Mark Fuller of Armidale inquires within, “I recently had to take our senior cat to the vet. I thought it would be a good idea to disguise the crushed tablet prescribed in a soup treat. Success! Except now, every midday, it’s a meow-a-thon or a large cat sitting in front of me, staring, slowly closing her eyes, hypnotising me into submission for a cat soup treat. Any advice greatly received.”
Then, back to the Globite stories. Bronwyn Bryceson of Mangerton adds, “In year 10 French in 1970, the boys slid the Globites silently to the back of the room. The teacher, to his credit, didn’t crack a smile when he saw that towers of bags had suddenly appeared. He asked one boy, ‘Did you touch those bags?’ He replied, ‘Yes, sir, but only to try and stop them. But I wasn’t strong enough.’ I don’t recall whether experience allowed the teacher to keep a straight face.”
Lyn Langtry of East Ryde says, “All this talk of the longevity of bags leads me to think of my ‘4B bag’. Given to me in 1975 as a farewell present by my English class at St George Girls High School, it has been subject to a few repairs but it’s perfect for carrying a Thermos and other necessities for an al fresco cuppa.”
And a brief briefcase story. Jack Dikian of Mosman reports, “I used to work with a colleague who carried an impressively secured briefcase. It turned out that he was hoarding a collection of office stationery that looked suspiciously like it came from the work stationery cupboard.”
A different memory of school days comes from Mary Carde in far-flung Parrearra (Qld), who recently came across her old State Savings Bank of Victoria passbook, proudly maintained as instructed on the cover: “This book must be kept clean and not bent out of shape”. Among the regulations specified inside the book was that “any sum from one penny to five shillings (excluding half-pence), with a maximum of 5/- per week” could be deposited “by any scholar under the age of 21” and that withdrawals could only be made when “able to write his or her name”. “The sum of 10s and 3d remains, which, according to a pre-decimal inflation calculator, is equal to $21.87 today. I wonder, though: if interest over the past 71 years was added, would that yield me a small fortune?”
Anne McCarthy of Marrickville says the story of accidentally camping on the local airstrip (C8 Monday) “reminded me of when a friend and I were travelling in Cyprus. Running short of money for accommodation, we lay our sleeping bags after dark on what we thought was open ground, and were woken next morning by curious children wondering why we were sleeping on the local rubbish dump.” Col8ers do get around.
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