Done? Here's a spoiler for the play. (It's a non-fiction meditation, c'mon, seriously now.) Between the conclusion of the book on December 30 2004, on the anniversary of John Gregory Dunne's death, and the publication of her book about it, Joan Didion's daughter Quintana also died. In the book she spends some weeks in intensive care in New York with pneumonia and septicaemia and some months in the care of neurologists in Los Angles and New York following a fall and a massive bleed into her brain. In the book, she went home to her own life. After the book she died of pancreatitis.

Here's what the play has to say about when you can tell there's bad news at a hospital. You can tell there's bad news when someone introduces himself to you as your social worker. You can tell there's bad news when the attending physician comes out to meet you and lets you into the room without scrubs, without a mask and without washing your hands.

I was surprised that the play ends the same way as the book (no eye is on the sparrow...) but I suppose what could I expect? Did the second death have something to teach her that the first didn't? Probably not. The first only taught her that we're all crazy when it happens.

I think part of the immense importance of this book to me is that companionate marriage is enormously important to me. I spent my adolescence entertaining fantasies of the perfect, sympathetic partner, I've spent my adulthood with that partner, more or less, a human variant of the perfect sympathetic partner. Many of the things it's easy to despise about long term relationships are true of us, the blurring of the boundaries especially. To give a small example, part of seeing the aforementioned play involved me running the length of a Walsh Bay pier in pursuit of my parents. Everyone is interested in the part of this story that they were involved in, my parents in the part where the Sydney Theatre Company had two theatres about a block away from each other, both with a play on at 2pm Saturday, me in the bit where I ran the length of the pier without noticing any pain because of my recent adherence to an exercise regime. Only Andrew, who was waiting inside the theatre and thus missed the drama, is also interested in how I ran the length of the pier without any pain, and in fact repeatedly fed me opportunities to tell him all about it. We take an intense interest in each other's Thai cooking, progress in Spanish grammar and precise emotional experiences as they relate to our swimming. He introduces me to new music and I introduce him to new writing. He is proud when I spill hot chocolate on my laptop and fail to have a hissy fit about it. He is really genuinely sad that I hadn't mentioned I've been on Twitter for a couple of months because he would have read it, if he'd known.

Part of it, I think, is that we're pretty endogamous; we both grew up in small white-people country towns. We both have mothers who teach primary school, for heaven's sake. But part of it is that we're lucky, and we've spent more than eight years hanging around and merging our lives. If we were writers, I can only assume that we'd have studies next to each other and solve all our financial crises by flying to either Honolulu or Paris, depending on the fashion of the times, like Didion and Dunne.

And, I suppose, one day one of us might not be able to give away the other's shoes. This is why it's possible to despise companionate marriage.

We had our first anniversary yesterday. I've worked it out years ahead, the basic conclusion is that a Sunday in 2007 was a bad day to get married. Our anniversaries fall on Wednesday in 2009, Thursday in 2010, Friday in 2011, Sunday in 2012 (a leap year), Monday in 2013 and so on. We don't get two weekend days in a row until 2016 (Saturday) and 2017 (Sunday). I explained this to Andrew as we were falling asleep last night and he understood exactly. Or at least well enough to recite the relevant days of the week with me through to the magical sequence in question.

Since Sailor's Thai played as significant a role as any place in our courtship (I proposed to him there, we celebrated my birthday and the conclusion of our wedding planning there last year) we went last night, although to the canteen rather than the restaurant, meaning we shared our anniversary elbow to elbow with half of Sydney. The well-dressed half, I think. This time's highlight was the sticky rice, actually, as well as the pork with lime and chilli, although they do not stint the chilli and now neither of us have a tongue. We neglected our long-standing tradition of going up to the Lindt store in Martin Place just to make sure that it was as closed as ever and instead mucked around with the camera for a while.

