My buddy Phil, he’s got this small-time electrical business, right? Runs it out of his mum’s garage, see? He don’t live there no more, of course – Phil’s a man who made himself by himself, you get it? But his mum doesn’t have a car or nothing, so she lets him use the space for his little electrical business, you see? Of course, she don’t want nothing for it, and of course, Philly ain’t never gonna take advantage of nobody’s ma – least of all his own. So he slips her some cash whenever she’s not looking, does odd jobs around the house and whatnot. He’s a good kid, Phil.

But why am I telling you about my buddy Phil? Well, you see Philly went and got himself in a bad spot with some tight fellas (or is that the other way around?). So he comes to me; says I can help.

How can I help? I ask him. This is your problem, I tell him. Deal with it, right?

Well, Phil goes away, long enough that we start to worry he’s been sent to the professional glazier in the Melbourne area – the great big glasshouse up north, you copy?

But Philly comes back, spring in his step, flower in his hair. You’ll never believe it, he tells us, joy stretching his big dumb face. I’m married! he tells us. 

We don’t believe him, the schmuck, but we start with the back-slapping and the shoulder-tapping – it’s a real love-fest, alright?

But Philly? I eventually asks him – what about those boys down from Melbourne who were looking to install a new glass balustrade in your home, if you know what we’re saying?

He did indeed know what we were saying.

What do you think I’ve been doing?! he laughs. That’s who I went and got married to!

And he turns around, introducing us to one of them tight fellas I was telling you about earlier – the two are hitched. Philly’s a made man – and protected.

Ah, Philly. Always did know how to deal with a problem.

I’m staying in a hotel with my family on holidays. I’m the mother of three children (and a man child who I call my husband). I love my family but they’re definitely a handful and they don’t always listen to me. The most recent example of my family failing to do as I say and acting like morons (for lack of a better word) was yesterday.

My husband and my three children were kicking the football inside the hotel room. I warned them at least five times to stop what they were doing and take the football down to the pool area, but of course, they didn’t listen. Instead, my husband kicked the ball too hard for my youngest child to catch it and it hit the window and cracked it. My husband genuinely cracked the glass in a hotel room costing us $500 per night. It’s safe to say that I’m furious. 

I refused to talk to the hotel staff about it and made my husband walk downstairs with my children to tell them we need a glass repair. Melbourne hotels are some of the best in Australia, so when they asked us how the glass cracked we had to lie. If they had found out what we were doing we would have been kicked out of the hotel. Instead, we agreed to have the glass repaired and they moved us to a different room. 

As we were moving all our belongings from the top floor to halfway down the building, I was very aware of the glass stairs. My family were all carrying a suitcase each and the wheels were often hitting the sides of the stairs. I was just praying that a wheel wouldn’t hit the stairs too hard and put another crack in the glass. The last thing we need is to pay for a stair balustrade on top of the glass repair.

I just wish my husband, and my kids to a lesser extent, would grow up. This could have been so preventable.