trying out the paperless bathroom instead. Err, I mean for drying your hands - if they took the actual toilet paper away I think they’d face immediate petitions, strike action, and maybe a riot or two thrown in the good measure.

The substitute is the hand drier, normally unused by 90% of the toilet-using population. Usually the only people who bother with it are those who are so fussy about getting every last droplet of H₂O off their hands that they use the paper and the drier, or those who are so fed up with seeing the huge pile of ex-tree that has developed in the bin by late afternoon that they decide to make a futile gesture for the environment and not use the paper towel.

But now, we’re all using it, whether we like it or not. And so we’re all discovering where exactly to put your hands so that the sensor realises you exist and turns the hot air on. And how to get them actually dry, you have to shake your hands out thoroughly, and make sure you rub them together under the drier like some kind of evil plotting baddy in a cheap suspense film.

Splish splosh splash. Shake shake shake. Rub rub rub Muuuhahahahahahahaaaa!

It’s not the end of the world. We’ll all survive. And in the extra time it takes to dry hands with the drier, we can try and answer the following question: Why is it that hand-dryers in bathrooms always have the brand name and company phone number, and sometimes even a sales pitch on them? Like you’re going to look at it and think "yeah, I could do with one of these for home", and go and ring them up?

We’ve been having a few more hassles with our neighbours in the flat downstairs. It’s nothing major, you understand, just a matter of a television blaring infomercials at three o’clock in the morning. And it’s in the room directly below our bedroom, while I, Runner-up of the Pan-Pacific Light Sleepers Competition 1997, try to get a good night’s sleep to help deal with the day ahead.

So I did what any sensible person would do. I thumped on the floor, in the vain hope that whoever had the TV pumped up would hear <bang> <bang> <bang> and interpret this as "Excuse me, but would you mind turning the television down, I’m having difficulty in sleeping". Or possibly what I was actually thinking which was "Turn that bloody racket off! What kind of moron is up at three in the morning watching infomercials anyway?!?"

This of course, didn’t work, because either the miscreant couldn’t hear it over the TV, or they had decided that it was in the best interests of the world and indeed the universe at large that they continue watching infomercials at 120dB.

After trying for a few minutes to find a sleeping position that would involve either the pillow or my hands or both covering both of my ears, and failing to find any that wouldn’t involve spending most of the rest of my life in a wheelchair with serious back problems, I went downstairs and rang their doorbell.

Manually operated doorbells have a habit of sounding particularly cranky and urgent in the dead of night, if you ring them the right way. Which I did. After a couple of rings I could hear heavy breathing behind the door, and was certain I was being watched through the peep-hole. Who was it? Some mutant creature from the pit, with three heads and claws instead of hands and a penchant for watching infomercials?

"Who is it?" a sleepy middle-aged woman’s voice called out.

I explained that I was Thax from the planet Thorgwarz 7, that their TV was so loud that it was stopping generations of Thorgwarzians from spawning and invading their puny world, and could she please turn the volume down.

Actually, no, I explained that their TV was so loud it was keeping me awake. And though I probably sounded quite irritable, I tried to be terribly polite, because I really would prefer in this type of situation that the TV would just be turned down, rather than getting into a huge argument about it.

She went and turned it down, and explained later when I ran into her on the stairs at a more civilised hour that her (adult) son sometimes can’t sleep, and when that happens he turns on the TV. Erm… right. (Why infomercials and why at such an annoyingly loud volume, I don’t know.)

Anyway, I returned to bed, and happily fell asleep to the sound of the son’s snoring, which was probably almost as loud as the TV, but much less annoying.

This was a week and a half ago. It happened again on Monday night, more or less as above, including the bit about the aliens which I didn’t really say. But it wasn’t infomercials, it sounded more like a really bad scifi movie.

But I’ll try and be grown up about it. As long as I remain friendly towards them, I guess the woman will keep turning down the TV when I ask - and will probably try and get the son to keep it down, so she isn’t the one who has to answer the door at three o’clock in the morning.

I won’t argue with them about it. I won’t intentionally do do silly things that irritate them. I won’t do anything that might cause a confrontation and the assorted hassles that would go with it.

So I’ll just keep quiet, not make a fuss, and quietly post this story on the Web, where tens of millions of people can read all about it. It’s the mature thing to do.

Management has spoken. There is work for me to do. Which is good. Because although sitting around at work doing nothing for four months might be some people’s idea of a good time, it’s not mine. It’s quite possible that I could die of boredom in those circumstances. Or at least go insane from it. Which I’d prefer not to do.