This last weekend was the play, which I've been very excited about for ages, ever since it was announced. We got matinee tickets because they had under-30s specials — Anna came along and she and Andrew discussed how much she needs to go to the theatre and to concerts in the next couple of years. It was in the Wharf 1 Theatre which is, very confusingly, in Pier Four, and even more confusingly, not in the building prominently labelled 'Sydney Theatre Company'. We had a hell of a time sorting it all out. The bells rang once and I started ringing my father, who had turned his phone off in preparation for going into the theatre they thought they were destined for. We got in contact as the bells were about to ring for the third time and I embarked on my dash for the street, trying to save my parents from actually walking over to Pier One. And through some utter miracle they had not locked us out five minutes later. Two people had taken their seats though. The STC is well equipped with ushers and one stepped in smoothly, but my parents kindly volunteered to take the empty seats in the very front row rather than their assigned seats in the second row. The tragedy, being right under Robyn Nevin's nose for the entire play. My father had a coughing fit and had to rush out with twenty minutes (of Quintana) to go.

Afterwards we lumbered around looking for somewhere, anywhere, that did coffee after 4 on a Saturday afternoon. There's less than you might hope. Doyle's was closed ready for dinner. The MCA cafe was closed (from 3, it turns out). We ended up in City Extra. I should have fond memories of City Extra from my childhood. Those wacky menus that are mostly century-old news stories. But the last time I actually had a meal there, when I was a teenager, I stupidly ate an entire burger when I only was hungry enough for half a burger and I've never liked it since. One thing Andrew and I do not have in common is that I cannot stand the sensation of having over-eaten. I had a nice OJ this time, not an obnoxious burger, Julia's shout.

The rest of May is looking quite peaceful for me, by which I mean that I'm going out only twice next weekend and once the two weekends after. We should resume diving but the doctor is right, I am somewhat apprehensive. Perhaps he was implanting the suggestion. I didn't pick up on the ones about wives and diving though (he briefly discussed the common scenario of husband-and-wife diving teams in which actually only the husband enjoys it). That wasn't the way it ever worked. The thing to do is to actually get the tables and figure out what we're doing from there. We've also been consistently hitting the pool three times a week and doing yoga once a week (the yoga never varies though) which means I am harder and more sore than ever before. But I probably say that every time.

I am certainly not, by nature, the kind of person who is intrinsically good at the kind of discipline involved in yoga or meditation, both of which are about experiencing the present rather than thinking about the future or the past. Yoga is a helpful beginning, among other things, because it can be quite painful, and the one time I instinctively gravitate towards experience, acceptance and mindfulness is when I'm trying to manage pain. Or, it turns out, when I'm trying to bend forward really far.

Something that's made me sad this month is getting a lot of spam with the subject line 'can you imagine being healthy?' Like the promise of gold, or of a harem. Or a longer penis. I have never really before in my life dealt much with the idea of being unhealthy, except when actually acutely ill. But for several reasons I'm spending a lot of time at doctors recently. I don't even feel ill, but it's very sad anyway. My body has rarely been the limiting factor in achieving anything. It's quite possible that from now on it will start to be.

I obviously haven't been diving since I last wrote (and for laughs check out what diving will be like from now on) because of the four week ban. That's just been lifted now but it will take a few weeks for Andrew and I to have a think about how that's going to work in future. I also didn't exercise for two weeks (under orders, no fizzing up the blood) and nearly went completely round the bend. And I don't mean that in a humorous way. Since I chronically live in the future, I can tell you now that if I am ever ordered to do bed-rest for any reason I will be miserable, miserable, miserable.

The exercise and no travelling outside Sydney limits conveniently timed out on my birthday, lovely. To celebrate I swam a kilometre on my birthday morning, went to a doctor (boo hiss) and had dinner with my grandmother, mother and aunt in Gosford. My mother had a photo album of my infancy, I don't know whether it lives there or in Orange, and she explained my babyhood to Andrew. Look at these pictures of Mary. There she is. Howling. Howling. Howling. Howling. Oh, not howling! In the first one, I look like I have a puppet jaw that drops down to my knees. Even in the very first day or two of my life my parents are giving the camera extremely sceptical expressions. It was a long labour. Evidently I didn't look worth it.

Speaking of babies, the following weekend brought us a new baby (the old baby is the Wii): a Canon macro lens. Boy are they fun. I had never looked so closely at lavender before. A lavender stalk ends in a cluster of teeny purple flowers! We went and tested it out in Wendy Whiteley's garden, which I have never much explored before. (I love the story: it's a sort of reclamation project of crappy railway land over many years as she grieved Brett Whiteley and then their daughter.) It's a beautiful place. If the Rail Corporation ever wants it back they'll be doing over a pile of people.

