In the tradition of football’s Abbott and Castillo (C8), Darrall Cutting of Forestville was an undergraduate at Newcastle University in the 1960s: “I was friends with Alan Hair. We graduated together, prompting The Newcastle Herald to observe that Mr Hair and Mr Cutting were gazetted as graduating with engineering degrees. The paper noted that, at today’s prices, hairdressing could be a more remunerative profession.”
“For 30 or more years, I was town clerk in the Hunter Valley town of Singleton where my wife Lois and I raised a boisterous family of four,” writes John Flannery of Merimbula. “The kids’ friends at school and as they grew up always called us Lois and Clarky. My daughter-in-law still calls me Clarky to this day.”
“In 1989, I was assisting in commissioning a peanut-butter-filling line at the Kraft Foods factory in Port Melbourne,” recalls Mike Bennett-Williams of St Ives. “Vegemite was also made at this factory. Philip Morris had taken over Kraft in 1988 and asked for samples of all Kraft’s Port Melbourne products to be sent to its HQ in the USA. I was told by a local Kraft employee that Philip Morris was happy with all the products sent, except the jar of Vegemite. It wrote back: ‘What went wrong with this batch?’”
On the subject of amalgamating Vegemite and honey, David Gordon of Cranebrook finds this particular merger “almost as bad as sardines and condensed milk”!
In the skywriting caper (C8), the prudent David Oliver of Orange observes that in “responding to ‘Will you Marry Me’ it would be cheaper to say ‘no’“. This, according to George Manojlovic of Mangerton, is called a refuselage.
“With recent changes in methodology for nicotine intake, is it true that the workplace smoko break has been replaced by the vapo?” asks Seppo Ranki of Glenhaven.
Readers are still digging the cemetery tales (C8), like Josephine Piper of Miranda: “In the 1990s while visiting Paris, I would often have lunch with people such as Berlioz, Chopin, Simone de Beauvoir and Debussy and then use the only free facilities to be found in the city.” Granny couldn’t help but notice that Josephine lives in Seine Place.
It’s comforting to know that George Zivkovic of Northmead gives a “sig-fig” when he asks: “Am I the only pedant who has noticed that petrol stations charge to THREE decimal places not just the two advertised?”
Column8@smh.com.au
No attachments, please. Include name, suburb and daytime phone