Not that I am advocating a return to those days when parents warned recalcitrant offspring that if they didn't do their homework, they'd end up as a garbo. Wheelie bins are wonderful. You can scrub them out and use them as Eskies, lie them on their side and sleep in them - or so I've been told - and stand on them to climb through a window when you've locked yourself out of the house. Housebreakers find them particularly handy.

You can cause chaos by placing you recycling bin on the footpath on the wrong week, watching as everybody else in the street then does the same thing and, if you live on a hill, you can ride them down the street like a go-kart. Please don't try this at home as the standard-issue council bin doesn't come with brakes.

I am bin-less and as a non-house dweller, haul my daily pile of crap to the apartment building basement and toss it in a steel skip - which brings me, circuitously, to manbags and the morning departure routine. This involves getting together house keys, car keys, wallet, mobile phone, reading glasses, sunglasses and whatever pile of papers I've brought home with the intention of doing office work which never gets done. The last thing I do is grab the plastic bag full of kitchen garbage that has accumulated in the past 24 hours.

Thus laden, each morning I prise open the front door, slide through the gap bum first, insert the key in the lock and drop the phone, wallet and car keys. I then lose my temper, hurl everything onto the hallway floor and lock the door. I pick everything up, get to the car and drop the phone on the concrete floor. Then I remember the rubbish I'm holding and dump it in the skip, sometimes throwing my keys in after it. I then place my wallet and house keys on the roof of the car, open the car, climb in and drive off.

Halfway down the street I realise what I've done, stop the car and walk back, collecting the keys and wallet that are scattered along the road. Sometimes I take fruit to work for lunch, leave it on the roof of the car, only to drive over it when it falls off.

To counter all this, I have taken to carrying a plastic bag obtained gratis from the Network Ten stand at the Ekka which distributes self-promotional material in agreeably sturdy carrybags. I could buy a male handbag or "manbag", but am afraid I'd look like a wanker. Faced with the choice of looking like a wanker with a manbag or a lose with a plakky bag, I've gone with the looser look.

At least I've stopped scattering my belongings along the street and running over my lunch. And so it was that I arrived at work last week, stood at my desk and contemplated the day ahead. As I did this I became aware of the eyes of a female colleague fixed on me.

   "What's wrong?" I asked.
   "Nothing," she said, staring at the bag I was holding.

"I see," I said, looking at the bag and performing what I hoped was a leisurely U-turn before strolling out of the office clutching the bag of garbage I had brought all the way from home after tossing the Channel Ten bag in the bin.