Easter became a real nightmare for yours truly.

Why? Well, late last week I was confronted with a disaster of immense proportions.

My wife, Kym, turned her ankle and couldn’t walk. Aaaarrrggghh!

That meant that at the last minute I had to do absolutely everything.

Why is it when this happens within a household, women take some sort of morbid pleasure out of watching their chosen male struggle with the day-to-day things they do.

How opportune it was that I was on holidays that week and spent it picking up after everyone, preparing school lunches, driving the kids to school, then picking them up afterwards, doing the washing and cooking the family meal each night.

Naturally, I ended up being the Easter bunny and accidentally bought all dark chocolate, which apparently my kids hate. I made myself completely unpopular by not reading the label properly when I did the grocery shopping.

I also bought those same children the pasta sauce that had added chunks of garlic and onion. I can’t wait to get back to that sanctuary I call work!

In a world of her own

I had the misfortune of following a silver Mercedes four-wheel-drive into the infamous Maroochy roundabout recently.

Well, the driver – let’s call her Cecilia Snooty-Smythe, shall we – virtually stopped in the outside lane, completely unfazed by the drama she was creating, with cars, utes and buses screeching to a halt everywhere.

She then proceeded to pull into the inside lane and drive forward for no more than 10 metres before stopping yet again and furtively glancing left and right and changing back across the traffic flow into the outside lane again, and heading off happily through Kunda Park.

Truly, lady, there’s absolutely no point driving a $100,000 motor car if you’ve only got a $10 brain.

C’mon Kev, speak out in Mandarin

I note with interest that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is seemingly distancing himself from the Chinese human rights controversy.

Much has been made of the fact that our Kevin speaks fluent Mandarin.

Surely it can’t be that hard to say “stop slaughtering Tibetans” in Chinese, can it Kev?

Bridge over troubled waters

I’ve mentioned several times in the column about the Vic Olson Bridge at Tuchekoi in the Mary Valley and how they are replacing it with a brand spanking new one.

In my mind, it’s going to be flooded if they ever build the Traveston dam.

It begs the question: Why would they build it in the first place?

I ran into a local the other day who had a theory.

“Jamie,” he said, in his best diary farmer drawl, “they’ve done minin’ werk on Mt Tuchekoi and they’re not looking for sand, Jamie, they’re not looking for sand.”

I turned my head to the side and asked quizzically: “And what does that mean?”

“Well, Jamie,” he continued, “let’s say they find rock on Mt Tuchekoi that they need to build a dam, for instance.

“They’re not going to cart it out on the highway and over to Traveston. They’ll need a bloody big bridge that’ll take it straight from Mt Tuchekoi to the dam site and that, my friend, is why they are building the bridge.”

All I can say is, will someone please correct me if he’s wrong.

Good on ya, Bob

How completely refreshing was it to see our new mayor big Bob Abbot on television the other night on one of the current affairs shows.

He looked larger than life.

No, let me correct that. He actually is larger than life.

He won me with his straightforward answers.

He won me with his yellow braces that I might say were stretched to the limit, and he won me with the breadcrumbs that were left on the front of his shirt from lunch.

Good on ya Bob, I’m glad I voted for ya.