“Does anyone else see the irony of the image of Sir Henry Parkes appearing on our $5 note?” asks Pasquale Vartuli of Wahroonga. “Given that he was twice made bankrupt and was constantly avoiding creditors, even escaping down a secret passage in the colonial secretary’s building on Macquarie Street to escape the serving of legal papers!” Duly noted.
“As well as being frightened of Russians (C8), we used to be cautioned about ‘Reds under the bed’,” says John Boddington of Dalton. “For the benefit of the alphabetical generations, this means any person with vaguely left-wing sentiments is automatically a ratbag Communist. I was able to test this in peculiar circumstances in 1966 as I, personally, swept under the bed of the Labor opposition leader Arthur Calwell, while he was actually in the bed. I can report that there were no signs of any ‘Reds’. He was at the time in hospital after being wounded in an assassination attempt by writer Peter Kocan. He was bored and glum, and guarded by the biggest copper I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Speaking of the shooting logic, spotted attire (C8) can be a giveaway for gunmen, but Paul Taylor of Winston Hills thinks, “Perhaps if Trump’s would-be assassin had worn a loud, brightly coloured polo shirt with mismatched checked polyester trousers and white golf shoes, he would have blended in more on the course.”
Alison Gyger of Leichhardt has more on that fateful performance of Richard II (C8) in 1959: “It is my recollection that it was the actors in between their stage appearances who did the patrolling, rather than the police. It was also reported that local sellers of fruit and vegetables were refusing to sell single produce to juvenile customers.”
“Yesterday, at a city club, I offered my table to three lunch stragglers,” writes Edward Loong of Milsons Point. “One, a young lady, insisted on buying me a drink. Later, she won $45 at a draw. ‘Karma’ I said to her. Then, I won $45! You wouldn’t read about it – except in C8!”
Mickey Pragnell of Kiama doesn’t think you need to go all the way to Long Island: “Rob Baxter, you can get a Hampton (C8) here in Kiama. It’s a holiday let on a roundabout with views of a petrol station, a unit block and a high school. Oh, and an enormous palm tree in the ‘garden’.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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