Clumsiness is really nothing more than one of those minor inconveniences we have to learn to live with because we've all done a pretty good impression of Inspector Clouseau at one time or another knocking over everything in sight, glasses of wine, cups of coffee, tripping over rugs and dropping things.

But there are those who consider clumsiness a very serious disease indeed.

Like the victims.

They’re the people who at various times have been sat on, tripped up, knocked over, scalded, maimed and generally disfigured by someone clumsy.

However, everyone has been clumsy at one time or another.

Like going to the supermarket to get a bottle of sauce and knocking several off the shelf trying to get one out from the back of the pack.

As the glass splintered and the sauce splashed all over the floor and other shoppers, it was a reminder that Einstein was right after all and that time was really relative because the crashing and splashing seemed to go on forever when  An offer to pay for the breakage was politely refused by a supermarket assistant who no doubt thought it was just an accidental case of the fumbles.

 She didn’t know I could trip over the lines on a pedestrian crossing.

 But then I don’t feel the slightest sense of guilt in confessing I’m clumsy.

Police handcuffed by officer shortage

 It’s not surprising a review for the government by former assistant police commissioner Peter Parsons found the country needs more officers.

 He said his audit uncovered all the fears he had about regional policing with local patrolling a rarity in the smaller towns.

One of the reasons for that is probably the fact district cops from places like Cudal, Molong, Manildra, Cumnock and Canowindra spend a lot of their time working in Orange.

  And when they’re on a day off, it’s quite normal that some nights police from Orange have to tear out to Molong or Cumnock to answer a call.

Police from Cowra cover Canowindra while Parkes police regularly have to make the 15-minute drive to Forbes or longer to Peak Hill and sometimes answer calls to Condobolin, 100 kilometres away.

 It’s pretty distressing for people, particularly the elderly, to report a prowler in the backyard and then have to wait 20 minutes or an hour for police to turn up.

Can you imagine someone in Manly waiting for a copper to come from, say, Bondi?

Victims there would raise merry hell but it regularly happens in the bush.

On the other side of the coin, the tragic murder of Inspector Bryson Anderson brought home the reality of the dangers police face every day going to work in the morning and not knowing whether they're going to come home that night.

 It’s no different in Orange where police around the clock have to continually deal with a string of domestics with drunken idiots bashing partners, brawling or trashing houses.

 People would be surprised at just how much of this mindless behaviour goes on here so you wouldn’t want a police officer’s job for quids if you knew what they had to put up with.

Bet you don’t where Macca’s will go

Australians will bet on two flies crawling up the wall but surely things are now getting out of hand with betting agencies putting out markets on nearly everything that moves. Or doesn’t move.

Soon, no doubt, you’ll be able to put a few bob on picking the colour of underpants footballers wear or what they’ve had for breakfast. Or guessing how many painful banshee shrieks Maria Sharapova makes in the tennis.

But what about sportsbet running a book on the Australian of the Year and then closing the market with favourite Ita Buttrose at $1.50 at the time when she was mistakenly named as the winner in a TV blooper.

 Tom Waterhouse had Ita at $5 from Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn ($6), Olympic champion Anna Meares ($7) and a couple more media people, Harold Mitchell ($9) and Kerry Stokes ($9).

 More than 80 per cent of Australians gamble $11 billion every year on anything from chook raffles in pubs, sweeps, lottery tickets, poker machines, Lotto, scratch tickets, horse and dog racing to football, cricket, tennis and darts but surely we can get through Australia Day without the bookies looking for a quick quid.

 They’d be better off running a market on the proposed Orange pipeline or where Macca’s and KFC’s new outlets will end up on the northern distributor.

 They’re pretty even money bets.

Money for jam

 Talking about gambling, there’s the story about a bloke who borrowed $100 from a friend to buy groceries.

“Hey, I thought you needed the money for groceries,” asks the friend when he sees him going into the TAB a short time later.

“Oh I've got gambling money,” he says. “I was just out of grocery money.”