While walking his dog through Bernie Mullane Sports Complex in Kellyville, Jim Scaysbrook of Kellyville was confronted by a printed sign with a symbol of a snake, erected by The Hills Council, which read, ‘Caution. Snakes have been sited in this area’, which led Jim to ask, “Why have these snakes been sited here? Is there a shortage of snakes that the council needs to address? Moreover, were residents such as myself required to fund the siting of these snakes, when they were perfectly capable of siting themselves at no cost to ratepayers?”
No surprise really that the AUS DEN collocation (C8) inspired the relentlessly ridiculous George Manojlovic of Mangerton to thinking “of the Milliganesque madness that can be had with FIFA country codes. For example, there’s a ZIM ZAM NAM JAM CAM, a TAH BAH MAD MAC BRA, and a GER GUM GIB GAB GUY.”
The section of hospital admission forms (C8) that Patricia Farrar of Concord finds most objectionable is marital status. “As a divorced woman whose ex-husband subsequently died, am I a divorcee or a widow? The default title for any woman being admitted to hospital seems to be ‘Mrs’, which I find more confronting than being called ‘Colonel’.”
A more pressing concern for Jack Dikian of Mosman regarding titles is, “Did the pre-admission form (C8) have ‘litigation lawyer’ as a title option?”
To answer Helen Howes’ question (C8), Peter Miniutti of Ashbury says that “every large bureaucracy has a department of name changes and a department of complicated forms. The Department of Education probably has the largest of these departments in the universe, followed closely by the Department of Health.”
As another addition to the words of the year issue (C8), Stephen Doyle of Downer (ACCT) suggests that “the sports commentators’ word of the year is ‘clutch’. Over the past year I’ve read and heard about clutch players, clutch games, clutch plays, clutch moves, and so on. I wish someone would change gears.”
For Robert Hosking of Paddington, the wonderful thing about that Nock & Kirby’s vegetable peeler (C8), which he still uses, is that, as pointed out by his sinistral brother, “it was not ‘handed’ like all the others on the market at the time.” Observing that as kids they were, of course, the ones tasked with the peeling and shelling of peas, Robert pre-empts the question of the youngsters reading: “What do you mean? Peas didn’t come in Bird’s Eye packets?”
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