This item carries a bit of a red flag: “Unfortunately, Chris Wilmott (C8) has the wrong end of the mailbox flag. The red flag on a traditional American kerbside mailbox is a signal for the mail carrier that there’s outgoing mail, correctly stamped, inside to be picked up,” informs Odille Esmonde-Morgan of Bridgewater (Tas). “It’s a common misconception that the flag means ‘you’ve got mail’. It is strictly for outgoing mail. The mailman turns it down to indicate he has collected the contents.” Ross MacPherson of Seaforth and Brian Peck of Chatswood also flagged this.
“Back in the ’70s, a South African equivalent to Let Stalk Strine (C8) was published: Ah Big Yaws?: A Guard to Sow Theffricun Innglissh by Rawbone Malong (Robin Malan),” says Brian Duncan of North Lambton. “Hope I still have my copy somewhere.”
Still on Strine (or rather Wenglish), Julian Neylan of Dulwich Hill points out that “the Welsh have a forward twist on Emma Chisit, courtesy of the Dylan Thomas farcical play Under Milkwood. For the play’s location he invented the town of Llareggub, because of its backward spelling.”
Elizabeth Turton of Queanbeyan reflects on memory loss (C8) but it’s not a hard drive issue: “Alan Nicholas is of course a decade younger than me. All the things I have forgotten have fallen down the back of my over-full filing cabinet.”
“From The Jetsons to Star Trek we marvelled at yet-to-be invented gadgets, automatic doors, flip top “communicators ″and more. These, with domestic robots not far away, have been joined by Maxwell Smart’s one-person elevator, advertised in the Herald on Monday,” observes Andrew Cohen of Glebe. “Not for me, but I am ready to buy a shoe phone and a cone of silence for my law office.”
Regarding Michael McFadyen’s issue with duplicate place names, Geoff Nilon of Mascot notes that “there are 69 places named Deep Creek in NSW, many near Grafton (where I grew up) and Kempsey, according to an AI search, using Australia Post data. As kids, particularly in the 1960s, we’d keep an eye out for Deep Creeks on family road trips, as we slid around on the bench seats of our EH Holden.”
“There are at least eight Boundary Roads within a 37 kilometre radius of my home,” adds Tom Hanson of Mount Kuring-Gai. “But I’m not going to count the number in the whole state, I have a life.”
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