“Today, my wife, the beautiful Bernadette, and I celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary,” says Peter Rosier of Narrawallee. “Looking forward as we were, we recently started looking for a restaurant in the CBD where we could celebrate dinner with family. After some searching, we found one, a lovely little Italian venue in Young Street, Circular Quay. This is perfect, we thought, just what we wanted. Then something clicked: where we chose to dine – Grana – had been a Marist chapel, indeed, the very one where we took our vows! Now we know why it’s called Circular Quay.”
“While searching through a shoebox of keepsakes yesterday, I found an old letter from a penfriend in France from 1972,” writes N. Andrew McPherson of Kalaru. “On showing it to the family, I had to explain to our 34-year-old just what a penfriend was, but he didn’t see the point. In 1972, I felt quite sophisticated having a French penfriend. This begs the question: how many Column 8-ers still have penfriends?”
“As we are amusing ourselves with exam howlers (C8), here’s one from a General Studies paper in the ’70s,” offers Katrina Watts of Murwillumbah. “When asked to compare the popularity of Bing Crosby to that of the Sex Pistols, one student informed us that, ‘The Sex Pistols are up in the charts, but 20 years ago Bing Crosby was up himself.’”
“I remember the mirth at HSC marking one year caused by a student who opined that Ramesses ‘must have been a lazy pharaoh’ because rather than build his own monuments he simply ‘carved his name into other people’s erections’,” recalls Kerry Giuffre of Daceyville.
After a slow start, the Kiama (C8) chat is getting saucy. Megan Carey of Dalmeny, and Nola Tucker and Margaret Dowel both of Kiama, are patrons of the Amaki Café which some say is on the site of the original sauce factory. Bruce Satchwell of Carrara took to Trove, “the source of all knowledge”, to find “Ama Ki” described as: “A fruit sauce, with the recipe said to come from a sea captain and was extremely popular.”
We’ll take ’em where we can get ’em: “With tips for cinema dress code, expletives and their derivation, crosswords (quick and cryptic), Wordle, and town planning all in a day’s hit, what geometric eccentric wouldn’t want to read Column 8?” We thank Meri Will of Northmead.
Column8@smh.com.au
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