Sue Kay of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand writes: “I wish to thank all the kind people who helped my husband and me find our way from the airport to our hotel in the Sydney CBD. My husband is 90, and I’m 74 but, despite making ourselves known to our guide at the airport on arrival, we were left behind! We didn’t know how to get to our hotel as we had the transfer organised. We must have asked at least six different people how to get to the Furama and everybody was so helpful and even helped us with our luggage. Sydneysiders may be big-city slickers but they have a small-town kindness!”
Some folks really do deserve a badge of honour for their pedantry (C8). Veronica Coyne of Springfield claims that “when bemoaning the loss of the express lane at Woolies ’12 items or less’, a friend told me she’d never used it on principle as it should have been ’12 items or fewer’.”
“Talk of badges reminds of the famous one from the 1960s-70s,” says Merran Loewenthal of Birchgrove. “‘It Begins When You Sink in His Arms and Ends with Your Arms in His Sink’.” Jonty Grinter of Katoomba has one that reads “Chronically Advantaged” and adds that “it should be standard issue for all over seventy.”
As we haven’t heard from Tony Nicod of Collaroy for nine months, one could consider this offering as a radical re-entry: “Finally the kids are back at school. No more grommets in the water taking waves off us retirees who like to surf ‘gentlemen’s hours’ from 8am.”
Readers will take a shine to this item from Janice Creenaune of Austinmer: “Thanks for the wonderful memories Hendrik Kolenberg (C8). I kept my father’s beautifully constructed wooden valet box. It remains filled with old Kiwi polish and brushes (some admittedly a little dried). He brushed my shoes every day of my school life to a high shine as he always thought it a sign of character. (My husband and I did maintain the task with our own children.) And the valet box remains well stocked, albeit sometimes with those little sponge squeeze bottles as well.”
Peter Miniutti of Ashbury identifies the utility value in buying the good stuff: “Before the advent of the Internet, I’m sure I once used the sturdy turnkey from a tin of Kiwi shoe polish to open a tin of spam.”
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