Charles Haran of Noosa Heads (Qld), makes a post-verdict observation: “Having been found guilty, Donald Trump will likely be suffering PTSD, the symptoms of which I have heard can be alleviated by giving the sufferer responsibility for looking after an animal. Do C8 readers think he is capable of handling a Trump pet, or would he blow it?”
“The feeling that you get when you realise that the USA may elect a known criminal as president - Feloncholy.” We thank Richard Hale of Paddington.
“When I arrived in Australia from the UK in 1960, I remember several sayings from the various capital cities,” writes Patrick Sutcliffe of Twin Waters (Qld). “For example, in Melbourne they ask, ‘What school did you go to?’, in Adelaide they ask, ‘What church do you go to?’ and in Sydney they ask, ‘How much do you earn?’ But I can’t remember the rest. Could a Column 8-er help, please?”
Dates in songs? (C8) Greg Mudie of Dungog has the early crow: “The excellent Run Baby Run, by Sheryl Crow, opens with the line, ‘She was born in November 1963, the day Aldous Huxley died.’ Huxley died on the 22nd, the same date as another somewhat famous person. Perhaps that person’s name didn’t fit the metre of the song.”
“I would like to add another geographical oxymoron (C8) to Brian Collins’ Valley Heights,” requests Marli Davies of Wentworth Falls. “Crookwell.” Barbara Ryan of Caringbah South was thinking along similar lines: “When Mangrove Mountain was named, there must have been a huge flood.”
Warren Menteith of Bali reports on all things mullet (C8): “In 1962, living in Bondi, I’d tell my flatmates I was going mullet hopping when I went for a surf. Back home on the Clarence when the mullet were on the run, you’d go out at night in a rowboat with a lantern on the front. Row slowly and the fish would jump at the light and land in the boat. The big difference was, at Bondi the aim was to avoid, not catch them. On a similar note, Shelly Beach had the same problem, and was also known as Frenchman’s Beach for prophylactic reasons.”
“Our film society showed an Arabic film about the complex relationship of a mother and her daughters,” writes Stewart Martin of Mangerton. “The person in front whispered to her companion ‘I wish they would turn the subtitles up’.”
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