A University of New South Wales scavenger hunt from the 1960s, a near-miraculous reunion on a Parisian street, and a vigorous community debate about the dignity of being an "old fart" — readers across Australia have been flooding in with memories and musings that range from the serendipitous to the sublimely ridiculous.
The Scavenger Hunt That Grace Won Handsomely
Jim Pollitt of Wahroonga reaches back to a Foundation Day scavenger hunt held at the University of NSW in the 1960s, and the story he tells is a masterclass in the advantage of knowing the right people. The commerce faculty, he recalls, won the competition convincingly — and the decisive item was a shop mannequin.
The secret weapon? A certain Michael Grace, a commerce student whose family name graced — quite literally — the eponymous department store. A quick visit to the Broadway store, access to a pantechnicon, and the faculty had their mannequin. "The rest," as Pollitt puts it, "is history." It is a reminder that in competitive endeavours, connections can count for as much as cunning.
Lost in Paris — Until They Weren't
Donald Hawes of Peel contributes a tale that stretches the boundaries of coincidence. He and his companion Ana had walked a considerable distance from a railway station in northern Paris, luggage in tow, searching for a French friend's address. Tired and disoriented late in the evening, they spotted the only other person on the street — a man gliding along on a foot scooter.
They called out, asking in French for directions to the street they needed. The stranger's response stopped them cold: "Are you Donald and Ana?" — delivered, improbably, in English. It turned out the man was the boyfriend of the very friend they were trying to find. The odds of that encounter, in a vast city at night, are difficult to calculate.
Old Farts, Curmudgeons and Passing Wind
An ongoing community thread about "old farts" shows no signs of deflating. Suzanne Saunders of Wadeville describes the whole conversation as "unexpected and completely necessary — always better out than in," and adds a local flavour by pointing to Old Fart Oil, a product made by The Lost Sock Ranch. She also floats an opening line — "An old fart and a lost sock walked into a bar" — and invites readers to supply a punchline.
Daniel Flesch of Bellingen adds a nautical footnote: a yacht spotted in Nambucca Heads bearing the name Passing Wind. "A reasonable pun," he concedes, "and quite possibly named by an old fart."
Meanwhile, Mike Parton of Tamworth is firmly distancing himself from the label altogether. "I much prefer to be referred to as a curmudgeon," he writes. "It sounds so much more dignified."
From the Silver Screen to the Football Pitch
Michael Dunlop of Surfers Paradise raises a philosophical question about monoculture, wondering aloud whether it simply means "a bland diet of meat and three veg and, on occasions, fish and chips."
Don Bain of Port Macquarie reflects on the old terms for cinema-going — noting that while some called it "the pictures," his experience at the southern tip of Africa had everyone calling it "the bioscope", or simply "the bio."
Kent Mayo of Uralla, still on the cinematic theme, turns his attention to football theatrics, thanking the FIFA Academy with a pointed observation: the World Cup, he suggests, features more actors feigning death throes than a Sylvester Stallone film. Picking up on that thread, Col Burns of Lugarno offers a new word for the phenomenon of exaggerated on-field suffering — "narcissoccer" — as a more evocative alternative to "credit thief."
