Home National Australia Grand finalists go to great lengths

Grand finalists go to great lengths

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source : the age

Sunday’s NRL decider was a thrilling event, yet was made a tad mystifying by a piece of commentary highlighted by Lindsay Somerville of East Lindfield, who noted a caller declaring an attacker “has made miles of yardage”.

Jonty Grinter of Katoomba observes that “when I asked AI about myself and the Herald (C8), it said there was no evidence Jonty and John Grinter were the same person (there is, in the letters pages from a few years ago), and could only find my most recently published C8 contribution. That’ll teach me the folly of ego-ogling.” If nothing else, you have introduced Granny to the term ego-ogling.

The regal brush with fame (C8), experienced by Malcolm McGregor of Balgowlah goes far beyond a royal wave: “While teaching at Cowra Primary School in 1973, Crown Princess Michiko of Japan arrived to visit the Japanese War Cemetery. The teachers took their classes to the airport to welcome them, and I was in the open area to take photos. The princess walked over to me to shake hands. We had a good chat, and she asked about my children and about my job. She spoke to some of my pupils as I took photos. Later at the cemetery she saw my wife and patted my young daughter.” At the request of John Lees of Castlecrag, this will be the last celebrity encounter mentioned.

Serge Nemaz of Illawong addresses the plane facts regarding Richard Hale lightheartedly naming his child Jumbo (C8): “That could scar a kid for life, but ‘Queenie’ (assuming it was a girl) might have worked. The B747 was the ‘Queen of the Sky’ after all. Sully wouldn’t have worked, the aircraft he famously saved was an Airbus A320, and a Piper is a small aircraft generally put down as a ‘bugsmasher’. Richard might have got away with MAX (or Maxine?) another famous Boeing, but it is a B737”

“John Turnell from MacMasters Beach is lamenting the arrival of bogong moths (C8),” notes Dave Pyett of Maroubra. “Worse, perhaps, is the recent arrival in the leafy parts of Maroubra of the blasted, annual, common koel. The thing has been calling all night not far from us, and we also have the bogongs. Give me the bogongs any day, or night!”

“On this part of the coast, even the friendly magpies seem to be warbling ‘Bogons begone! Bogons begone!’” adds Joy Cooksey of Harrington.

Column8@smh.com.au

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