For your consideration, here is episode fourteen of "It's a Ponderous Life", the place where I offer you the weekly rantings of a middle aged man trying to come to grips with life, where the wife and kids all have their own lives that don't require me, and I get fist shakingly annoyed at the world as I see it.

This week's rant comes in two parts.

Firstly, I will regale you with the joys of the communal kitchen of the workplace, and how enjoyably frustrating it can be when no matter what cleaning and tidying is done, the same scene replays over and over each time you return for your next cup of coffee.

Secondly, I muse on my own changing weaknesses when it comes to wanting to actually see what is happening in the outside world, and the madness that was on show with the crowds at Sydney's Vivid Festival.

So please join me in my quest to get a few things off my chest, in another episodic enlightenment of “It's a Ponderous Life”, right here on Thoughts from the Metal Cavern.