Reports are coming in from reputable sources that our neighbour has broken his toilet.

Our neighbours in the flat downstairs are an old woman and her son, and quite frankly they can be a right pain in the arse sometimes. Their capacity for watching the TV all night with the volume turned right up knows no bounds, and although they have always turned it down when asked, they always make it sound like it’s a big imposition - like me asking it to be turned down so I can sleep at 3am is being completely unreasonable.

He always leaves the door to the stairwell open, despite the notice (and verbal requests) asking for it to be kept shut. When it’s open, birds, moths, flies and other assorted forms of wildlife get in and flutter around before either becoming trapped or dropping dead. Oh, but he closes his own door all right - in fact, he slams it, every time.

They never empty their mailbox of junk mail, so after a few days their junk mail eases its way out of the box and gets blown around the yard. While most of the neighbours take turns to haul the bins out on Tuesday nights, he never does. He parks in other people’s car spots. He smokes in bed, so if we dare to have our bedroom window open for some fresh air, the smoke wafts in instead.

Interestingly, he sometimes works as a cab driver, which probably explains a lot of the stories you hear about cab drivers. Most of the drivers I get are pretty good, but I guess a single bad one can stick in your mind. And I’m just betting that this guy isn’t the best cab driver in the world. Anyway, this work means he comes and goes (and slams doors and smokes) at all hours of the day and night.

All of these factors combine to make him a very irritating person. And for this reason, I have no qualms in making fun of the guy because he’s fat. No, he’s bigger than fat, he’s enormous. We don’t know his name - so we refer to him as Alexei, as in Alexei Sayle, as in "Who is that fat bastard?" He’s so big that when they moved in, the landlady had to have the sink in the toilet taken out because he couldn’t fit.

And today, apparently, he has actually broken the toilet. Snapped the bowl off its base at a 45° angle. Quite an achievement, if you ask me. How embarrassment.

Well, all in all, it’s been a great Christmas long weekend. Lucky next week is broken up by New Year’s Day, otherwise going back to a full work week would be a bit of a blow.

On Christmas Day we awoke to the inevitable pile of presents under the tree, and proceeded at a leisurely pace to open them all. I think we all did pretty well, just about all the presents had been very well chosen. Which is good - it’s always a relief when you don’t have to give them all to your local charity because there’s nothing you like!

After that we went over to my mum’s place for Christmas lunch. It was pretty warm, not sweltering - about 35° (that’s 95° for you people in the Third World still using Fahrenheit), so we sat around in the garden and munched on turkey (or was it chicken?) and ham and mountains of other various Christmassy foods. Again the swapping of presents took place.

If anybody’s reading who doesn’t get Boxing Day off, and is wondering what Boxing Day is for then ummm…. I don’t know. I don’t think anybody really does. But it’s as good an excuse as any to have another day off. Certainly the name is confusing, since it’s Boxing Day when seventy thousand odd people go along to the cricket at the ‘G. Maybe they in Melbourne they should call it Cricket Day. And of course in South Australia it’s called Proclamation Day, because they just have to be different, don’t they?

We spent the rest of the long weekend relaxing in the time-honoured tradition, with occasional expeditions out to see what bargains could be had at the post-Christmas sales. My general conclusion is that if you’re lucky enough to actually want to buy something that’s heavily discounted, then good for you. But there appears to be an awful lot of crap that the stores put out in the discount bins that wouldn’t normally sell, that they’re hoping will be bought by people who are looking for a bargain.

"Wow, look, Garbazanoid Blasters ‘95 on CD-ROM, only three dollars!"

"But you don’t like video games!"

"But it’s only three dollars!"

"But we don’t even have a computer!"

"It’s been marked down from forty dollars! That’s thirty-seven dollars savings! That’s ummm… well that’s a lot of percent, let me tell you! It’s a bargain, a bargain I tell you! Wow, they’re not kidding when they say they’re sales have genuine savings! I’m not missing this opportunity to save thirty-seven dollars! In fact here’s another one - I’ll take two!"

