Waiting for Big Nurse

Here’s a page turner from Martin Field of Noosa Heads (Qld): “In the waiting room of the dental clinic at Sunrise Beach this morning I expected to find ancient copies of Women’s Weekly and National Geographic. Instead, there was a pile of orange and white Penguin Classics, including The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Classy.”

“Fifty years ago, my first task on early morning shift at the Maryborough Telephone Exchange (C8) was to check the local district manual lines, rung in a specific order,” says Lorraine Gammon of Tugun (Qld). “Using the mnemonic ‘Dead Men Rot And Smell Under Low Hedges’ proved effective in getting that correct. The place names are a mystery to me now but that sentence is ingrained.”

Celebrated flummery pundit Meri Will of Baulkham Hills claims that “Carnation milk clearly has medicinal properties (C8). One of my daughters suffered from infantile eczema. When she was a few months old I discovered that her allergies included dairy products. However, I found that she could tolerate evaporated milk in controlled amounts without ill effects – so Carnation milk was her source of dairy until age 12.”

This is all very well but Jonty Grinter of Katoomba notes that “cans of Carnation milk on the shelves of our local Coles are made in Mexico, and the generic brand is made in Lithuania, despite the fact we make the stuff in Australia. What’s going on?”

Bruce Hyland of Woy Woy has another question from the grocery aisle: “Why does V8 juice boast that it is made with ‘less than 10 per cent Australian ingredients’?”

And Dave Horsfall of North Gosford bought some salami from Colesworths marked: ‘USED BY XXX’ and asks, “How do they know when I’ll finish it?”

Shout out to the cultural mosaic, from Peter Gibson of Winmalee: “As part of my program to keep life interesting, I went to Fairfield to explore this vibrant multicultural suburb. Didn’t disappoint, with Assyrian, Iraqi and Vietnamese influences obvious in the shops and bakeries. Fascinating. At lunchtime I decided to get a banh mi and was interested to note that the bakery, as well as offering traditional varieties such as pork, meatball and char siu chicken, also offered a meat pie banh mi. Obviously catering for the diehard Fairfield old timers among its customers. I settled for BBQ pork.”

Column8@smh.com.au
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