Sometimes, as a writer, it's nice to deal with facts. Here are some facts:

1. From where I sit every Tuesday, I can usually see a cluster of blue hills called the Dandenongs. Today, I can barely see Richmond. There is smoke in this city and it ain't pretty.

2. There are 24 hours in a day. This is ridiculous and should be audited immediately.

3. The Carlton post office should be made the subject of a nature documentary, for I believe it contains information systems designed to keep the population down via a process whereby customers die of old age.

4. The smell of a giant box of pencils is lovely.

5. When I was little, a couple called Mr and Mrs Dixon lived over the road. They were terrifying. Their letterbox had Mr and Mrs Dixon written on it. They frowned and mowed the lawns and looked like they had marched to nineteen-eighties Greensborough straight from the fifties. One day, my friend Simone and I went over there to ask Mrs Dixon for some things to sell in our store. We had decided 30 seconds previously that we wanted to open a store in the street - people could give us things they no longer wanted, and we could sell them! Brill! Anyway, Mrs Dixon asked where the money would go to, and Simon said "to us", so Mrs Dixon thought very seriously for a moment before returning to her house. We were thrilled! The Dixons had nice things, our store would do well!

Mrs Dixon returned. She gave us a coat hanger. It was pink. I found it the other day when cleaning my house. Simone and I never did start that shop. Sometimes I wonder what happened to Simone.