Oil prices went over US$100/barrel again last week. Caltex expects people to pay more than $3 a litre in the next ten years. Meanwhile the interim Gaurnaut report came out, warning of the need to cut emissions.

Recently when petrol nudged $1.50 per litre, I heard Wayne Swan on the radio having a whinge about it, and talking about the ACCC getting tough on petrol companies, the usual stuff. More recently, one Lib backbencher called for cuts to petrol taxes to relieve inflation (uhh… tax cuts accelerate inflation actually…)

Why is it the pollies (on both sides) can never see beyond the car? They can’t look at the root issues?

Most people don’t drive for the hell of it. They drive because they need to get places, and there’s no better travel option. Give people better options for some or all of their travel, and exposure to petrol prices won’t be such an issue.

People need to get places to work, shop, learn, meet, talk… Some of that interaction can be done remotely, using the net, phone, fax, letter and so on. Give people better options for that, and they won’t need to travel as much.

The more of this we do, the more we wean ourselves off petrol, and onto cleaner, cheaper alternatives.

Maybe things haven’t changed all that much in the last 119 years.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

– from Clancy of the Overflow — Banjo Patterson, 1889

The party made their way slowly down the corridor. Leading was Raftor the Brave, followed closely by Roder the dwarf. Bringing up the rear were the wizard Pyhus and Felonius, the group’s thief. They came to a door, which marked the end of the corridor. Raftor tried the door; it was locked. Felonius got out his tools and went to work on the door, while Roder and Pyhus kept a look out. Signalling that the door was now unlocked, Felonius nodded. Raftor kicked down the door and burst into the room with sword at the ready, the others closely following.

From the light given off by the wizard’s magic lantern, Raftor made out the shapes of five goblins with daggers at the ready, attacking.

Suddenly, a booming voice said “Roll for initiative!” and two giant dice came tumbling down squashing Felonius and two goblins. The party of adventurers had gained initiative, and Raftor attacked first. A huge twenty-sided die came crashing down in the corner flattening the remaining goblins. As the remainder of the party gathered around the crumpled body of the fallen thief, two giant hands descended, and grabbed the huge dice. The booming voice spoke out once more: “That’s enough for this session. See you all on Wednesday.”

– from Toxic Custard 14, October 1990.

The inventor of Dungeons And Dragons, Gary Gygax just died. Not at the hands of a goblin — it was natural causes.

I played D&D a bit in high school. A few of us did the occasional lunchtime and weekend session in years 7/8, and I had a go of Advanced D&D in the following years. At one point I had all the (basic) D&D rule books, a bunch of player character sheets, a stack of graph paper, and a full set of those funny dice. I had a go a designing my own scenarios, but they were never as successful as the professional ones. Child And Adult in Elsternwick sold all the gear.

For a while there in the mid-80s, D&D was quite popular. There was a cartoon adaption on morning TV, and a magazine called Dragon. At one point I encountered a Fundamentalist Christian brochure claiming it was all about devil worship.

It was D&D that got me into computer games like Ultima — which I played a LOT, leading at one stage — with friends Conrad and Konrad — to attempting to write a clone of it on the BBC Micro.

When I first watched Fellowship of the Ring, I was struck by how similar that was to a D&D game. Which I guess just shows how much D&D was influenced by Tolkien.

Unlike some things from my youth (such as classic video games), I’ve got no real urge to revisit D&D, but it does bring back some happy memories. And it leaves me wondering what I did with all that D&D stuff I used to have.

PS. The character names in the piece above were nicked from D&D characters my friends and I had.

Don’t use Dymocks bags for permanently storing things in. They seem to be made of some kind of plastic that degrades quite rapidly. I’ve had two that were kept in drawers, out of the sunlight, which have unexpectedly disintegrated into lots of little plastic bits.

Actually I think it’s great that they’re using this kind of plastic… but it means they’re not practical for keeping longterm, and it’s a shame they don’t have a warning on the bag somewhere.

You have been warned.

When I first needed childcare, back in 2000, I first looked at council-run places. There were none without a long waiting list, so I looked at private. I found a place nearby called Wilmar, run by a lovely couple called Neville and Pat, with a handful of staff. So I signed the kids up there. It was based in two adjacent houses in Ormond, with a garden out the back with some chooks and other animals in it.

Jeremy, then about two, didn’t like it much initially. For a time I had to distract him each morning, by giving him a different coloured paperclip each day to show the staff. To my surprise several months later, they gave them all back in an envelope.

Anyway, both my kids went there on various days, until they reached school age. They both ended up enjoying it, and made friends there who went along to school with them too.

It was there, I think, that they picked up the theoretically insulting but ultimately inoffensive “silly duffer!” exclamation, which still pops up from time to time in conversation.

Over those years I earned an awful lot of credit card points thanks to Neville and Pat, but that’s part of being a working single parent, and I knew that the kids were getting good quality care from people who cared.

A couple of years ago when my sister was looking for childcare for her son Leo, I recommended Wilmar. She went along and signed him up there.

Then the news broke: Neville and Pat had decided to retire. They had sold the business to ABC Learning.

ABC Learning has been controversial at times, accused of being the McDonald’s of childcare: rapid expansion fed by cost-conscious budgets, and a cookie-cutter approach to operations which many said led to a decline in standards.

Nobody would begrudge Neville and Pat leaping at the chance to retire well. But my sister didn’t want Leo looked after by ABC Learning, and she moved him elsewhere. The last time I went past Wilmar, it was Wilmar no longer — it was ABC Learning Ormond, just another branch of Eddy Groves’ empire.

Now that empire is unravelling. ABC Learning’s share price (ASX: ABS) has plummetted over the past couple of weeks, before being suspended from trade.

Pat and Neville must be very pleased they sold up and retired when they did. They certainly weren’t silly duffers.

OMG.

Why did nobody tell me about this before? The King of Kong.

I know, I know… I didn’t actually list the original Donkey Kong in my top ten games… I don’t know what I was thinking of — it’s definitely one of my favourites. My own high score is around the 31,000 mark.

It’s in the cinemas locally now, but can already be ordered from Amazon.com on DVD. Very tempting, but I think I want to see it on the big screen first.

• The Age — feature article on the movie
• Age Review
• A related movie: Chasing Ghosts