G'Day From Downunder

Well what do you know the "Doom and Gloom" experts are out in their droves! Everyone's an expert!

The planet is overheating, the ice is melting, the war is all wrong, the sub prime mortgage situation is going to ruin us all, the U.S. is going into recession, the Chinese are going to cheat us all at the Olympics; putting it bluntly we are all going into meltdown.

So what are we going to do about it? Well I don't know about you but I was out and about last week enquiring about renting a coffin for a year or so then stocking it up with a few nicknacks to tie me over until everything is all right again.

No point in buying the coffin as I'm not quite dead yet! But there appears to be reluctance by undertakers to rent those horizontal cubicles to the living.

I did find it very selfish of them to only want to sell them to you and then bury you in them. I just thought it might be a good idea to try them out.

After all, if I ever die and I'm only saying if mind, I might be spending a long time in one of them.

What if I don't like it, or if it's draughty, or leaking? It's not as if you can complain or swap it over or anything like that, is it now?

You know how you sometimes get a lifetime warranty on goods that you buy. So should you get an after-life warranty on a coffin?

Really, would you buy a suit without trying it on, or would you buy a car without test driving it?

You will spend more time in your coffin than you will spend in your suit or car or even your house for that matter.

I just thought with all that was happening in the doom and gloom world of today I'd rent my future home for the hereafter to give it a bit of a try out. But alas, no such luck.

I had considered renting an urn but they told me I had to be cremated first so there didn't seem to be any point in pursuing that avenue.

Maybe I'll just go to bed and pull the sheets up over my head and wait until the doom and gloom merchants turn back into optimists and I hear them sing again.

Maybe that's not such a good idea either. The last time I went to bed after a bit of doom and gloom it caused all sorts of concern and embarrassment - let me tell you how that happened.

Some weeks ago we had a massive storm in Sydney and Melbourne (500 miles apart).

My evening flight was delayed home from Sydney. Meanwhile my wife on arriving home discovered that the electronic garage door wouldn't function due to a power failure. So now we have a blackout.

As a safety measure we always keep a key in the inside part of the door lock (double deadlocks, keyhole on both sides and a key will only work if there is no key on the other side) so no one can enter the place from outside if they happen to get their hand on a key. Fool proof! Perfect until there is a blackout then, oops, even we can't get in hence it's like Fort Knox.

Credit must be given to my wife who dangled from the balcony like Spiderman to try and prise open the upstairs windows to gain entry encouraged by our dear, but worried friends.

Meanwhile I was being tossed about like an old T-shirt in a tumble dryer while clutching Rosary beads in seat 17C of a Boeing 737 in the skies somewhere between Sydney and Melbourne.

After a couple of hours trying every strategy of forcible entry in the torrents of rain and lighting my wife and her friends accepted defeat but not before giving due consideration to burning the place down.

My wife's dear friends Julie and Wayne offered to put us up for the night rather than book into a hotel.

The State Emergency Service put out a call that the electricity would not be operational until 7am next morning.

My wife accepted their kind offer and I was informed of her decision by cell phone on my arrival several hours later at Tullamarine Melbourne Airport.

The city looked as though it had just experienced a total eclipse of the sun, pitch black which was only broken by the dotted emergency vehicles with flashing light and sirens blasting out ear piercing noises.

I finally arrived at my new residence for the night to be greeted by the host's, candles in hand, and then led into a candle-filled kitchen where my wife was waiting for her hero's return from the battered skies, silhouetted in candle light, an amazing dramatic setting. Spooky you bet.

We sat around and made light (excuse the pun) of the situation for a half hour or so then retired to bed.

At about 6am I awoke to find a very uncomfortable sticky substance on my lower back.

After feeling and rubbing it I thought, "oh no, I think the cat's done something here that he hasn't owned up to. Or maybe the last guest didn't use the toilet roll and now I'm going to have to explain."

Explain what? I rush to the bathroom to double check the goo that has attached itself to me.

It's almost impossible to see in the dark to confirm the substance but in the faint light of dawn I can just about make out it's brown; Oh s**t! Excuse the pun again.

What do the experts say about things like that? If it feels like it, looks like it and tastes like it, then it is.

I tell myself in the panicked state that I'm in, I'm certainly not and I mean not, going to taste it.

I shake my wife like a rag doll to wake her and inform her of the problem.

I thought I must have done "you know what" in the bed unbeknown to me, or was it the last guest or the cat.

Holy s**t, what do we do? Then the brain kicks in: "yes, let's take the sheet and put it in the washing machine before our hosts wake... no, no, no, the washing machine won,t work - no electricity.

"Okay, let's hand wash it then". So there I am two seconds off having a heart attack over the shame that might be.

Washing and rubbing the sheet that could have killed my dignity then my wife says, "are you sure its s**t? Did you...."

"Stop right there," I tell her, "no I didn't taste it....".

"No, no, you mug did you smell it?" Looking at what I could see of her dumbfounded face, "of course not," I replied.

"Well go on smell the bloody thing" she says. "No, no," I reply, "you smell it" "No, no," she replies "it's yours, you smell it"

Eke! I hold it closer and closer to my nose... "Bloody hell, it's chocolate! I don't believe it, how in God's name did I get chocolate on my back?"

Then the story comes to light: Julie, the perfect hostess, put some chocolates on my pillow before bedtime.

I failed to see them getting into bed and no one told me of them, so I slept on the chocolates and of course now I was left with a different dilemma, that of being accused of having a good old romp and then washing away the evidence.

It would have been good to include pictures of this remarkable event but unfortunately there was chocolate all over the camera lens.

On YouTube it might have been worth a fortune and Heaven knows how many hits there would have been.

If the world doesn't come to an end in the next couple of weeks or so, as per the doom and gloom experts, be good to those who love you and slainte from Downunder.