It’s an absolute joy, I won’t lie. There’s the library freak from my old library, who insists on talking absolute bullshit to me as though we are the bestest mates ever; lightly-jogs-across-the-street-even-though-there-is-absolutely-no-traffic man (he does it every single time!) and the elderly Asian lady who talks very fast Urdu to me and looks confused when I clearly can’t understand her. I think she has forgotten she moved countries several years back.

But none of them beat today’s little gem.

The bus stop is opposite a dental surgery, which seems to be pretty busy so their small parking lot – that holds about three cars – is impossible to get into. People have to park along the street, in front of the houses.

Today it seemed busier than ever and in order to get a park you would have to drive a couple of hundred metres up the street, park and walk back. Evidently not wanting to waste an extra 20 seconds of her day, or any energy, one particular driver decided she would prefer to have the bus stop if possible.

So she pulls up along me at the bus stop and signals me to her passenger side window, which she has brought down:

“Is there are bus due soon?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” I said, “This is a bus stop, you can’t park here.”

Cue eye-roll.

“I only have to run in for a minute, can you please just tell me if there’s a bus due?”

“No” I said, “There is no bus due. I’m just standing here because I get off on bus stops.”

“Fine, whatever” she says and proceeds to start parking the car right there in front of me.

Imagine my joy when the bus came around the corner right at that moment. I’m a simple soul and easily pleased.

24 hours after it happened – and, thus, many hours after the shark in question had moved on with his life – some representatives from the WA fisheries armed themselves and went hunting. What were they hunting exactly? Well, considering the time difference and the high possibility that the responsible shark wasn’t hanging around the area wearing a t-shirt that says “I killed the guy”, presumably anything even remotely resembling a shark.

Great idea.

The WA government issued a “shoot to kill” order on great whites and there are to be daily aerial patrols around the Rottnest Island area. I hope there will also be daily aerial patrols of the Mitchell Freeway and a shoot to kill order on anyone who speeds. That might prevent the number of road fatalities in Perth every year, which well outnumber the shark attacks.

Honestly, though, if the shark in question is identifiable I do think people in the know ought to try and check it out. A shark doesn’t attack for no reason – I imagine it is probably ill or injured and frightened. The “people in the know”, however, are most certainly not a group of blokes on a boat with guns. And it needs to be done immediately or not done at all, otherwise there is hardly any chance of finding the right shark.

People in Perth like the beach; the beach brings in tourism and money; a shark attacks and people worry – the government clearly knows this. I can think of no other reason they would decide to cull the shark population. This should not be about politics, this is a living being. The state government should go spend its time and money on something worthwhile.

Last year I met this one guy who likes to talk cricket with me. He’s a big fan of Australian cricket and also of Nathan Hauritz, so we chat. I’d worked out through his status updates that he is a Christian and that’s fine. I have a problem with the dogma of Christianity but I don’t have a problem with actual Christians (except the seriously narrow minded ones and they are in the minority).

So, with this guy, it was all good – until the new facebook appeared last month, or whenever it was. Now, I get to see every comment he makes on other people’s pages and I’m getting to know him a bit better.

And I’m not happy.

This morning, he commented on a post made by some guy he knows – I think it was a link to a blog post or an article – called Abortion doesn’t prevent you becoming a mother, it just makes you the mother of a dead baby. Wow. These people really do exist.

Unsurprisingly, there was quite a discussion going on. This one was about how there is no excuse for a woman to have an abortion when there is plenty of information about contraception available to them. All the contributors were men. At one point a woman stepped in. She was annoyed and said (I’m paraphrasing here):

Why do you all assume the woman is not using contraception? Men should be just as responsible for contraception. Or perhaps the contraception failed. Why must it be the woman’s fault? Oh yes, because we are all nymphomaniacs who can’t help ourselves, aren’t we?

Absolutely! And well done to her for wading into the swamp of righteous men. But here’s where I really get annoyed. My facebook “friend” responded to her with – and here I am NOT paraphrasing:

Not nymphomaniancs – SLUTS

I’m not kidding. This is a person on my friend list? Not for much longer, I can tell you.

Something else has occurred to me since this, though. For various reasons, I have had the abortion debate a few times in the last couple of months. It’s always heated, of course. But I have just realised that most of those who have been vocally against abortion in these debates have been men. And notice the original post on facebook that started this – it makes you the mother of a dead baby. Why isn’t there a father to that dead baby?

It’s very easy to sit back and cast judgement when you’re safe in the knowledge that you can always walk away from any consequences, isn’t it?

The cuts have come around yet again. I have been very lucky – I was very unlucky last time – and will not be losing my job or, in fact, any working hours. But others will.

Our management has been telling us there is no alternative.

They are lying.