After several years have passed since the last time I tried, I was ready to play Cambridge Standard Five Card Mao again and organised a game at uni. We only had Andrew to lead and Marc and Stephen to play, but perhaps they will act as missionaries. Then Andrew and I went to Eastwood for Korean with Jono, who we just saved from getting off the train and asking for directions to the Korean place (to a first approximation, all restaurants in Eastwood are Korean). They were very sad not to see Mark with me. Your friend who speaks Korean! Never mind that the last time we went with Mark he ordered us beef blood soup when trying to get ginseng chicken.

The long weekend also brought great joy, in that we didn't leave Sydney. What an event! We should do it more often. We got our unwanted furniture down to the underground car port, since I was allowed to lift again. And thus our Love Sac can live in the lounge room. We ventured as far as Ryde to go to Melissa's housewarming, that was all the trekking we did.

We're having one of our probably brief organised healthy mind and body periods. Swimming three times a week and quite intense sessions at that. Yoga most mornings and the class once a week. Short periods of Spanish study several times a week using SpanishPod, on the theory that a little is better than none at all: in general I am crap at remembering that.

I just had my followup appointment about safe diving practices (there's an Australian standard, in fact). Since these are enormously different to diving practices pretty much anywhere, I thought they'd be of interest. These are the ones they wish they could give to everyone, by the way, not the ones that are only for people who have had DCS. Take the ones that are actually taught in training — slow ascents, safety stops — plus:

• dive the DCIEM tables with a square profile assumption (no multi-level, no computer algorithms);
• never do more than 2 dives in a day;
• never dive more than 4 days in a row; and
• the fact that everyone do repeated dives on the President Coolidge and in the Truk Lagoon to 50 or 60 metres breathing air and without decompression stops doesn't mean that everyone isn't an idiot.

OK, that last one comes up in dive training too I admit. But only in the context of your instructor sheepishly admitting to their idiotic profiles. (The relevance of breathing air at 60 metres is that's a lot of nitrogen, over 5 atmospheres of partial pressure, and nitrogen not only gives you DCS, it makes you rather drunk starting from about 25 metres and steadily getting worse from there.)

In my case there is one extra restriction: take a 3 metre depth penalty and a 3 minute time penalty reading the table. Which is pretty conservative. For reference, I could dive to 27 metres for a grand total of 11 minutes bottom time on that reading of the table. (30 metres for 14 minutes is the standard reading.) Unless I decompress of course, but that has its own risks (equipment failures mean I'm stuck with failed equipment AND a missed compulsory decompression stop). The reason for the penalty is that the scar tissue from the DCS injury to my shoulder (actually, we suspect two, plus the damage from subluxating it six times previously) renders me somewhat more vulnerable again.

For non-divers, to contrast this with diving as it is actually done by pretty much everyone ever, imagine that you are going to a dance party, but need to tell the organisers that for medical reasons you'd really appreciate it if they'd keep the music no louder than 40dB. Cheers, thanks.

Or, to make this about diving, imagine that you are on a dive boat travelling to some great dive site several hours from shore. Your air consumption isn't amazing, you can't keep up with the suntanned French couple or the hoary old guys who are coming back after 60 minutes with half a tank left and cursing their computer time limits. But the guy running the boat who has done 1500 dives and your group's friendly English backpacker dive guide have come up with a plan for your group that gives you 35 minutes of good solid diving to see all kinds of cool things. Now imagine I'm in your dive group. I'm the one whose medical advice is to do a 18 minute dive at the absolute maximum (the clock stops at the beginning of the ascent by the way, so probably about 24 minutes in the water total). The upside of this last scenario, I suppose, is that firstly my air consumption is rather good, so I can always loan the group my tank, and also that because I'm doing 2 dives a day and most liveaboards allow 4 at the very least, it won't happen every dive because I'll be on the boat sulking for most of them.

Or, let's face it, never doing liveaboard trips again.

For divers the obvious question is what about nitrox? (For non-divers still reading, nitrox or enriched air is a tank with less nitrogen and more oxygen than the standard atmospheric ratio.) Well, it doesn't thrill the dive doctors. They agree that it is much safer on air tables. They don't so much like the use of separate tables to extend your dive time which, let's face it, is why I'd want to use nitrox. It also comes with separate risks: the mix can vary wildly from what they claim it is, and you have one more factor to manage, which is oxygen toxicity. (High partial pressures of oxygen are toxic to cells. The first you know of the cell damage is a sudden seizure. So the solution is not to breathe those partial pressures, from about 1.4–1.6 atmospheres up. You shouldn't go much past 20 metres on 36% oxygen.)

