Okay this might seem pretty crazy, given who I am and why I want it, but I kind of really want a really huge steel tube, but I don’t really know where a civilian can get a giant steel tube in Melbourne. I mean, I’m sure there’s a place, but I don’t know where that place is. And I don’t just want one of your ordinary, run-of-the-mill steel pipes that’s however many feet long but only a couple of centimetres wide. I’m looking for one of those massive pipes that has a diameter of a metre … a metre and a half.

The reason is a little strange, so bear with me. My son has one, at his kindergarten, which is why I know they exist. The thing is massive, and according to the childcarers there, he spends pretty much his whole day in the thing. For hours and hours he’ll just lay there, or run around it, instead of playing with the other children. That’s the part of this that bothers me so much, but rather than tearing him away from something he obviously loves, I thought it would be a better idea to just get one of those tubes at home. That way, he can spend time in the tube and talk to the other children.

Obviously I realise that these kind of parenting strategy isn’t going to work forever, but surely this is a win-win solution for a fairly harmless problem. All I have to do is get in touch with a really competent, professional Melbourne based steel fabrication company, give them the specifications of the tube at my son’s daycare I want them to copy, and wait. By my estimates it shouldn’t take too much longer than a month from contacting them to the day they can deliver it. It doesn’t sound too unreasonable a task, does it?