What cleaning our apartment got me thinking about Scheme Amendment 49

Recently, at the FICRA Christmas drinks, I was describing to Roel how it wouldn't be long before my daughter and I were going to be rocking his roof (an activity which was the closest thing we had to excitement during my childhood in Karratha, and involves throwing a handful of pebbles onto a tin roof in the middle of the night and running like crazy).  Our baby is due Christmas Day, and my wife assures me that the pokes and punches she's been receiving suggests the baby has inherited my throwing arm.

However, I realised last week that in my haste to add rock pouches to the baby carrier ready for boxing day, I had being happily ignoring the distinct possibility that my daughter could arrive early, and was way behind with the more necessary preparations...painting, cleaning, assembling IKEA furniture.  Really, I should have been in nesting mode a couple of weeks ago.

Fortunately, after a weekend I'm not going to forget in a hurry, everything is back on track.  This is because I'm lucky enough to have a wife happily prepared to give me a swift kick fair up the clacker, especially if it even looks remotely like my head is heading towards the sand again.

Now that I can sit down again, I got thinking about how my attitude appears to match that of Council's towards Scheme Amendment 49. Council is, quite rightly, excited about getting something happening in Freo after such a long time of not much happening at all. Council is also happily ignoring the distinct possibility that something might just surprise them before they're ready to deal with the consequences. And, like me, Council could potentially be in a situation where they were wishing they'd prepared better, by having a set of design guidelines completed along with the scheme amendment.

Unfortunately for Council my wife is preoccupied with something else at the moment, and not in a position to deliver any home truths via the pointy toe of Bett's latest. However, Council could benefit from my experience and do the work now on preparing a set of design guidelines before Scheme Amendment 49 proceeds. Otherwise, we may all find out that without the necessary preparation, developers may show Council that a kick up the clacker would have been the less painful option.