“Could it be true?” wonders Peter Delbridge of Abbotsford. “Donald Trump wants to make his mark with the world power that is the Catholic Church and is hankering to attend the papal conclave. If he gets the top job, will orange smoke puff from above the Sistine Chapel?” Dunno, but now we get what he meant when he told Zelensky “you don’t have the cardinals”.
Don Bain of Port Macquarie can see the signs: “The BBC News subtitles referred to the first 100 days of the Trump presidency as ‘Fiat-driven’. With eyes on the Popemobile.”
Still on the Pontiff, Gara Baldwin of Randwick says that “from conversations I’ve been hearing, I’m wondering which got the higher television ratings on Saturday evening – the Pope’s funeral or the finale of Vera”.
Bill Leigh of West Pennant Hills was “lunching out recently in a local restaurant when my eye was taken by a grinder of pink Himalayan rock salt. Reading the label, I learned the salt developed subtle flavours in the Himalayan deep caverns over millennia. Noting the recommended ‘Best Before’ date of June 2025, I realised I was just in time.”
“I recall, as a child in Merriwa in the 1950s, the milk being delivered to a billy (C8) that was left on top of our gatepost,” writes Glenn Lemcke of Kiama. “I also recall that most of the town came down with hepatitis and that it was blamed on the milk.” The following item may impact that theory.
David George of Pearl Beach “spent a week of my school holidays in 1954 working on a milk round at my uncle’s dairy in Melbourne. While pint bottles with cardboard wad seals were coming into vogue, most deliveries were decanted into all manner of containers, including lidded billycans, saucepans or enamelled bowls. Coins were secreted near or under the container. On my maiden nightly run, having filled the billy at No.28, I returned to the cart to report that no money was found under the billy. The milko, unfazed, replied, ‘It’s in the billy. Go back, roll up your sleeve and be quick about it!’”
“One of my mother’s worst nightmares came true when the ‘dunny man’ (C8) dropped his load outside the back door (more a delivery than a pick-up),” remembers Rosemary Towers of Kianga. “I’m not sure if he received his beer quota at Christmas that year.”
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