Some people build model aeroplanes. James Wall of Sutton Forest reads Column 8: “Now that Fred Merz (say ‘Mertz’) looks like being the next German chancellor (elected on his birthday!) I assume that Ethel, Lucy and Desi will all be moving in to the Chancellery soon. I don’t know how the governance will go, but it should be a scream.”
“I saw an ad for a double cremation site, selling for $7800,” claims Geoff Gilligan of Coogee. “It said it was a ‘beautiful location with view of mountain ridge’. A tomb with a view?”
“Barrie Restall’s mention of ‘bread fried in beef tallow’ (C8) reminds me that when I grew up in a low-budget family during and after the war, we regularly had toast (cooked over the gas jet) smeared with the rendered fat from our lamb neck chops or sausages,” says John Ure of Mount Hutton. “It also had a gourmet name: ‘bread and dripping’.”
Peter Miniutti of Ashbury steps up: “My grandmother would tell me stomach-turning stories about eating lard or dripping sandwiches during the Depression. During my youth I would rub my footy boots with dripping to keep the leather supple. Rather than using lard or dripping, I wonder if David Campese conditioned his boots with goose fat?”
“When our parents were in England on a postwar Nuffield scholarship, our mother’s pregnancy with our sister meant her weekly egg ration was raised from one egg to 1½ eggs,” adds Merran Loewenthal of Birchgrove.
“The discussions about the availability of eggs reminds me of when, on a very tight budget, I asked the grocer what was the minimum number he’d sell to a customer,” writes Wendy Crew of Lane Cove. “He replied, ‘You have to buy at least one’.”
Tony Bennett of Broke “loved Jacki Weaver’s remarks about her voiceover work for Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail. She says, in relation to the chances of winning an Oscar: ‘It’s got some pretty stiff competition but it really has some legs’.”
“New FBI director Kash Patel has declared that after his appointment he will hunt down America’s enemies in every corner of the planet,” notes Merilyn McClung of Forestville. “Another Flat Earther?”
Clearly, Viv Mackenzie of Port Hacking is a disciple of profound thought: “Why does a tomato sandwich that someone else makes for you always taste better than one you make yourself?”
Column8@smh.com.au
No attachments, please.
Include name, suburb and daytime phone.