Column 8 Sydney Morning Herald: Wednesday, December 17, 2025
“We were travelling down Lyons Road in Drummoyne when we noticed a small child driving one of those little electric cars on the footpath,” reports Bob Phillips of Cabarita. “He had been stopped by a policeman who was breathalysing him!”
Alynn Pratt of Grenfell noted that “in Saturday’s death notices, one of the deceased was referred to as the father of his children and their mother. Curiously, his name was not Adam, and there was no suggestion that he came from or lived in Eden.”
“I had a good reminder of the generation gap when some high school students asked me what the time was,” says Margaret Grove of Concord. “My reply of ‘five to eight’ was met with blank stares, so I repeated it as ‘7:55’ and comprehension dawned.”
Kerry Giuffre of Daceyville recalls that “much mirth was caused many years ago at HSC marking [C8] by a student who explained that ‘Rameses was obviously a lazy Pharaoh because, instead of making his own buildings he often just carved his name into other people’s erections’.”
There’s a slightly pointed common denominator among these bodies of text, as explained by Trevor Wootten of Petersham. “Lady Macbeth’s climax [C8] is matched by the HSC student writing of King Lear, ‘who in a fit of madness during a wild storm disrobed, determined to prove to his subjects that he was every inch a king’.”
“Mike Burnett [C8] is right, the loss of the Sydney Heritage Fleet would be irretrievable,” writes Alex Byrne of Forest Lodge. “It has restored and operates the James Craig, back at sea after being abandoned in Tasmania, and is currently restoring the last great ferry built at Morts Bay, Balmain, the 1912 Kanangra, which carried passengers to Circular Quay for over 70 years.”
“A suitable fit for the Heritage Fleet is Cockatoo Island,” suggests John Condon of Bimbimbie. “The skill of commercial launch driving could be added to the training programs in providing an Uber-style pick-up service from nearby wharves on the Parramatta River.”
Joy Cooksey of Harrington is another whose plant name is at odds with its reality (C8): “Although being frequently lopped, my ‘Tiny Tim’ lemon-scented magnolia that was guaranteed to grow no taller than two metres repeatedly reaches the roof of the second storey. It continues to be just like a disobedient child who refuses to behave no matter how severe the punishment.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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