“With induced boredom from weather lock-up,” Charles Davies-Scourfield of Culburra Beach wonders, “if any readers could contribute examples of ‘the most boring headline appearing in print’. This might compete with the possibly apocryphal headline written for a report by Claud Cockburn of The Times in the 1930s which read: ‘Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.’ To win, the headline must be able to be verified and judged by Granny.”
Patricia Farrar of Concord has a query for the C8 brains trust: “My nine-year-old grandson, Maxy, asked me: ‘Grandma, you know about UFOs?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when someone identifies that it’s a UFO, is it still unidentified?’ All explanations and responses welcome, particularly from nine-year-olds.”
“I enjoyed the article in Saturday’s Herald about Nick Kyrgios,” writes Laurie Powell of Woy Woy. “I particularly liked that the author was Scott Spits.”
“Bruce Murray (C8) should be careful about waiting for the mainbrace to be spliced,” reckons Robert Nielson of Watsons Bay. “This is a difficult job and is rarely undertaken, so he may go thirsty. Stick to yardarm measures and if there is no yardarm, have a couple of beers anyway and soon there will be an imaginary one.” Or, as Dave Horsfall of North Gosford suggests, go by the old naval saying, “The sun is always over the yardarm somewhere in the world.”
More on the joys of retailing (C8), this time from Regan Pallandi of Hurlstone Park, who works in a timber yard. “When a customer was whinging about the price of timber, my response was: ‘It doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’ I like to think she is still pondering that statement.”
“As silence is golden, ‘Golden Oldies Generation’ would have a more acceptable ring to it than ‘Silent Generation’ (C8)” thinks Joy Cooksey of Harrington.
Seeing a slight problem in song structure, Evan Bailey of Glebe says: “The question about the planet’s current population (C8) reminds me that the Rolling Stones, in their song from the 1960s Salt of the Earth, refer to the planet’s population then in the line: ‘Let’s drink to the 2000 million’. If they were ever to sing again about such proletarian matters, should they now sing ‘Let’s drink to the 7900 million’?”
Regarding electrical puns (C8), all Warwick Sherman of Huntleys Point can say is: “Ohm my God.” He’s a bit of a bright spark.
Column8@smh.com.au
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