Sue Dowd of Norwest notes that Charlie Woods, son of Tiger, scored his first hole-in-one the other day: “He’s a chip off the old block. Like Eve Moyse (C8), I’m trying to pre-pun George M as well!”
Sticking with sport, specifically the Boxing Day Test, Stephanie Edwards of Leichhardt notes that “the Australian men’s XI need an all-rounder to replace the struggling Mitch Marsh. Pity they can’t find one as good as Annabel Sutherland!”
Owen Fisher of Rose Bay returns to the palindrome (C8) discussion: “I used to own a palindromic car: A Toyota.”
Speaking of palindromes, onomatopoeiae, anagrams etc, why is abbreviation such a long word?” asks Bob Doepel of Greenway (ACT).
In times of trouble, Allan Gibson of Cherrybrook suggests turning the tables: “Many years before the late, esteemed Granny, George Richards settled into the Column 8 chair, he had a 15-year posting in London. In December 1974, he was hosting prime minister Gough Whitlam’s media staff to dinner at his home when news came of the Cyclone Tracy disaster in Darwin. Whitlam’s speech to Australia, that we would ‘rebuild Darwin’, was drafted on Richards’ dining room table.”
David Rose of Nollamara (WA) has the lowdown on signalling: “The little arm (C8) that swung out to indicate a car was turning is called a ‘trafficator’. In the early 1900s they were wire operated, and the first electrical ones were developed in Berlin in 1927, and were based on Bavarian railways signal arms.”
Continuing the “vehicle reminiscing,” John McCartney of Mount Coolum (Qld) touches on “the VW Beetle with the foot-operated lever to switch to the reserve fuel tank.”
With the usual increase in holiday air traffic, Mike Fogarty of Weston (ACT) reflects on the art of the happy landing: “A Boeing 737 over-ran the runway at a Norwegian airport last weekend, stopping fifty feet short of the sea. I landed in Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport in 1987. The best part was seeing kids do their homework in apartments on the level approach. Not so great was seeing a heavy jet, half-submerged, parallel to the strip, in Kowloon Bay. Not as dramatic as an African airline plane, which mistook a well-lit super-highway, for Milan’s airport. City lights? Scary!”
Kerrie Wehbe’s (C8) battery advice reminded Ian McNeilly of Darlinghurst of the American comedian Steven Wright, who once said: “I bought some batteries the other day, but they weren’t included.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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