During the height of the Aids epidemic a body was established called the ‘Aids Council of NSW’. I’m sure in fighting that awful illness they did splendid work. But that epidemic is now over. So, was the ‘Aids Council of NSW’ thanked politely and dissolved? Oh, no. Like too many organisations set up for a special purpose it just changed course, kept getting taxpayers’ money and did other things. Its current project seems to be to undermine the English language. They now appear to see their role in Australian life as wiping out of the dictionary any words to do with normal family life. They are now telling employers to ban the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’. According to the Daily Telegraph Acon encourages: ‘…using terms like “primary caregiver” (and) “secondary caregiver” making sure we’re not referring to partners using gender terms like “mother” and “dad” is really important’. Well, no. What is really important is that we ignore knuckleheads like this. But here’s what’s really alarming – up to sixty government departments and agencies including the prime minister’s office, schools, universities, police, the ABC as well as private businesses have signed up as members to the training schemes they run. And who is paying for this? You are. They receive $13 million in taxpayer funding a year. I hereby call upon governments to withdraw all this funding. The Aids epidemic is over. Acon is no longer needed, and appears to have been taken over by fanatics. The public should not be funding the enemies of the English language!

There I was, standing quite still, in my local Colesworths contemplating whether to buy the Jarlsberg or the brie, when another customer barged into me. No, not some rude and aggressive person trying push me out of the way – it was someone ‘twalking’. His head was down, glued to his phone, and he was texting and walking at the same time: ‘twalking’. I’m sure you’ve run into such people yourself (or more likely they’ve run into you). Drivers, in particular, dislike those ‘twalkers’ who amble across the road superglued to the tiny screen in their hand while the world has to grind to a halt around them. Gary Martin from the Australian Institute of Management says there are those who believe that ‘twalking’ (particularly when crossing roads) is so dangerous it should be outlawed and those who step out of line heavily fined. Perhaps local councils could employ TOs (Twalking Officers) with the power to write out a ticket on the spot for violators. But I’m not so sure. Perhaps ‘twalking’ is its own punishment. I remember the clip seen on TV news of a pedestrian on a New York street plummeting into an open manhole in front of her because her eyes (and thumbs) were flying over her phone at the time. And for those stupid enough to keep their feet moving while they text, sooner or later the bus they step out in front of just won’t have time to stop. I suspect the problem is bigger than just ‘twalking’ – it is a whole generation that is terminally confused about the difference between living in your smart phone and living in the real world. Eventually the real world catches up – and you end up as surprised as the man who was picking flowers beside the railway line when he was struck in the small of the back by the Melbourne express.

Are you a clutterer? You’re probably not a compulsive hoarder – like those remarkable houses we see on the news with mountains of old newspapers and other rubbish filling hallways and backyards. Nevertheless, there are many of us who never go that far, but we ‘clutter’  – we find it hard to throw things away, which then accumulate. Finally, we decide something must be done to de-clutter the desk, or the study, or the whole house. What you need to do is a ‘death clean’, also known as a ‘Swedish clean’. The expression seems to have been coined by Margareta Magnusson, author of a new book called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. The Swedish word for ‘death cleaning; is döstädning, meaning a really serious clean up that takes hard decisions (‘Will I ever really consult that book again?’, ‘Do I really need a laminating machine in my home office?’) Moving house can be a helpful motivator for doing a ‘death clean’. The opposite, by the way, is (apparently) called an ‘Irish tidy’ (coined by Lady Caroline Blackwood). In an ‘Irish tidy’ you chuck everything into a cupboard, push the door tightly closed and hope for the best. Mind you, after you’ve done enough ‘Irish tidying’ you’ll probably have no choice but to go in for a Swedish death clean’.