The new Customer Information Centre at Flinders Street Station is a funny looking structure. The native grasses growing out of the sides… well, I don’t know who thought of it, but it’s certainly distinctive. Staff will answer customer queries there, and additional staff will be on the platforms from November.

Extra staff on Melbourne’s busiest station? Got to be a good thing, especially given recent platform crowding issues.

Mind you, there’s over 100 stations out there on the network with no regular staff presence at all, and another 31 with only staff in the morning peak hour.

I was at the centre’s official opening last Thursday morning, and talking to a senior Connex manager about it, and asking specifically whether the staff held information on non-train modes. If a train passenger wants to know where to catch the bus to Port Melbourne or the tram to the Victoria Market, can they help? Yes they can. They have access to all the Metlink and V/Line information.

Just to underscore the importance of public transport staff knowing about the entire network — not just their bit of the empire — a couple of punters came up and asked how to get to Waverley Park. Footy tragics apparently, headed for the pre-Grand Final Hawthorn training session. Between us we managed to give them an answer: platform 7, train to Huntingdale, then the 900 bus.

Even though they were Hawks fans, hopefully they found it all right.

(A couple of people seem to have wondered if I’m upset the Cats lost. I’ve been a Cats fan for a long time, but I’m not exactly hard core. And anybody could see from the number of behinds scored that Geelong’s goal kicking was lacking on Saturday. But hey, they might have lost, but at least Geelong doesn’t have fugly colours.)

I enjoyed this season. I know I’ve loved the show for decades, but they do seem to keep coming up with new, clever stuff.

Voyage of the Damned: A little over-long and plodding in places. I suppose it was a Christmas episode.

Partners in Crime: Got the shock of my life at the end when Rose appeared, even though I had heard she’d be coming back. Other than that, not a spectacular story, but enjoyable enough.

The Fires of Pompeii: Good stuff. Liked the Roman name and Celtic gags. The Confidential episode that went with it showed David Tennant walking around the ruins of Pompeii, which was interesting.

Planet of the Ood: The Simpsons reference had the kids laughing. I was scratching my head until I worked out the boss character was Tim McInnerny. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to think Eww when he turned into an Ood.

The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky: Hooray, the Sontarans! Hooray, Martha’s back! Hooray, so is UNIT! Laughed at the reference to the UNIT dating controversy. Chief Sontaran played by Christopher “Mike Thecoolperson” Ryan. Naturally I liked the transport politics references too.

The Doctor’s Daughter: Given the name and premise, I thought I was going to hate this, until I saw how she was created. Some neat stuff with the dating on the city sections. I’m assuming we’ll see more of Jenny in the future.

The Unicorn and the Wasp: What, two historical stories in one season? Good stuff, it kept me guessing until the end. I liked the idea of the alien basing its activities around Agatha Christie’s plots.

Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead: Oh Stephen Moffat, you are a genius, and not just because you managed to again use wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff and childhood fears made real. The whole thing had me guessing until right near the end, Doctor Moon had me creeped out at first, and the Vashta Nerada is pure brilliance. The River Song character was terrific too, though I wonder if we’ll ever see her past when she meets the Doctor.

Midnight: This year they did the main actor’s time-off over two stories. I thought this story was interesting, both for the alien that was invisible, and the way they played the “trapped in a room” plot, involving people who might consider themselves normally civilised going feral on each other.

Turn Left: Best story of the year, I thought. Bringing back the last year or two’s events and seeing how they would have played without the Doctor being involved — very clever. The acting — including minor characters like the Italian housemate bloke — was great, and it really brought out how much Donna matured throughout the series. The only thing that let it down slightly was the beetle. What a cliffhanger!

The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End: There’s no doubt about it, executive producer Russell T Davies loves a shock-and-awe season finale; he does them every year. But just when I thought I was tiring of them, this had some clever stuff, plenty of returning friends and villains, celebs like Richard Dawkins, tying up a multitude of plot threads and… well, the ultimate in nostalgia, Sarah Jane meeting Davros again for the first time since 1975. I found the ending poignant — the “loss” of Donna (or at least that whole aspect of her) was quite sad. Let’s just hope she doesn’t run into Martha or Sarah Jane or Mickey or Jack in the street…

The year’s episodes might have started a little slowly, but they built up to a great conclusion. (Go look at the early ones again and you’ll find clever forward references, like mentions of the missing planets, bees, and Lucius in the Pompeii episode telling Donna “There’s something on your back!”)

Looking forward to what happens next.

I couldn’t fault the trains on Tuesday going to the Show. But despite all the talk of fighting fare evasion, things at the Showgrounds station on Tuesday were incredibly sloppy.

