Not much to report, other than that I had to work most of the weekend, which sucked more than … I was about to make a bad joke then, but maybe I won’t.

Some stupid bint in the office today has a phone that sounds like a fire alarm. Seriously, a slow crescendo "whooop" kind of sound. How fecking stupid is that.

Thankfully she was only visiting.

I don’t have anything against mobile phones per se. I have one myself. It’s just that an awful lot of people in the office I work in seem to think it’s a good idea to have some deafening annoying ring tone, and then leave them on their desks. WTF is the point of having a mobile phone if you don’t take it with you? Do these people think others have nothing better to do than either (a) listen to Que Sera Sera all the time?

Gee. I’m doing a lot of whinging about people. Am I becoming a cranky old man?

… then get the cops to look for the big Italian-looking bloke in the dark red old-model Commodore that I got into an argument with down the street this afternoon.

Well I mean, what kind of moron stops right in the middle of a pedestrian crossing, behind banked up traffic going nowhere because of a train going by, then when asked nicely to move off the crossing so me and my kids and some woman with a double-sized pram can cross, starts a tirade of abuse, shouting insults about myself and (would you believe) my mother.

I bet he’s never even met my mother.

I pointed to the crossing again, called him a moron and kept walking. He actually looked like he was about to get out of the car, as his kid and wife looked on. What was he going to do, duff me up on the street in front of dozens of people? What a tosser.

Actually, I think I’m pretty safe. He wouldn’t be in the mafia. There’s no way a mafia dude would drive such a crap car as that.

Last night we went to see the guy who is probably my favourite performer - Paul Kelly - and his band at the Forum Theatre. I have a number of promotional t-shirts of various designs, but PK is the only one who warrants two t-shirts in my collection. And his band shouldn’t be overlooked either - they are a supremely talented group of guys.

Anyway, on the tram on the way, a couple of amusing things worth noting. One was that as we passed it, the clock on the silo did indeed say eleven degrees. The other was that a bloke got on with a didgeridoo, and after some encouragement from his fellow passengers, proceeded to give it a bit of a blast. The tram rolled through Yarra Park with him playing it, everybody watching and listening intently. It was like a little preview of From Little Things Big Things Grow. And when he stopped everyone applauded.

As I got on the train this morning, so was a guy on crutches. He seemed to be struggling a bit to board. There were no seats, and he stood next to me in the doorway and grabbed onto a handle. He seemed more disabled than injured, if you know what I mean, but he wasn’t flailing about as the train moved.

I looked over at the people in the nearest seats. Would any of them volunteer to get up? I would have. None did. They looked a bit guilty. I looked to see if there was a "Please offer seat to disabled or elderly people" sign, but there wasn’t.

What should I do? Should I be a vigilante, and demand one of them give up a seat? One lady I recognised as someone who got off two stops along. Why on earth wouldn’t she just offer her seat now? Maybe he didn’t want a seat? Wouldn’t he ask for one if he did? Maybe he was a regular on this train (I only catch it sometimes) and everybody knew he didn’t want to sit down, because getting up again would have been a pain. I could ask him if he needed a seat. Yeah, that’s what I could do.

Just then we got to the next station, and he got off the train. I looked at the other people again. It was hard to tell if they seemed relieved. What had happened here? I wasn’t sure. They all looked like fairly well-dressed, well brought-up polite people. Had they asked him every day for the past week if he had wanted a seat, been knocked back and (quite reasonably) stopped asking? Or were they all mean spirited hard-nosed gits showing unusual levels of heartlessness, proving a point that disabled people can be safely ignored until they go away, and generally contributing to the breakdown of civilised society?

I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking maybe I should pep my diary up a bit.

Monday
Did gardening. Dug out fossil of an as-yet unheard of dinosaur.

Tuesday
Recording session with Bowie. He seemed a little down.

Wednesday
Discovered a new element in the periodic table.

Thursday
Packing for New York. Spielberg called to arrange a meeting. Told him I’ll be too busy.

Actually my week hasn’t been that interesting. The only thing I can think of that’s remotely amusing is this:

On Tuesday as I was leaving work, I began munching on an apple. As I left the building, a big gust of wind blew up outside, and dust enveloped the people on the street. Like most people I shielded eyes and kept walking, and it died down after a few seconds. I looked down. My apple was gritty. Little pebbles and sand right through it. Yuck.

It’s warm outside, but I can hear the snow, falling on my window… No, wait a minute, got a bit confused there. It’s July.

Yesterday it was the last day of June, and I spent some of it walking. I feel like I need to get more exercise, and putting one foot in front of the other, then swapping, then repeating, seems like a pretty good way to do it. So I walked. And walked and walked. I ended up at JB Hifi in Brighton, and amazingly managed to restrain myself from buying anything.

I suppose I should look at the Melway
and figure out how far I walked. Hmm. I guess it’s in the region of about 7 kilometres. It would have been more but I cheated and caught a tram part of the way back. Anyway it was a nice day for it.

Funniest observation: in a quiet leafy street in Brighton, several houses with "We will oppose inappropriate development" signs (one of which was pretty ugly and inappropriate itself I reckon). A bit further along, a lovely house featuring an old panel van, one wheel missing, up on bricks in the front yard. Perhaps placed there to annoy the others - who knows!