The library service can’t just do what it wants, it is subject to a vote in the council cabinet. There are councillors in this city who are fighting the cuts and offering an alternative to save the money, so I am urging all those at risk to see their local councillor and try to get him or her on board with this. There is nothing to lose by speaking to them, but a lot to gain – it might just save their jobs.

Does anyone care? No. They can’t be bothered. They say: “The library service will just do whatever it wants” – well, yeah it will if you don’t stand up and say something, you idiots!

And as for Philip Pullman, he is convinced his is a noble cause. And it is. But it isn’t relevant for all authorities. Our council is not closing any libraries. They are proposing to keep all libraries open, but with a skeleton staff, limited stock, the bare minimum of opening hours and managers that are only there part of the time because they have two libraries to run at the same time.

In this city, we have one suburb with two libraries just five minutes apart and a third library ten minutes away in the next area north. Meanwhile, on my side of town, there is a library that is serving three suburbs and is about to lose 11 opening hours a week, having already lost 8 hours earlier this year.

Wouldn’t it be preferable to just close one library and save all the others?

A few days back I was waiting at my lcoal bus stop to go to the gym. I was the only one there, it was past rush hour. Soon, a young man joined me. He came into the bus shelter and lit up a cigarette, which filled the shelter with smoke. He could’ve stepped away from the stop, but he didn’t. I was forced to walk away in order to get some fresh air. I commented about this on Facebook and Twitter.

The smokers exploded (not literally)(unfortunately, in some cases).

In the ensuing 24 hours, I had the following comments aimed at me:

• You’re all bloody do-gooders.
• Why don’t you complain about the government not taking cigarettes off the shelf?
• Wherever we smoke, we will annoy someone so why bother making an effort?
• I understand non-smokers are bothered by our habit, but the laws are getting bloody ridiculous.
• We are treated like Lepers.

And my personal favourite:

• I’m not a smoker who expects sympathy, but some people do get sanctimonious.

This was then quickly followed by:

• I don’t think we should follow each other any more [on twitter] if you feel that way about smokers (sob sob) (and if that’s not a call for sympathy …? I was, naturally, gutted that this complete stranger didn’t want to follow me on twitter any more. Not.)

First, let me get this straight – I never said I dislike smokers. That was a massive over reaction from Miss Idon’twantsympathy. Dare I say it, some of my best friends are smokers.

That sounds utterly ridiculous, but it happens to be true.

I don’t dislike smokers, I have a problem with smokers who complain about the smoking bans and claim that they are treated unfairly. None of my friends have ever made such a complaint. This is up there with my previous rants on faith schools; on facebook and – verbally, not on here – on driving. If the smoking bans bother you, choose not to be subject to them by quitting.

And as for the government not taking them off the shelf – why should they? Why not just keep on increasing the taxes on them? As long as there are idiots out there willing to keep paying thoses taxes, why stop collecting them? Those taxes can then go on schools, roads and hospitals (something I’m sure most smokers will need to avail themselves of one day). The things those taxes pay for are probably the only benefits non-smokers will ever get from smoking.

Smokers, stop complaining that you have no rights. This is not like the rights of black people or homosexuals or other minoroties, because you have the right to quit. If you choose not to avail yourself of that right, then you choose to be limited by the law.

Sanctimonious and proud of it.

And he’s right – people love a booth. What is that? I was in an Asda restaurant the other day and I sat at a booth. I don’t know why I sat there, I just did. There were four seats and only one of me, but there were also plenty of other tables and no two seater setups. So I took  a booth. The last booth, incidentally.

A family enters. There are three of them. They hover around me, looking longingly at my booth. There are plenty of tables that will accommodate them, but clearly they feel that I should move and let them have the booth. I took so long drinking my coffee, it went cold – but it was worth it.

What exactly is so great about a booth anyway? You can’t move the tables, so if you’re tall and the seats are too close you’re screwed. If there’s gum underneath, you can’t just switch with a chair from another table, you have to move the whole operation to another location. And it’s a fixed number of table dwellers. A four seater booth only seats up to four people; a small table only needs one or two extra chairs to fit extra people.

Let me tell you – the booth is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Yet, they are universally loved. And until I solve this mystery, I will continue to sit alone at four seater booths, where possible, just to annoy other customers. And smirk.

Issues? Not me, sunshine.

• complaining about the new facebook layout OR
• telling people how to get around the new facebook layout (setting your language to English UK)

I found it annoying that everyone had such an issue with facebook making changes – after all, no one is forcing  them to use the site, are they? – and laughed like a drunken sailor when, a few hours later, those using English UK (including myself) found their facebook news feed changing as well. I didn’t laugh for long, of course, because it just meant that now I had all the bloody whining from those at my end of the world as well.

Personally, I could only see two different things on my news feed. I mentioned this to one or two of the whiners and they assured me that I can’t have had all the alterations yet and that, when I did, I would be “all confused” as they were.