At the moment we’ve been trying to clear a lot of this kind of crap out of the house, with some success, as the two bags and one box behind me filled with stuff ready to go to the Opp Shop are testimony to. What we are looking for is a new fridge with an adequate capacity for our fast growing family. As it happens we’ve already more-or-less settled on the particular model, and it doesn’t appear to be one of the ones discounted very much, if at all.

It’s incredible to think that 1997 is almost over. Wednesday is New Year’s Eve, and I’m determined to see the year out with a bang. I’m not even sure what’s on, but if nothing else eventuates, it’ll probably just be Southbank and/or the City Square enjoying the fireworks.

Last night, the night before Christmas Eve (which could be called Christmas Eve Eve, but it sounds silly) found us enjoying dinner at a nice little (well, medium sized) Italian place in the city with friends from my previous jobs. We had been going to have Indian, but at not quite the last minute, I discovered some features of the chosen Indian place which I felt may have detracted from our dining experience, and not knowing another suitable Indian venue in the vicinity, I opted to re-schedule to the Italian place instead.

I got into the city a bit early, and roamed around watching the poor souls still having to do Christmas shopping. I found, despite not having touched a drop of drink (honest), that I couldn’t resist the lure of those foam reindeer antlers they have for sale on street corners ($3 for charity). What the hell, I thought, if you can’t get into the Christmas spirit on the 23rd of December, when can you?

Given that I was dressed in my work trousers, jacket and tie, I don’t think the girl selling the antlers seriously expected me to buy them, but I did, and she reckoned they matched my tie, so I put the antlers on and trudged up Bourke Street.

Sure, some people stared, but hopefully the sight of a white collar worker with briefcase and antlers put a smile on their faces. At least one complete stranger told me to have a Merry Christmas. And I managed to surprise some friends by sneaking up behind them and bellowing "Merry Christmas!" And to think I used to be quiet and timid.

The meal itself was good. I almost hit the waitress with the antlers a couple of times, but she must have been quick on her feet to jump out of the way.

Everybody turned up except for one bloke and his brother. By phone I discovered that the brother hadn’t even been told about the dinner, and the bloke, one of the most wired people I know, apparently hadn’t checked his e-mail in over 24 hours and had gone off to the wrong restaurant (which had moved anyway). I left the revised address, but he never showed up.

Ah well, the rest of us ate, drank, were merry and generally got into the Christmas spirit. And unlike the last dinner with these people that I went to, nobody even threw up.

And now it’s Christmas Eve. The presents are wrapped, and everything is ready for Father Christmas’s imminent arrival. It just remains to be seen if he’ll have space to park on our roof, and what he’s going to do about the lack of a chimney.

Yowsers. It’s almost Christmas again, which means the year is practically over. Quite frankly I’m amazed at how fast it’s gone. We’re all ready for Christmas. We’ve bought all the presents, we’ve sent all the cards. Well, okay, so I personally didn’t do most of it - like most married men in the western world, when I say "we’ve" done it all, I mean my wife did just about all of it. Everything except forging my signature and buying her own presents.

Actually L did buy one of her own presents, but that was just a freak occurrence. I bought everything else, and with a bit of luck she has no idea what she’s getting. She’ll be reading this, so I’m not going to spill the beans here.

Meanwhile the Christmas festivities have been going strong. The office Christmas tree appeared about a week ago - with lights of course, I’m working for an electricity company right now. And we had a massive three course, four hour lunch last Friday. One of those ones where we all go off to lunch to eat, drink and be merry, and the only people who even bother to come back to the office are those just picking up their bags to take home.

While we were all ploughing into this mammoth lunch, some joker in the office diverted our phone. To America. To some poor sod’s house. And during those hours, about half a dozen calls came through for either me or the guy I share the phone with. The phone system happily diverted the call through to these poor bastards somewhere in the US, who were no doubt trying to enjoy their Thursday evening, and were rather less than pleased to be getting calls from Australia.

We still don’t know who did it, but if we find out, I think we might have to get them to call this unfortunate number and offer profuse apologies.

