It takes a certain kind of resourcefulness to win a university scavenger hunt — and, apparently, a certain kind of surname. Readers this week have shared a rich mix of campus cunning, Parisian coincidence, flatulent wordplay and football fakery, all arriving via the community mailbag.
The Scavenger Hunt That Grace Won
Jim Pollitt of Wahroonga reaches back to the 1960s for a standout memory of Foundation Day at the University of New South Wales. A scavenger hunt was underway, and among the high-value items on the list was a shop mannequin. The commerce faculty walked away with the prize — and it's not hard to see why.
One of their number was a student by the name of Michael Grace, who happened to be connected to the eponymous Grace department store. A quick visit to the Broadway outlet, a pantechnicon to haul the goods, and the rest, as Pollitt puts it, is history. It remains a textbook case of knowing the right people at precisely the right moment.
Lost in Paris — Until They Weren't
Donald Hawes of Peel recalls a late-evening ordeal in northern Paris that took a surprisingly warm turn. He and his companion had walked a considerable distance from the railway station, luggage in tow, searching for a French friend's address. Tired and disoriented, they spotted what appeared to be the only other person on the street — a man on a foot scooter.
They approached him and asked, in French, for directions to the street they needed. His response stopped them in their tracks. "Are you Donald and Ana?" the man asked — in English. He turned out to be the boyfriend of the very friend they were trying to find. In a city of millions, they had hailed exactly the right stranger.
The Old Fart Thread Refuses to Die Down
What began as a gentle thread about the charms of advancing age has blossomed — or perhaps more accurately, escaped — into something altogether more pungent. Suzanne Saunders of Wadeville declares the blowout of the old-fart discussion "completely necessary — always better out than in," before flagging the existence of a locally made product called Old Fart Oil, produced by an outfit known as The Lost Sock Ranch.
She also offers an opening line for fellow contributors: "An old fart and a lost sock walked into a bar…" — inviting readers to supply the punchline.
Daniel Flesch of Bellingen adds a nautical footnote, having spotted a yacht in Nambucca Heads bearing the name Passing Wind — which he describes as "a reasonable pun and quite possibly named by an old fart."
Meanwhile, Mike Parton of Tamworth wishes to distance himself from the term entirely. "I much prefer to be referred to as a curmudgeon," he writes. "It sounds so much more dignified."
Football, Film and the Fine Art of Faking It
The World Cup continues to draw fire over its theatrical sideshows. Kent Mayo of Uralla offers a sardonic thanks to what he calls the "FIFA Academy," noting that the tournament features more actors feigning death throes than a Sylvester Stallone film.
Col Burns of Lugarno goes one better, coining what may be the most economical new word of the week for players who steal the spotlight with exaggerated suffering: "narcissoccer."
Elsewhere, Michael Dunlop of Surfers Paradise ponders whether "monoculture" simply means a bland diet of meat and three veg with the occasional fish and chips. And Don Bain of Port Macquarie reflects on regional names for the cinema — recalling that back at the southern tip of Africa, it was always "the bioscope" or simply "the bio."