While the Show tickets were individually scanned on entry, we didn’t have our train tickets checked when arriving or departing. And when we left, we had a 10×2 hour ticket that needed validating — but there were no validators there, at all. The staff said to go to Flinders Street and do it there. Instead we did it at Southern Cross while changing trains.

I don’t know whether this is typical of the entire period of the Show, but I’m told people found the same story last year. And with on-train ticket checks so scarce, most people could basically get a free ride to the Show and get away with it undetected. And once-a-year train travellers might buy their tickets, not know they need to also validate them, and never find out.

Of course I’m not saying those who turn up without validated tickets should be wrestled to the ground and fined $167, but at least their tickets should be checked and they should able to buy/validate a ticket if they need to.

• Herald Sun: Show fans get a free ride on Connex

Spring has sprung. The weather’s getting nicer.

My mind has turned to the cluster headaches that I got for the first time at this time last year. I haven’t had any again yet, but there’s something about the light which just hints that they might be on their way. Or maybe it’s just that my memory of them is now so strongly associated with them now.

Given that conventional painkillers (to quote Natalie: Tylenol, paracetamol or ibuprofen) don’t work, I’m going to make sure I’ve got some Veracaps left from last time in case they come back. Or if not I’ll need to make a rapid visit to the doctor.

The kids and I set off for the Show on Tuesday morning. It had been about a decade since I’d been — ditto for Isaac, who went with a childcare group some years ago, and we’re not sure if Jeremy had ever been before.

Tuesday turned out to be a good day to go. Despite a slight threat of some showers, the weather looked good and in fact it never did rain, at least not on us.

The train got us to the Showgrounds pretty quickly — the kids seemed bemused by the idea of Showgrounds railway station existing purely to serve the venue. As we’d been able to buy the Show tickets at our local station, we went straight in, a cacophony of amusement rides greeting us just inside.

Up above the crowds a death-defying ride was dangling some foolhardy individuals upside down and swinging them around by their ankles. Or so it seemed. We could hear their screaming above the noise, and the kids — not the bravest when it comes to this kind of thing — vowed there and then not to go on anything so scary. I’m not overly enthusiastic myself about being shaken around like a ragdoll, and agreed with them.

Another death-defying ride / Plenty of bags of crap in the Showbag hall

We wandered around, first exploring the nearby Showbag hall. Once upon a time you had to remember to buy The Sun on the right day to get an advance list of showbags and their contents — these days it’s all on the Show web site, so we’d planned ahead.

I’d emphasised to the kids that they shouldn’t go mad spending all their pocket money, as we’d just end up with lots of junk food and crap toys — not to mention the supposed “Total value” of the showbag was likely to be inflated. The companies involved don’t get into this game to lose money, after all. They came away with 2-3 bags each, a mix of junk food and crap, and me with just a Cadbury one. Ultimately I can’t resist chocolate.

First stop after that was the nearby Dodgem cars. This proved to be a lot of fun, though the small track was rather overloaded with cars, and for much of the time we were in dodgem gridlock.

The Grand Pavillion had a number of free food samples which the kids eagerly devoured, and since it was approaching midday, got us thinking about lunch. It also had a temporarily unused kitchen demonstration area, where Jeremy noted with some amusement a laptop computer had been left on top of a stove, as if to cook it.

We took a look at the food court-ish area of the pavillion, but nothing grabbed us and we ended up buying burgers and so on outside. For some reason in the area we were in there were 10 tables but only 15 chairs, so quite a few people ended up standing around eating their lunches.

After lunch we looked around the Victorian government pavillion. Jeremy got a demonstration from a fireman on how to escape from a house quickly, both kids got to sit on a police motorcycle, and take a look at the inside of the back of a divvy van — without being driven home in it. Unlike past years, there was no sign whatsoever of a Myki display…

You’re going home in the back of a divvy van / Showgrounds, with the city centre in the background

In the stadium (which replaced the old arena, of which the only thing left is the grandstand) they were doing horse stunts. Elsewhere was wood chopping, and pigs in obstacle courses, and sheep and cows just standing around. One display had brightly-coloured cow statues, which were pretty cool. It was good to see that some of the traditional agricultural/rural influences were still there.

The kids then had a go on the Euroslide, a huge slippery-dip which purports to be the largest in the southern hemisphere. They liked it so much they had a second turn later on, and we also encountered a miniature train and a multi-level Giggle Palace-type house of obstacles.

My sister had asked via SMS if there was a Thomas showbag for young Leo. I let her know there was — $20 for a bag full of plastic crap, none of which really had anything to do with Thomas or trains, but which had the Thomas logo on each item. That’s the way it goes with merchandise for the toddlers I suppose. She looked at the web site herself, acknowledged it was crap, and said to go ahead and buy it for him.