On Sunday after attending a toddler’s birthday party and holding a "Wine, Cheese, Wallace And Gromit-athon", we headed down to the park to see Santa Claus arrive by helicopter on the cricket oval. He climbed out waving, keeping his hand wisely below the level of the blades - what a picture it would have made if he hadn’t eh? He climbed aboard a kind of sleigh thing on skateboard wheels, which carried him through the carpark and into another bit of the park, pulled by a dozen Samoyed dogs, and pushed by a couple of rather big blokes from the Samoyed Club.

Santa climbed out of the sleigh and made his way down the line of kids, giving each a greeting and a bag of lollies, though he missed L’s now prominent "inner child". I didn’t notice if he was sweating or not, but in that suit, I wouldn’t be surprised.

His good work for the day done, Santa then got back in his sleigh and rode off back through the carpark.

Suddenly, I was running. The tiled walls of the corridor became a blur, as I scrambled towards the end. There were people all around - some walking, some running in the opposite direction to me. And worst, some walking the same direction as me, in my way but oblivious to what was happening, and to my urgency.

I reached the end of the corridor, and leapt up the steps, two or three at a time. A woman and a teenage girl were doing the same, just ahead of me, but slower. This was no time for dawdling, hurry! I almost found a gap and got past them, I think I may have bumped one of them. "Sorry!" I gasped back at them.

I got near the top. My eyes flitted upwards to the screen. I could scarcely believe my eyes. It couldn’t be possible. The laws of physics don’t allow this, do they?

But it was true. The 8:20 Lilydale express. ON TIME. That had never happened before. I kept moving, towards the nearest door. It was still open. I had made it.

I looked back to the girl and the woman. They were now running towards the door too. I stood halfway in, halfway out, making sure the driver wouldn’t speed off without them, and let them board, before doing the same and finding a seat.

The doors closed, the train set off. Those of us who had run for it looked relieved. I don’t usually have to run for this train, it’s usually at least three or four minutes late.

We all settled down into our seats, to read our newspapers and books, listen to our headphones, stare out the window, or just look cool. Except the girl. By the time the train sped through Burnley, she had started to look worried.

Wrong train.

Or at least, right train but wrong passenger.

This is something I’ve done before. Bolted up (or down) the stairs and onto the wrong train, because I didn’t check the screen. I had been lucky though. The train I ended up on went to the station I was going to - just by a more circuitous route.

The girl was not so lucky. She wanted Glen Waverley, and short of forcing the doors and leaping dramatically from the speeding train as if in some wholly unrealistic action movie, she was going to have to backtrack from the next stop. She asked and got advice from a woman, and another who was getting off at the next stop. Catch a train back to Burnley, they told her.

Did she find her Glen Waverley train? I don’t know, I hope so. She’ll be more careful next time.

As for me, despite the freak on time running of the 8:20 Lilydale express this morning, I still made it to work on time.

Another busy week. Highlights included:

• I got a room mate at work. My desk is in a converted conference room, because they ran out of regular desk spots to squeeze people into. After arriving in the morning once or twice to find meetings happening in there (and calmly walking to my desk and settling in, ignoring whoever was gathered in my office!) people seem to have got used to the fact that the room’s not available anymore. My room mate arrived on Tuesday, and while the advance warnings about him being a bit noisy don’t appear completely justified, he’s certainly more lively than many of the people I’ve worked with. Most of Tuesday he was telling co-workers about his adventures last Saturday night, and how he couldn’t remember very much after the Vodka and orange.

• Tuesday’s session with my driving instructor, which was going to be an evening romp in the peak hour traffic, got postponed because his car was being serviced and it got delivered back to him late! I instead went for a spin later in the evening in my sister’s car, and got to experience the joy that is night driving. Surprisingly, I still failed to smash into anything!

• I did get the chance to catch up with my instructor on Saturday. Which was good, because I had a very important question to ask him, something regarding driving that I had been extremely curious about. Had he seen "Driving Lesson", that hilarious and quite scary documentary series on the ABC
  about people learning to drive? Yep, he had. My own driving test is booked in for January 27th, and hopefully I’ll do better than Maureen.

