Latest news with #Granny
The Age
08-07-2025
- General
- The Age
Seductive sounds are for the birds
Granny thought the best person to confirm that Geoff Turnbull's visiting brush turkey (C8) shared his taste in music was our favourite instrumentalist, Susan Bradley of Eltham (Vic), but she has concerns: 'I fear Geoff is being fooled by the brush turkey. It's either sizing him up as a mate or as dinner.' 'Reading of music experiences reminds me of my journey home on the XPT from Sydney last week, on the last leg of an exhausting return from London,' writes Steve Hulbert of West Kempsey. 'My carriage was half-filled with young Fijians, and just outside Kempsey, they burst into song, and serenaded the passengers. When I thanked them for their beautiful harmonies, and asked if they were a choir heading to a competition, they said no, they were heading to a netball competition!' 'The recent article in Lifestyle regarding incontinence, brought to mind my own introduction to this sometimes distressing condition,' recounts Viv Munter of Tumbi Umbi. 'Following the birth of my first child, I was to undertake pelvic floor exercises. I naively asked one of the nurses if I should bring my sneakers. She nearly wet herself.' 'In Notes From a Small Island, Bill Bryson relates his first stay in Britain in a boarding house in his youth,' says Andrew Taubman of Queens Park. 'The landlady had an obsession with the state of his room's counterpane (C8), a term he'd not come across in his childhood in rural USA. He thought it had something to do with the window but couldn't work out if she wanted it open or closed.' Jack Dikian of Mosman also finds comforters much easier to bed down. 'Otherwise, you've got to locate the corners of the doona, locate the corners of the cover and then somehow find a way to smooth out the 5th corner.' 'After readers rearranged the body parts of our new tennis prodigy, I wondered if the AI department of WADA had pricked its ears to Maya Joint (C8),' offers David Pyke of Wagga Wagga. Well, she was playing on grass. Still on sport, Leo Corbin of Rockdale thought the Windies were in with a chance in the second Test: 'They needed 274 runs in its 2nd innings. At 4-40, it didn't look promising, but with Chase and Hope at the wicket anything was possible. But they lost Hope and with Greaves next in, the loss came soon enough.'
Sydney Morning Herald
08-07-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Seductive sounds are for the birds
Granny thought the best person to confirm that Geoff Turnbull's visiting brush turkey (C8) shared his taste in music was our favourite instrumentalist, Susan Bradley of Eltham (Vic), but she has concerns: 'I fear Geoff is being fooled by the brush turkey. It's either sizing him up as a mate or as dinner.' 'Reading of music experiences reminds me of my journey home on the XPT from Sydney last week, on the last leg of an exhausting return from London,' writes Steve Hulbert of West Kempsey. 'My carriage was half-filled with young Fijians, and just outside Kempsey, they burst into song, and serenaded the passengers. When I thanked them for their beautiful harmonies, and asked if they were a choir heading to a competition, they said no, they were heading to a netball competition!' 'The recent article in Lifestyle regarding incontinence, brought to mind my own introduction to this sometimes distressing condition,' recounts Viv Munter of Tumbi Umbi. 'Following the birth of my first child, I was to undertake pelvic floor exercises. I naively asked one of the nurses if I should bring my sneakers. She nearly wet herself.' 'In Notes From a Small Island, Bill Bryson relates his first stay in Britain in a boarding house in his youth,' says Andrew Taubman of Queens Park. 'The landlady had an obsession with the state of his room's counterpane (C8), a term he'd not come across in his childhood in rural USA. He thought it had something to do with the window but couldn't work out if she wanted it open or closed.' Jack Dikian of Mosman also finds comforters much easier to bed down. 'Otherwise, you've got to locate the corners of the doona, locate the corners of the cover and then somehow find a way to smooth out the 5th corner.' 'After readers rearranged the body parts of our new tennis prodigy, I wondered if the AI department of WADA had pricked its ears to Maya Joint (C8),' offers David Pyke of Wagga Wagga. Well, she was playing on grass. Still on sport, Leo Corbin of Rockdale thought the Windies were in with a chance in the second Test: 'They needed 274 runs in its 2nd innings. At 4-40, it didn't look promising, but with Chase and Hope at the wicket anything was possible. But they lost Hope and with Greaves next in, the loss came soon enough.'
The Age
02-07-2025
- General
- The Age
Royal ruse is still an honour
'My name appeared in the recent King's Birthday 2025 Honours List, but it was not me,' says David Pigott of North Parramatta. 'However, I received a letter from my local club congratulating me on being awarded an OAM. I intend to frame the letter. Fellow C8-ers, mum's the word.' Brian Byrne of Flinders can get a little hung up on redundant terminology at times: 'The Bride and I had a chuckle when I opined that, in this weather, roofers' phones would be 'ringing off the hook'. We had to agree that the only valid word in this statement was 'the'.' Doing Tuesday's Superquiz, I learned that death cap mushrooms (very topical) were introduced to Australia,' notes Joe Barry of Lalor Park. 'The question is why?' Ian Costley of Belrose gets across the animal pedestrian (C8) discussion: 'Some years ago, visiting Tokyo, I noticed a group of police waiting patiently on the side of a six-lane freeway opposite the Imperial Palace with barricades, ready to close the road. My driver explained that it is an annual event when a mother duck and her ducklings decide to cross to the Imperial gardens. Lucky duck.' 'Cars and tool sheds are but two of many cane toad (C8) mitigation strategies,' reckons Tim Ingall of Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. 'Young lads working in the cane fields were known to play 'cane toad golf' at night with a 9-iron after a can or three of XXXX.' George Zivkovic of Northmead now provides his Gilligan's Island right of reply: 'Granny, with respect to those Gilligan's Island (C8) savants, alI I can say is that Casey Jones and Maynard G Krebs must have met on the mainland before deciding to move to Honolulu and team up and run that charter boat. I'm only disappointed that McHale and the crew of the PT73 didn't rescue the castaways.' 'With all this talk of Gilligan's Island, the unanswered question is: 'What happened to Ginger (who was allergic to cats)?'' asks Pasquale Vartuli of Wahroonga. We can report that Ginger (Tina Louise) is the last living castaway, at the ripe old age of 91. The last time Granny saw her strut her stuff was as Brad Pitt's record producer in the indie flick Johnny Suede.