By about 2:30 we had seen most of the Show, and decided to head home. The traditional inspection of the bag contents on the train ensued.

Euroslide / Peak hour can be horrific sometimes

We had a total of 7 showbags between the three of us (one bought for someone else). Looking around the train carriage, it was apparent that other families had been a little less restrained in their spending.

In fact one family observed in the Showgrounds had their pram loaded up with inflatable baseball bats. It left me wondering what they were going to do with them all. Just leave the kids alone that night to bash the hell out of each other, perhaps. “Here you go kids, go mad, whack away!”

This Herald Sun article notes that some families spent hundreds of dollars “to pass our childhood memories on to our kids”. It does add up surprisingly fast. By my rough estimate, we spent about $180 — $52 admission, about $45 on showbags, about $30 on lunch (we took water bottles with us), and the rest on rides. But the kids paid for their own lunches, showbags and most rides, which is a step towards them learning to be a bit more independent.

And the bottom line is we had a good time, and didn’t come home with too much crap.

Apparently Jay has a bowel movement. Not sure why he feels the need to immortalise it on his licence plate though.

There can be few things less appetising in the supermarket than this: Ham & chicken flavoured knob.

Grand Theft Panto? (Sorry, a little joke for the gunzels.)

By the way, my old car finally got taken away the other day. Apparently the engine is going to be extracted and sent to the Sudan — probably not to go into another car, but to work a pump or something. Wow. My old rustbucket might be helping a whole village somewhere.

I don’t claim to understand a great deal about the share market, and the current turmoil it’s enduring.

I’ve heard the practice of short selling explained twice on the TV or radio in the last few days, and while I think I get how it works, I can’t understand why the owners of the shares involved would agree to it, if they know it drives prices down… but I assume there must be some explanation.

As for naked short selling — well, I know I’m missing something there, as how one can make use of a something without possessing it is beyond me.

All in all, my layman’s view, based on minimal information, would be that short selling and naked short selling sound like dodgy practices that are odd things to be a part of the global economy. In fact the whole share market seems to be like a stack of cards… which is now toppling.

The big US government bailouts are interesting. It was very amusing to hear Derek Guille on 774 note that it was “pleasing to see the Neocons embracing socialism”.

What does this all mean to the person in the street? Well, I got my annual superannuation statement the other week. It had a cover note that basically urged people not to panic about losses on the markets, and emphasising that in the longer term, growth has been strong. I turned over the page to find that my retirement fund has dropped by 20% in the past 12 months.

Ouch.

Oh well, if the bailout is what’s being done, I hope it works.

The government backed down on one of the January fare changes — making Seniors Dailies only available in packs of 5. Not in a pack, really, but on a single ticket. Which meant a couple wanting that fare would have to cough up $33 in one hit.

(Some might argue that Seniors shouldn’t get any discounts better than the general concession fare, but this kind of change just said “Stuff you” at a time when the plight of some Seniors is very much in the public eye. Anyway, if you’re going to have it available, it should be available individually like most other fares.)

The other changes are still expected in January.

If, as appears to be the case, the zone bonus on periodicals being removed is to make it simpler for Myki to be completed, what gets the chop next in the name of simplicity? What if they pared away at everything that was in the least bit complicated?

Timing 2 hour tickets from the next hour, rather from the exact time. Actually removing this might make some sense, making it fairer, but if done it should be a three hour ticket, not a two hour ticket, so people can still make short local return trips on it. (Remember, back in the day, they were three hour tickets.)

2 hour tickets valid until 3am if used at or after 6pm. This definitely should be kept, as it gives a significant incentive for people to go to evening events by PT, even if they don’t normally use it. Effectively it’s similar to the weekend discount tickets, encouraging use of the system outside busy times.

Zone overlaps. Pretty key to making zones palatable in the first place, but hey, it complicates things!

The second validation on a 10×2 hour switching it to a Daily is unlikely to go, as it fits in with the Myki concept of Daily caps (equal to 2×2 hour portions, or a Weekend Saver ticket).

I don’t realistically think they’d do any of this, but hey, you never know how desperate they might get.

We already know the Weekly ticket will be effectively nobbled, replaced by a Weekly cap that runs Monday to Sunday only. This means people who currently buy a Weekly in the middle of the week will face a higher cost if they use the system for every day of that period.

• Current Weekly Z1 cost: $28.00
• Cost under Myki of using Z1 every day from Wednesday to Tuesday: Wednesday $5.60; Thursday $5.60; Friday $5.60; Saturday $2.90; Sunday $2.90; Monday $5.60; Tuesday $5.60 = $33.80.

So much for Myki always giving you the best fare.

(Source: Fares and Ticketing Manual 2008: Myki)