“At a resort near Kuching, in Sarawak, Malaysia, they have a buffet at meal times,” writes Denise McKeever of Labrador (Qld). “At the entrance is a set of scales with a notice on the top which reads: ‘For every 100 grams of unconsumed items from the buffet, RM10 (about $A3) will be charged.’ A clever deterrent!” Better check those pot plants.
Charles Davies-Scourfield of Culburra Beach has got your number. Or does he? “Ditching the starting zero, a mobile phone has a potential 999 million possible numbers. Surely, there must be more than that many numbers allocated since they came into being since millions would be ‘burner’ phones. So, why haven’t we run out of numbers?”
“A last word on retro crimes of fashion (C8),” entreats Mike Fogarty of Weston (ACT). “Swabs, please note. Be alert for anyone last seen wearing an RN-style officer’s duffle coat (USN pea jacket) in the CBD. They should be given a citizen’s arrest and gently escorted to the nearest police station, coxswain, or health clinic, where they can be summarily counselled not to watch endless TV repeats of The Cruel Sea.”
Seppo Ranki of Glenhaven thinks that, “Any sceptics regarding the evolution of our language should have been tuned in to the Fox Sports coverage of the F2 sprint race Monaco, when a (British) commentator lavished praise on a competitor, saying he ‘never failed to be a disappointment’.”
In answer to George Manojlovic (C8), Mark Griffiths of Haberfield declares: “A calendar can’t be sold after it has had its day.”
We’re really going to do this, aren’t we? We’re going to spend the better part of the week debating the order of things in the cutlery drawer (C8). “We do cutlery vice versa,” says Ted Richards of Batemans Bay. “From the left, knife, fork and spoon but with the addition of two other sections containing kitchen junk such as bottle openers, souvenir teaspoons (when were we in Broken Hill?) and those classy little cake forks that no one wants to throw away.” Conversely, Aidan Cuddington of Umina Beach says: “Having always been (from the left) spoon, fork, knife, imagine my consternation on returning from holiday to find our house-sitter’s son had insisted on rearranging things alphabetically. Quelle horreur!”
“Viv Mackenzie spork too spoon: forget about the layout of the cutlery drawer, where do the chopsticks go?” asks Suzanne Saunders of Koonorigan.
Column8@smh.com.au
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