My family are shit. I don’t think any of them even remembered it was my 18th. I invited some friends over to the flat I was staying at and we played cricket in the carpark, then drank beers for a couple of hours.

57?

Years ago I worked in an inner city market. I had made friends with a person at one of the nearby market stalls. We spoke almost every day. She was an actress working at the market between acting jobs. I had never seen anything she was in, but it didn’t matter. She was just really sweet and easy to talk to.

For unrelated reasons, my girlfriend and I broke up and I moved to the other side of the city on very short notice, to my brother’s house, and didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to my friend.

My brother and I were watching TV a couple of months later and there’s my friend from the market, introduced on a popular TV show as the new season 2 “token annoying character” (think 2000’s, trendy, weekly drama).

“That’s name of my friend. She’s my friend. We used to chat every day!” My brother scoffed and called me a liar “just because we live out in the suburbs, don’t think you city folk can make us believe any old bullshit story!”

Two weeks later she happened to go to my brothers’ workplace for car parts and he recognised her: “My brother reckons he knows you.” Friend: “What’s your brother’s name?” Brother: “SkaraBr…” Friend: “What? Where is he? Is he okay? I’ve been so worried. Do you have his number?”

Good lad, my brother, wouldn’t give out my number, even to a TV actress, but she made him call me right then and there so that she could talk to me.

Twenty years later and I still laugh about that phone call and the sound of his voice when he said “she wants to talk to you”.

Australia: The Homo Sapiens Cognitus Plummetus, or Drop-Bigfoot, larger cousin of the drop-bear (Thylarctus Plummetus). They’re rarer than the drop-bear because they’re so easy to see due to their size that they have been hunted to almost-extinction. The last remaining specimens are only found in high, rocky, mountainous areas where they can hunt from the protection of cliff overhangs and large rocks.

I started playing Robert Koeneke’s roguelike “Moria” in around 1991. I still play uMoria (Moria’s spiritual successor) a couple of times a year.

That’s a good attitude. You will cut yourself. Probably requiring stitches at least once. Fear is a good way to keep the edge pointed away from yourself.

Galileo

See! There’s always someone who just has to suck the fun out of it. Now I’m commenting wrong.

Gatekeeping. Anyone who tells you that “that’s not how it’s done” or " we don’t do it that way" or otherwise cramps your style just because they do it differently, or better, or with more expensive tools or materials, is an arse.

I have been put off so many hobbies because other people just have to suck the enjoyment out of it. Now that I am older and more sure of myself, I tend not to join the communities related to my hobbies because people are dicks; I just do what I enjoy, how I enjoy it.

Any rooms for rent?

Forget my favourite books and read them again.

Dumped at the scrapyard… In a three-sided, concrete-walled bay in the yard, 30km from the nearest large body of water. I didn’t say anything about the ocean.

Cricket. There are many different roles in the team and you get to hang out outside with your teammates all day. Also, if it rains you go inside and have something to eat.

When I worked for a scrap metal recycler someone dumped a load of electronics and didn’t tell us there were EPIRBs in the mix. We found out when the cost guard, police, fire and ambulance turned up.

6½d. Would be 6.5 pence, or sixpence and hap’ne (halfpenny). 6s. 6d. Would be 6 shillings and sixpence, or 6 and 6.

Source: my parents and grandparents are/were English (Birmingham and Warwick) and I heard stories when I was growing up, as well as a couple of texts and TV shows. Sketchy sources, yes, but hopefully gets you started! Also, I’m probably wrong.

Specifically 10mm sockets.

I had been awake for 36 hours and my mother insisted that I keep her company on a 5 hour drive to pick up her boyfriend. When she called I told her that I was going to bed. She turned up at mine to pick me up, anyway, and forced me into the car: I was too tired to resist. I slept all the way there and all the way back.

Your coach sounds like an arse. Every runner knows: nothing new on race day! You eat what you ate when you were training. You stick to your familiar routines… Obviously, travelling away from home makes some adjustments necessary, but you keep it as normal as possible.

Well done on a good race under difficult conditions.

I did my CPR and First aid earlier this year (3rd time) in Australia and mouth-to-mouth wasn’t taught as part of CPR this time.

Not a traumatic brain injury…

It’s a change in perspective. It’s hard to explain without referencing the experience itself.

It’s like spending your whole life at the bottom of a valley. You have everything you need. Your life is whole. And then someone takes you to the top of a mountain and you can see a million valleys and a million mountains and an endless sky. Your valley is the same, it hasn’t changed, but suddenly everything is different. Your life is still whole, but that means something else, now.

That doesn’t do it justice, but hopefully you get the picture…