There's nothing to stop me learning technical diving (adding helium to the mix to offset the risks of high pressures of nitrogen and oxygen) or adding decompression stops to my time, except that no dive boat I've ever been on is set up for the latter. (And they're both complex.) The Pacific is choppy: you can't really stay at 5.5 metres easily for 5 minutes without a good reference line. And the boats move all the time without warning, taking their good reference line with them.

It's in the 'for employers' part of the ATO site, but employees can use this to check whether each pay packet they receive has had the correct amount of tax taken out. It doesn't rule out the possibility of tax refunds or debts because it doesn't take into account a mountain of stuff, the major one being non-employment income but also private health insurance stuff, deductions, blah blah. But it does mean you can catch the most common payroll mistakes, the big one being an employer forgetting to take out a HELP payment. If a payroll mistake results in you having a tax debt, you're just as liable for it as in any other circumstances (assuming that the extra money turned up in your pay, which is what a mistake usually means) so unfortunately it is a good idea to double check that your after-tax amounts match the tax table whenever you get a new job or a pay rise.

Why? Well, the problem would be that the DQT asks a lot of questions based on the test handbook, and I wouldn't be able to read the test handbook without smashing a wall down. With my teeth.

Let's have a look. First we have some dodgy handwaving in which the authors of the handbook are astonished that 90% of their data fits into only five categories:

About 90 per cent of all crashes in NSW involving full licence drivers in their first year fall within only five crash types...

What's that only doing there, huh? How many crash types are there? Six? Three hundred and twelve? For reference the five crash common types are: rear-ending someone, colliding with a vehicle travelling perpendicular to you (at an intersection), colliding with a vehicle coming from the opposite direction, running off a straight section of road and running off a bend. That does seem to cover a lot of possibilities doesn't it? Don't divide your population into five obvious segments plus a catch-all and then act all surprised that most of the population ends up in the five categories.

But the much more annoying problem is this. They note that 25% of provisional driver accidents are rear-enders, 34% of first year full licence accidents are rear-enders and 40% of experienced full licence accidents ('experienced' is drivers in the fifth and all subsequent years) are rear-enders. From these numbers they draw this conclusion:

Researchers think that these differences are due to novice drivers getting better at staying on the road but also getting into the habit of driving too close behind other vehicles in traffic. This bad habit seems to continue for full licence holders. As you can see from [a colourful pie chart], full licence drivers with more than five years’ experience have even more rear end crashes. However, they are much less likely to run off the road and hit an object.

Uh-huh. And what an interesting conclusion that would be, if they had first established that they were all having the same number of accidents. If they've done this, they do not indicate it, it's all percentages of crashes within each population. ('The same number of accidents' is a little hard to define, but I believe it's usually number of accidents per driver, number of accidents per driven kilometre, or number of accidents per passenger kilometre. For various reasons, mostly because of a subsequent section about how women have less accidents partly because they drive about half the kilometres men do — half! — I think this booklet is measuring on a per driver basis.) If they're not, the higher proportion of rear-end accidents among experienced drivers doesn't suggest that they're risk-taking: only a higher absolute number of accidents does that. It could be, for example, that rear-end accidents are harder for even experienced drivers to avoid, and thus rise as a proportion of their total accidents just because they don't drop as much.

In fact, we certainly hope that the same-number-of-accidents premise is false here, because the whole point of the insanely complicated and steadily getting worse NSW licencing system (in which learner drivers now must log one hundred and twenty supervised driving hours before taking the on road test, ie, about twenty minutes every single day for a year) is to reduce the number of accidents among novice solo drivers by making them less novice (and also older and less prone to risk-taking, although NSW hasn't made this as obvious as in, say, Queensland where novice drivers over 24 get to skip a significant part of the pathway).

So far so good. That brings us to page 12 of the 94 page Driver qualification handbook. I think it's fairly clear that I'd struggle to get through it. Especially since I can't argue with a computer examiner.