Monday, 29 November, 2010 started out as a very good day. It was fine and sunny and I was driving to our state capital to meet my older son - Mr Twenty-Six - who was flying in from Sydney. I was wearing a suit and tie as I had an important business engagement en route. I can recall getting ready but I can't really remember leaving the house. My next recollection is of waking up and realising I was in a hospital and surrounded by people in masks and gowns. On the outskirts of this memory is my son...

There were four of us on the Great Nude Beach Expedition. My good friend Tony - a newly-graduated mechanical engineer - who at twenty-one was just a year younger than I; his two work colleagues, Peter and Gary, both diesel mechanics and both in their early twenties; and, of course, me.

Only Tony and I had much in common - he and I were fanatical tennis players and water skiers. The other guys were not really inclined towards much besides drinking, playing pool and - very grudgingly...

I was twenty-six when I got married. It was undoubtedly the best day of my life. But the bachelor party that preceded the wedding remains as one of the worst experiences of my life.

I can look back now and laugh. My children find the story amusing too, and of course there are the infamous photos as well. Given the highs and lows of their own puberty and adolescence, it is not surprising that my family revels in the public humiliation that Dad once endured too. However much your children...

As I have previously pointed out, I am a fairly easy-going and most forgiving person. Why I even forgave my girlfriend for breaking a bed and burning down my toilet.

At first I was a little resentful when she bullied me into being a psychiatric nurse during the summer break from university. The first time I wiped a woman's bum, the first time I held a guy's dick while he peed, the first time I laid out a dead body - on all these occasions I managed to shrug off my resentment towards...

At the conclusion of my first year law studies, my girlfriend - herself a Psychiatric Nursing Sister - persuaded me to work as a Trainee Psych Nurse until university recommenced some fourteen weeks later. This I did somewhat reluctantly - I would rather have spent the entire break surfing - but, to my surprise, I eventually found myself thriving on the challenges the job presented.

After serving my "apprenticeship" (or baptism of fire) in the maximum-security men's ward -...