• On Thursday night we finally sorted out which few dozen members of the human race we’d send Christmas cards to, and got them all addressed and signed, with an appropriate (but frighteningly generic) message in each. Something like "Have a great Christmas and a terrific ‘98" was the order of the day, with occasional swapping of adjectives, and additional personalised comments just in case some of these people know each other and compare notes. Thank goodness for self-adhesive stamps, otherwise we’d have worn out tongues dry sticking them on all the envelopes.

• No more driving in my sister’s car - it’s a company one, and they’ve swapped her manual Lancer for an automatic Camry. A promotion of sorts for her - it’s got a boot so big that she can’t reach all the way into it without climbing in - but since I’m trying for a manual licence, it’s not great for me to practice on. So rather than risk losing the amazing ability to move off and switch gears many times in a matter of seconds, I’ll try and think of fearless manual car driving friends that I can hassle.

• And finally, a reasonably quiet weekend - the driving lesson, a haircut, some city Christmas shopping, the local library, and a park crawl with Isaac.

On Saturday, as part of a gentle introduction to our quest to see more of Australia, we set off for Bendigo. Bendigo is about 150K’s north of Melbourne, in the heart of Victoria’s goldmining district. The train took about two hours to get there, weaving its way through varying countryside - from well farmed fields to thick rainforest - and towns of varying sizes.

By the time we arrived in Bendigo it was well and truly lunchtime (we hadn’t left home spectacularly early), so we cruised around the shops looking for some suitable food. Most suitable seemed to be pies and chips from a fine little establishment called Gillies, and we scoffed them down as we sat in the Hargreaves Street mall watching large numbers of the local population passing by.

After that we started exploring, with the first stop the information centre, in the grand old ex-Post Office building on Pall Mall. They were very eager to give me brochures and maps, and almost chased me out of the place before I got a chance to even look at the various souvenirs on sale.

We headed north, up to the Golden Dragon Chinese Museum to check out my roots, but paused outside the door when we saw the (as it turns out, not unreasonable) price of $6. Having a sudden attack of stinginess, and having no idea what was in there, we decided to put it off til later, which quite frankly turned out to be a big mistake. We went instead to look at the Chinese gardens, and the temple, and most impressive they were too, along with the gateway and marble bridge over the Bendigo Creek.

Then we headed back to Rosalind Park, behind the information centre, and strolled for a while there, trying to avoid the muddier spots. Through the park back to Pall Mall, we found what must have been all of Bendigo’s historical tourist trams waiting in the street. They were queued up ready to do a procession through the town to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening tour route - just as soon as a far longer queue of local and visiting politicians and dignitaries had finished their speeches extolling the praises of the trams, the town, the area, and well, just about everything else. They were still jabbering an hour later.

We stocked up on ice creams from an excellent ice cream shop, the name of which escapes me, and headed up the hill that is View Street, where according to the map, there were about half a dozen places of interest within a block of each other. These turned out just to be historic buildings. No, I’m not knocking historic buildings, I was just expecting at least one thing to be something involving a bit more activity than standing, looking up and saying "yep, that’s the old Fire Station/Temperance Hall/School Of Mines And Industries."

After tramping up and down View Street, we were looking for a bit more relaxation, and went back into Rosalind Park for some serious relaxation on the seriously angled sloping lawns, which were thankfully free of mud. Isaac and I climbed to the top of the circa 1931 Lookout Tower and enjoyed the rather impressive view of the town, the gardens and the newly restored waterfalls, with their various groovy statues and things.

Then we decided to stop messing around and do the Chinese museum. Once inside we realised that we should have come here first. It wasn’t just the fact that they have the longest Chinese dragon in the world permanently displayed around the perimeter of the building. It wasn’t just the immaculately presented displays. And it wasn’t just the personal tour we got (including a quick lesson in Origami). Okay, well actually maybe that was it. Anyway, we were rather disappointed that we had to rush things a bit (we didn’t want to have to get the late train back), and we’ve promised ourselves to get back to Bendigo soon - preferably at Easter when the dragon comes out - and make sure we see all that the museum has to offer next time.

Well, so long Bendigo, as Telly Savalas might have said… You’re my kind of town!