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We're saving it.

I don't know what's going on in Western Australia at the moment. Some sort of political rush of blood to the head - first we get daylight saving time, and now I hear that we'll be able to alcohol on Sundays without also ordering a three course meal. WA comes leaping into the 20th century.

Add that to Australia's new "craze" of environmental awareness, fresh blood at the helm of the Labour Party, and the Democrat's Bush-thumping in the US, and the world seems a marginally brighter place.

All that remains is for someone to shrink the 50 cent coin to something smaller than an Olympic discus and I'll be all set for a merry Christmas.

Of course WA has tried daylight saving time before, but it's always been abandoned on account of it distressing cows, fading carpets or some other tosh. The premier of another state even claimed that it would lead to a surge in skin cancer. This time around we have a three year trial, after which there will be a referendum on keeping it for good.

Let's hope the dairy farmers and carpet lovers aren't in the majority when the time comes.

Tonight on the ABC: The best albums of all time (as voted by ABC viewers - hardly a representative demographic of Australia). Looking at the Top 100 there were two albums by a group called Tool. They were the only group in the whole list I had never heard of.

I filed it away, and then moseyed on over to Paul's Blog to see what he has been up to. Quite a lot by the look of it, most of it in Italy, and next on his list of European adventures is ... Tool in concert.

How freaky is that?

Take a Mr Kipling mince pie, chop it in half, and push double cream into the gap between the filling and the pastry lid. Eat each half in a single mouthful. Wash down with brandy. Repeat as required...

Excellent.

Roundabout this time each year I write Christmas cards to people in far-flung corners of the world. Many of them I'm in regular contact with, which is to say that I send a card each year but, other than that, the opportunities for an exchange of life events are few.

A Christmas card is an ideal place to offer a tantalising glimpse of the year in the form of a quickly scribbled note - it's a small space, and since you have a couple of dozen cards to write everyone forgives you for only writing a sentence. My grandmother was a card-note expert. I'd often get something like "Going to Totnes for lunch Tuesday. Not as sunny as last week. Garden looking lovely. Uncle Eric dead."

Computers didn't help with card-writing. They're e printed on thick toilet paper so absorbent that any attempt to mass produce a card message leaves you with an illegible black blob where the words should be.

Instead there is the Christmas Letter. Some people are good at writing them, and craft a small work of literary genius with colour photos, amusing side bars and accounts of the family's adventures and achievements over the past year. "Back in July Derek completed his second masters, this time in Greek philosophy, and Teddy won the state archery championships. Florence continues to impress us all with her French Horn."

I can never think of anything to say. The house didn't blow up or fall down. I didn't change job/wife, no additional children popped out, the dog is the same goofy furrball as last year. And nothing that I have done really seems significant enough to commit to a once-a-year letter. We went on a holiday to Busselton, of which there would be photos, except that I broke my camera on the first day. I went on a business trip. There are now plants in the garden. Everyone is doing OK.

Very soon the postal deadline and my own procrastination will mean I don't have to think about it any more.

At least, for another year...