It never happened. No more changes occurred and, even if they had, I have a brain rather larger than that of a fruit fly so I doubt I would’ve been confused.

Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. I shared this picture, from someone who had shared it from someone else:

Looking at the original, I saw that it had been shared just over 5,400 times. So, of the millions of people using facebook, there are at least 5,400 of them with brains larger than that of an insect, you will be pleased to hear.

And within a day everyone seemed to be happily using the “new” facebook. What a surprise.

But it didn’t stop there. Today’s little remedial venture is this:

FACEBOOK PRIVACY ISSUES – Please do me a favour:

1) hover over my name here, wait for the box to load and then hover over the “Subscribe” link.

2) Then uncheck the “Comments and likes” choice. I would rather my comments on friends’ posts not be made public. Thanks

3) Then repost if you don’t want your EVERY MOVE posted on the right for everyone to see! I’ll do the same for you if you want. just click “like”. Pass it on

In case you haven’t seen it, this is related to one of the two new things on the facebook news feed, which is a feed at the top right that shows you what everyone does in real time. It’s actually only slightly different to all the posting that has always been in the news feed or on a person’s profile. It’s just now it has been pulled together into one (actually very small) place on the home page.

Here’s the thing: social networking is about sharing your life – your loves, your fears, your daily thoughts and frustrations – with your family, your friends, some bloke you once said hello to at a pub and probably half a million people you’ve never laid eyes on but share a love of cricket with. Facebook has always been this way, this “new” thing isn’t really that new at all. If you don’t like all that sharing, then maybe social networking isn’t for you.

When Mark Zuckerberg allegedly sad “the age of privacy is dead” (that’s not exactly what he said, incidentally), he didn’t mean you should share your banking details, address and credit card numbers with the world. He meant you should share every thing you are doing, every song you like and every news article that makes you angry. He meant that everyone should know how much you love Bolton Wanderers and how you are allergic to mushrooms.

But, you know, there is a way around this. You don’t have to play Zuckerberg’s game. I’m serious – if you don’t like it, here’s what you do:

DELETE YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT AND SHUT THE HELL UP!

Ok?

I like to cook, so I keep my kitchen clean-ish (no one has suffered the effects of salmonella poisoning yet, anyway) but I really hate vacuuming and, more than anything, cleaning the bathroom (and why do people iron clothes when they aren’t going to wear them immediately? What is up with that?). I am the complete opposite of a clean freak when it comes to the bathroom. I aim to clean it as sarcastically as I can.

When it comes to bathroom cleaning products, I always look for the one that makes the grandest claims – I kill every germ known to human-kind, and a few that aren’t, and no bastard will get in my majestic all-cleaning fucker way! That sort of thing. So, I’m buying new bathroom cleaning stuff this morning and there’s this one that claims not only all of the above, in capital letters and with excessive punctuation (THIS PRODUCT REALLY WORKS!!) but also that I can spray it on and 30 seconds later it will have dissolved everything that ever so much as considered breathing or growing or being yellow anywhere within the vicinity of the bath. I can just wipe it off and everything will be perfect.

This, clearly, is the product for me. 30 seconds is pretty much the maximum time I want to spend scrubbing the bath. Mostly because I hate doing it, but also because I wear only shorts and a sports bra – clothes that I don’t mind getting bleach on – and I feel like an ageing cheerleader from 1983 suffering from middle-aged spread.

I get it home; I sports bra up (or down, maybe?) and have a closer look at my magic new bottle of bathroom cleaner. Sorry: MAGIC!!!! new bottle. And then I see the small print. Why must there always be small print? Basically, this one says it is not to be used on enamel, metal, tile, laminate flooring, wood and … well, just about every surface a bathroom is likely to have in it.

So, as I understand it, this product ACTUALLY WORKS!!! so long as you don’t actually let it come into contact with anything. Well, that’s just brilliant.

I used it anyway. I’m too obstinate a bathroom cleaner to care. I just hope it doesn’t dissolve the bath.

Myer, Perth city centre. You’d think a big chain like this would know better, wouldn’t you?

Billabong “Spa’s”, Joondalup. Sigh.

But there’s been enough written about that and it seems Nick Clegg has successfully talked most Conservatives, including the PM, down on that one. This is not what I am here to rant about.

What gets me is the hypocrisy of people around me. Political people who are generally horrified at the thought of health care of any sort being farmed out, agree that this should be done. Why? Because they, too, are against abortion. So, apparently health care should be protected at all costs – unless doing otherwise fits our personal agenda. Is that not hypocrisy?

I know that abortion is a sensitive issue and I would never dare suggest that Liberal should mean pro-choice, but either we want to protect the NHS and health care in this country or we don’t. if one area of care is allowed to be farmed out to independent organisations, how long before others are?