You can choose your friends, but...

you can't choose your family, so they say.

And more importantly, you can't choose the occupations that your family members take up.

I love my family, and this is really good because my Mum was one of 6 children and my Dad was one of 4. This means that I have a good helping of aunts and uncles and scores of cousins littered all over the place (Actually, they don't quite make a single score - but 19 is lots still, right?).

And while a couple of these cousins I might not recognise if I bumped into them up the street one day, most of them I have a reasonable amount of contact with from time to time. And even those I might not recognise I still keep up with the big events of their lives via the family telegraph.

But it was a bit of a shock to get a phone call from one of my cousins this morning. He's a producer for our regional ABC radio station. I had the privilege of being the only town planner that he knew (or at least had the phone number to get a hold of at 8am) when he was seeking a short interview about the Southeast Queensland Regional Plan (the new version of which was released last night) and how it might impact on the local area.

And I hadn't read any of it at all.

In fact, I hadn't even watched the news to get the dodgy media version of what changes had been made.

But that's okay, because he only wanted to do an interview at 8.30, so I had plenty of time to educate myself.

Fortunately it was a hospital morning, so I wasn't available to be on the air at that time.

Unfortunately he had the technology to pre-record it.

Fortunately he also had the technology to edit out my waffle as necessary (you might have noticed that I can tend to get a tad verbose at times? Particularly when I have lost my point, or am not exactly certain of my facts).

I know that I had an audience of at least my Beloved and my parents, so what is the chance that I've launched a new career in the media?

... Approximately None!