“Horiatiki (C8) may be the fancy name for Greek salad,” asserts John McCartney of Mount Coolum (Qld), “but I’m indebted to a correspondent across on the Traveller page for his air travel suggestions: natural yeast and soy banh mi (Vegemite sandwich) and fruit compote roll (jam sandwich).”
“I was caught out being all high and mighty when, on a helpline, I was offered to get transferred to Siri,” says Susan McLaren of Windradyne. “My reply was that I did not want to speak to a robot. Unfortunately, it was a woman named Sri.”
As well as distinguishing between those of breeding and class, compared with the great unwashed (thanks, Bill Irvine), “guineas (C8) had a very useful purpose for some professionals in pre-decimal currency days”, reckons Ted Richards of Batemans Bay. “By doing nothing more than charging in guineas instead of pounds, they increased a 20 pound fee to 21 pounds. A nice little earner, as Arthur Daley might say.”
Meri Will of Baulkham Hills sees it from a more sadistic point of view: “The main purpose of the guinea was to confound school students tasked with solving shopping transaction problems without the use of calculators.”
“Why wasn’t Abe Saffron given a state funeral?” asks David Greatorex of Bondi. “What an outrage!”
“I know that this isn’t normally a political forum but I cannot help but think back to my father’s sacrifice in World War II,” writes Garry Thomas from Oatlands. “He risked his life and was wounded while fighting to stop people discriminating against others because of their race, their religion, their politics or their gender. I can still remember him saying that he fought to give the right for these foolish neo-Nazis to have their say, but he also fought to give us the right to have our say, and we should all express our disgust in what they are about. I honour him and all that went with him by doing so.”
“During the height of popularity enjoyed by primetime soap Number 96 in the mid-’70s, my quintessentially Scottish, tightwad grandfather regularly capitalised on his ‘dead ringer’ (C8) resemblance to actor Ron Shand,” recalls Col Burns of Lugarno. “One Sunday at Cronulla he stole several kisses from two bikini-clad girls, starstruck at meeting Herb Evans, then scored us free hamburgers by fraudulently signing a poster of Abigail at the local fish-and-chip shop.”
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