THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN

Dear Alice,

Well it’s probably a long way from your consciousness, but it still burns brightly in mine. This week however, I have had little choice but to concede defeat and pay your $50 train fine. I really have done all I can to get leniency from the computer robots at the State Debt Recovery Office. Due to a small technicality though, they have simply refused to budge or respond like human beings ought. Each of the three times I corresponded, I found my content getting more and more ridiculous. A week or two later back would come a predictable, pig-headed, obstinate reply that just snowballed my exasperation. Letter three focused on trying to yet again, explain how you were actually travelling on a valid a ticket and so your only crime was to be unaware of, and therefore not carrying, the free State Rail identity card you were actually entitled to. I asked why an additional card beyond your secondary senior school card should be required to prove you were indeed a secondary senior school student. I said you had produced that card which the police officer had deemed not good enough, something I find frustrating and really rather pedantic. I then began ranting on about how, as a taxpayer, I really wished this ‘laughing policeman’ had instead been busying himself with big-boy crime that night instead of picking on a gaggle of schoolgirls for such a minor misdemeanor. I added that he said to you, for things as trivial as this, he would normally just have issued a caution and advised you of your error. However, that night he was acting on instructions from his boss to issue more fines and generate more revenue, a revelation that if true, I personally find abhorrent. Instead of educating you, he chose (metaphorically speaking) to kick you all in the teeth with his size 10 boot. I concurred that this is not how we should be treating our law-abiding young people and was it any reason that our youth have little respect for the police? Outraged at their responses to my plea, I actually cc’d my last letter and documentation in to our local Federal MP, Leader of the Opposition The Hon. Tony Abbott. I told Little Tony that I was struggling to understand how in Australia (a non Police State) a group of 17 year-old girls can all buy the correct tickets for their age and status, yet still manage to get fined by an over-zealous copper. He hasn’t replied yet… but I feel sure he will be taking this up in Parliament at Question Time any day now…

Elliott cooked dinner during the week, which was nice, though it did prove to be quite an expensive meal. To bake his calamari and chips to perfection he used the timer on the microwave – except that he didn’t. He actually turned on the microwave, full power with nothing in it for 20 minutes! The net result, after I had restored power to that section of the house, was that the microwave was now extremely dead. Given it no longer went round anyway, I therefore had little choice but to go and buy a $569 new one the next day.

Well it’s stopped raining here and soggy Sydney has slowly dried out this week. Last weekend saw some suburbs get their heaviest rain for almost twenty years. The city got 77mm, the heaviest in two years, and makes it the third wettest February this century – and there’s still two and a half weeks to go! Killarney Heights received a whopping 195mm in twenty-four hours, which was the heaviest in 12 years and sixth highest on record. The dams also got a drenching, around 100 to 250mm which reportedly lifted levels by around 5% – the biggest rise since June 2007. Showers and storms look set to return at the weekend though, so just when we thought it was safe to put the umbrellas away… Actually this is really bad news as Saturday is Elliott’s birthday party and Sunday is Tristan’s FKFC football grading followed later in the afternoon by the last A-League game of the regular season. This blockbuster fixture just happens to be between the first and second placed teams which are, Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory. The winner will win the minor premiership and automatically qualify for next year’s Asian Champions League. Obviously we are really keen to go, but I just can’t drag the boys (or myself for that matter) back to the Sydney Football Stadium in the rain again, not after last weekend.

: Dad