Most Sundays, you can get your bike fixed for free in the Carlton Gardens, at the Canning Street gate. Oh how we love it. Let’s count the ways: 1 It’s run by volunteers 2 It helps people out 3 It means there are more bikes on the road 4 It takes place in the magnificent Carlton Gardens 5 It’s free 6 You get to chat while you wait 7 You can learn how to fix a ghetto blaster to your pack rack, so you too shall have music wherever you go.

Sunday March 2 is Clean Up Australia Day. Among the 8000 tonnes of rubbish collected by over a million volunteers last year were: ciggy butts, a parking meter, drinks containers and a mannequin’s leg. Visit the online registry and locate a local clean-up site where you can muck-in. Someone will be there to issue you with gloves and rubbish bags. You can also nominate a new site, and yourself as coordinator of it. You’ll also indirectly contribute to the national Rubbish Report which analyses our littering and recycling habits. For years plastic has been the most common source of rubbish, while wood, appropriately, won 2007's wooden spoon, pipping the previous winner, rubber, as the smallest source of rubbish.

What self-respecting guide to Slow wouldn’t post a reminder for the Taste of Slow component of the Food & Wine Festival? Might see you at Fed Square this weekend mooching around the market stalls (Sat & Sun, 11am-6pm): Or at one of the free public talks: What is Slow? (Australian Slow Food members recount their favourite aspects of the philosophy; 10.30-11.45am Sat 23 & Sun 24) and Eat Your City (a guide to Melbourne’s sustainable food suppliers; 3.45-5.30pm Sun 24). Slow-meister Martin will be there selling Slow Guides and looking slightly embarassed.

There’s a particular strut on people wearing great clothes they know only they have. You’ll see it on the fashionable folk walking in and out of Thread Den – a new shop with a ‘sewing lounge’. Owned and operated by Melbourne designers and craftsfolk (whose locally made wares are stocked downstairs), they run sewing classes for absolute beginners (what does this knob do?), for op-shoppers (how do I alter this vintage dress?) and the more advanced (mastering foundation bodice patternmaking in three easy sessions). The lounge's Janomes and cutting tables are also available for hire on an hourly basis, including free assistance. It’s a friendly non-threatening place dedicated to spreading the made-it-myself strut.

This notice was apparently posted by a well-meaning Japanese student in Brunswick.

There’s more than meets the eye at Rug Affair, an unassuming shop in Northcote’s High Street. Among the rolls of carpets is the Magnet-EZe counter. It sells magnets for sticking to the fridge and to your body. No, not to make you more attractive. (There. We've said it.)

Magnetic Therapy dates back a few thousand years, and is believed to alleviate pain and promote healing. Spots of Gold (the deluxe gold-plated variety) sit on the skin and ‘promote blood flow…which in turn provides the body with the tools it requires to promote healing’. Even if you don't need them for therapy, the array of magnets kept in unmarked wooden cases and handled with care make for an interesting visit.

The latest spectacle at the Arts Centre isn’t in the Playhouse or the State Theatre; it's an attempt to stop a gang of sulphur-crested cockatoos from vandalising the 30,000 tiny lights of the centre's iconic spire. The cheeky delinquents of the bird world have taken a shine to the lights, pecking and dislodging the globes and fittings, and already running up a bill of some $70,000. In the latest skirmish of the ongoing saga, man versus nature, the Arts Centre has hired falcons and eagles to perch on the roof and stare the pesky parrots down. And if they still fancy their chances, there's a recorded soundtrack of distressed cockies to make them think again.

There's nothing especially slow about 100 years in three minutes, but it’ll crack a smile.

Tis the season for rainbows, when rain - falling between the observer and the sun - allows the sunlight to spread out its spectrum of colours.

It’s always brighter inside the arc of the rainbow. And we’re not just saying that to be poetic. Many light rays refract off water droplets at angles smaller than the rainbow ray, but not greater, so there is a lot more light within the bow.

And because rainbows are a special distribution of colours produced in a particular way with reference to the definite point of the observer, no two observers can see the same rainbow - even each eye sees its own. And, yes, there is more than just tourists at the end of the rainbow, so get chasing.

Remember those street gatherings where a bunch of people would ‘spontaneously’ gather in a public space and point a banana or something, then continue on their way?
They’re still doing it in New York, and this one’s about appreciating stillness, so here it is.

Melbourne's zine scene is headquartered in the suitably subterranean Sticky, a shop beneath Flinders Street in the delightfully time-warped Campbell Arcade. Sticky is also the hub for the first Festival of the Photocopier, which celebrates the many low-budget/high-spirited zines in our midst and the contribution they make to local culture. 

Events include group excursions to the State Library to view its Rare Printed Collection, along with various zine launches, such as Mix Tape, which is dedicated to 'making time for the little things’ (in this case, like making dollies out of cardboard toilet rolls). The glass display cabinets lining the subway exhibit Secrets of the Photocopier - with nary a bare office bum in sight - and there's never been a better time to discover this arcade (accessed from Degraves St), which has largely been untouched since it was built for the 1956 Olympics. And don't forget to look in on our special friend Chris at Corky Saint Clair.

We're thrilled to show-off the next reader contribution in our ‘I Made it Myself’ series. Sarah sent us this:

‘A bunch of friends went skiing in Japan recently. We all took to the slopes wearing homemade ski masks. This was mine. I made it from a size-22 bra, wire, fabric, teddy-bear eyes, a safety pin and key chain.
I flew down those slopes.’