I’ve had a bad day. Existential threats aside, sometimes it’s the little things that get you down.

Please allow me (as Thomas Keneally recently wrote) a bloody good rant…

Scooter riders go too fast. Tradies, if you are getting the speed wobbles when you overtake me walking, you need to slow down. I’m wearing a bright orange hi-vis vest and it’s not for fashion, it’s because I’m scared you’re going to run into me or worse, a little kid or that old bloke with the grey bearded dog strolling along.

Chuppa Chups are too hard to open. Lollipop makers please hear my cry. That little sphere of sugar is too hard to unwrap. Parents are at risk of cracking teeth while ripping off that weird double layer of packaging. What the heck is that heat sealed twist around the stick for? Extra rage?

Tailgaters should cop a sensor beep when they’re too close to the car in front. If vehicle manufacturers can make a sound for when you’re about to reverse into something, how about a back off beep that tells you when you’re invading the booty space of your fellow road user.

Cockatoos need to stop drinking my pool water. It’s salty and full of chlorine that can’t be good for beak or belly. There’s a flock of six sulphur-crested boozers that swoop down for sunset drinks daily and I’m worried about their squawks.

Where are my mandarins? I got given a tree as a gift when I was first pregnant. That was eleven years ago. I’ve lugged that fruitless shrub across suburbs and nursed it through the black plague. It’s time to give me citrus.

Halloween food that replicates the innards of a human should be banned. If your October 31 buffet involves limbs made from prosciutto and a skull of salami, it’s gross. Those little red sausages should not be used to replicate intestines. Biscuits should not be referred to as bones. Stop it.

Cheese platters have jumped the shark. A grazing table that takes longer than an hour to prepare will be annihilated in seconds. Then it’s just messy and wasteful. Don’t give people so many choices in the form of a cascading food mountain. Cheese is not an all-in affair. Not in this pandemic climate.

Where does all the dust come from? Window sills, bedroom fans and the sucker above my oven grows a film of filth far too regularly, like some kind of black magic. Same goes for the grout in bathroom tiles and the silicon bits around the shower. I’m sick of cleaning.

Houses are too expensive. My friends are moving out of Brisbane because the housing market has lost the plot. A house that sells for more than a hundred grand above the asking price should ring alarm bells not front door bells.

People aren’t wearing enough deodorant. When you enter a small space, you should not leave a waft of sweaty gumbo with your fellow inhabitants. Reapply please.

Last Saturday was too hot.

There is not an unidentified item in the bagging area.

The Queen should not have to give up drinking martinis.

Thank you. That is all.