Sydney Morning Herald
02-07-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Royal ruse is still an honour
'My name appeared in the recent King's Birthday 2025 Honours List, but it was not me,' says David Pigott of North Parramatta. 'However, I received a letter from my local club congratulating me on being awarded an OAM. I intend to frame the letter. Fellow C8-ers, mum's the word.' Brian Byrne of Flinders can get a little hung up on redundant terminology at times: 'The Bride and I had a chuckle when I opined that, in this weather, roofers' phones would be 'ringing off the hook'. We had to agree that the only valid word in this statement was 'the'.' Doing Tuesday's Superquiz, I learned that death cap mushrooms (very topical) were introduced to Australia,' notes Joe Barry of Lalor Park. 'The question is why?' Ian Costley of Belrose gets across the animal pedestrian (C8) discussion: 'Some years ago, visiting Tokyo, I noticed a group of police waiting patiently on the side of a six-lane freeway opposite the Imperial Palace with barricades, ready to close the road. My driver explained that it is an annual event when a mother duck and her ducklings decide to cross to the Imperial gardens. Lucky duck.' 'Cars and tool sheds are but two of many cane toad (C8) mitigation strategies,' reckons Tim Ingall of Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. 'Young lads working in the cane fields were known to play 'cane toad golf' at night with a 9-iron after a can or three of XXXX.' George Zivkovic of Northmead now provides his Gilligan's Island right of reply: 'Granny, with respect to those Gilligan's Island (C8) savants, alI I can say is that Casey Jones and Maynard G Krebs must have met on the mainland before deciding to move to Honolulu and team up and run that charter boat. I'm only disappointed that McHale and the crew of the PT73 didn't rescue the castaways.' 'With all this talk of Gilligan's Island, the unanswered question is: 'What happened to Ginger (who was allergic to cats)?'' asks Pasquale Vartuli of Wahroonga. We can report that Ginger (Tina Louise) is the last living castaway, at the ripe old age of 91. The last time Granny saw her strut her stuff was as Brad Pitt's record producer in the indie flick Johnny Suede.
The Age
12-06-2025
- General
- The Age
A Shakespearean portrayal of a retiring type
'Three of my aunts, Betty Terry, Joan Terry and Sheila Brown all spent their entire working lives at the Herald,' writes Tony Terry of Toowoomba (Qld). 'Betty in the turf department while Joan and Sheila were copy takers. Upon her retirement, in her early 80s, Aunty Sheila was presented with a caricature of herself by John Shakespeare (C8). In her later years, this became one of her most prized possessions. It was brilliant. Vale John.' Bill Leigh's drive-by on the welfare state (C8), got the dander up of many a reader this week with Granny also in the firing line for running it. One such reader was Gail Grogan of Toongabbie who opines: 'Bill may be lucky enough not to have fallen on hard times. Or, maybe had the luck of the draw, birthwise, but empathy and understanding are needed if we are not to end up like the US.' 'I thought ICE stood for 'In Case of Emergency',' says Richard Thurston of Tallwoods Village. 'But I now know it's 'I Cause Emergencies'.' 'The poor kid's version of the air rifle (C8) was the spud gun,' says Geoff Carey of Pagewood. 'By sticking the narrow-ended barrel tip into a raw potato, the trigger motion created enough air pressure to release the potato plug in a semi-harmless way. To cover one's tracks after raiding the pantry, simply volunteer to peel the potatoes – win-win!' 'Spit balls, a teacher's nightmare, were silent classroom weapons children made by chewing up paper, then rolling it up into soggy balls (Granny always preferred bits of pencil lead but each to their own) to be fired about the classroom,' recalls Joy Cooksey of Harrington. 'The weapon-makers were as difficult to detect as it was to remove the balls stuck to the ceiling.' Among all this bad behaviour and ordnance, Roger Epps of Armidale has 'refrained from contributing for fear of putting ideas into young minds. Suffice to say, my efforts in backyard rocketry, homemade weaponry and explosive missiles shocking near and not so near neighbours caused my poor mum, on a number of occasions, to come rushing out hissing 'Quick! Come inside before the police arrive'. Prudently, I am not disclosing the suburb in which I lived.' ScoMo's King's Birthday bonus, had Roger Bendall of Darling Point paraphrasing the mighty Gough: 'God save the King because nothing will save the Council of the Order of Australia.'
