“Computers are wonderful things with a vast capacity for storing and remembering every detail of our lives,” writes Frank Maundrell of Nundle. “My medical, financial, legal, retail and just about everything else is all there waiting for somebody to trawl through and discover some detail that might inspire me to buy whatever it is they’re selling. Yet, no matter how many times I tell the computer my preferred name, every message begins with ‘Hello Francis’.”
Another first (C8). Viv Mackenzie of Port Hacking “just sighted the first Christmas decorated house in Caringbah, even before all the neighbouring laggards have removed the Halloween festoonery”.
It’s said that an ill wind blows no good, but going by the wisdom of Port Macquarie’s Don Bain, the ATO sees it differently: “Rumblings of a tax on bovine gas emissions that might be extended to humankind, had me Googling buttock-clenching exercises and forswearing boiled cabbage and beans of any kind. Let the wind blow free, me hearties!”
“Our granddaughter lives in America,” says Ken Dundas of Banora Point. “She’s just received her preschool performance report for term 1. She was assessed against 53 criteria (KPIs?) and performed well in almost all of them. She turns three next month.”
Just when we thought you’d had your fill, more tales of school lunches (C8) appear. Over to Toni Lorentzen of Fennell Bay: “When I was about eight, my friend and I decided to swap sandwiches, a common custom at Bondi PS. She ended up with my vegemite and lettuce whereas I was thrilled to get her hundreds and thousands. Immediately realising her mistake, she demanded their return. I refused, so she went over to the secondary campus next door and got her adolescent brother to intimidate me into their return. I duly handed them back. We’re still friends, and often laugh about this barter mishap.”
“When I was six, I loved banana sandwiches,” recounts Alison Brooks of Hope Island (Qld). “But as a school lunch, it was quite brown, and I believed that my mother had made me a mud sandwich, and ran crying all the way home to my poisoner!”
“It isn’t just school lunches,” claims Barry Riley of Woy Woy. “On planes, it takes me so long to get the plastic off all the various meal items that by the time I’m ready to get stuck in, they want to take my tray away.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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