dear City of Yarra planning dept, and one planner in particular: this is what you don't do.. you don't send me a letter telling me that under subsection x(y)z, I "must" provide more drawings of an unclear nature. you don't reply to my email asking why the photo I sent in isn't enough information with the phrase "it is noted that". you don't suggest, when my child starts crying in the background, that we talk later. I want to sort it out now, for good. you don't try to refer me to your email reply rather than giving me a straight answer. you don't tell me, when I ask how much longer this will take that you "have 60 days to decide", a veiled threat to drag it out if I ever heard one. you certainly don't go on to then try to tell me how many other reports you have to write; not, that is, unless you really want to hear the problems I have, which are a) greater than yours, believe me, given that you sound about 21 years old, and b) won't stop me sending this information back so fast it'll make your head spin.

in general, you wake up to the fact that you are a person, you're dealing with humans and you need to engage with them, not block them.

in fact, why the hell do I have to get a planning permit for a rollerdoor anyway? because our neighbours hate us and might report us if we did what EVERYONE else does and build the stupid thing regardless of Procedure.

angry? moi? never.

I want to know: who makes up the names that spammers email under? my spam box (Gmail does a great job of filtering, btw) currently includes correspondence from Tundra P. Hollyhock, Boadicea Jablonksi, Jehovah Darling and the fabulous Inhumane H. Idolaters.

This is more than someone with little English trawling the dictionary for words. this is humour that even Monty Python would appreciate.

can't believe we're prepared to stop media coverage of an event in a public place (the Yarra River) in order to protect media profits for one organisation. if that's the price of funding these big events with sponsorship, we shouldn't have them at all. seriously.

the Commonwealth Games are fast approaching and oops, I forgot to buy tickets. the truth is that while I'll be vaguely interested in the whole production, I don't really care. not enough to use up a rare outing on watching people sweat around a track.

and given that the paper this morning had a photo of a flying tram, for goodness' sake, I'm not sorry I'm not going to the opening ceremony, either.

the site won't let me pinch this photo, but it's just amazing: the Canberra bushfires of three years ago.

that's it: I am officially an old fogey. having decided not to try to get tix to the Rolling Stones, partly on principle and partly because I couldn't access the Web site, I took my son to childcare down the street.

On the way back, I saw a car driving very slowly and unsteadily. the driver, of course, was texting or dialling on her mobile phone. I considered running after her and bashing on the back of the car; instead, I took her number, came home and rang the police, where I had a very nice conversation with a very nice young man named Will, who coincidentally used to live in this street. he can't do much except maybe write to her and let her know there was a report - I think that would be a start anyway - but I'm not sorry I called. my son is two years and three months old - old enough to get out onto the street alone (not that he ever has or, I hope, ever will - too young to know it's dangerous, and too short to be easily seen by a drive who's busy rtig 2 hr frnds.

hope it scares the bejesus out of her.