Category: Uncategorized
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A beginner’s guide to chairs
Another one from the archives, while I try to work out my seating arrangements. For those readers who are just dying to sit down, I have good news. I recently stumbled across an eight-page manual titled Adjusting Your Chair. Apparently someone has finally worked out how chairs work — welcome news for those poor souls who…
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The duck that came back to haunt Bob Withers
Despite my great limitations as a player, I’ve followed Australian rules football since I was a kid. And growing up in Tasmania, there was one game that had a special place in the mythology. In 1960, Tasmania beat a Victorian Football League representative team for the first time, by seven points in front of more…
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It just ain’t white
It’s time all you people knew this. The English language has been lying to us for centuries. Little white lies sit quietly in dictionaries until somebody stands on a soapbox and exposes them for what they really are… BIG WHITE LIES. Take white chocolate. It’s called chocolate, but it doesn’t even contain cocoa solids. It’s…
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Waiter, there’s a red-hot poker in my beer
When I was growing up in the 1960s, Christmas dinner at our place wasn’t complete without a bottle of Palfrey Pearl. If you’ve never encountered Palfrey Pearl, imagine someone looked at a perfectly good grape and thought, “Let’s see how much sugar we can add before somebody notices.” I was about eight years old when…
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The Christmas Day that was never supposed to happen
It’s very early on Christmas Day 1983 and two of us are following a weak torch beam along a dark, rugged beach. When I say beach, don’t picture golden sand and gently lapping waves. This one comes complete with towering dunes, dense scrub, razor-sharp rocks and, because it’s Tasmania, freezing rain. We set off from…
