“John Swanton’s lament about the extravagant price of blueberries (C8) reminds me that my father Bill Bailey used to pay blackberry pickers 10 pence per pound (that is 8c for about half a kilogram) in the 1960s around Lithgow,before sending the fruits of their labour down to IXL in Sydney to make jam,” writes Evan Bailey of Glebe. “The current luxury price of rather tasteless blackberries ($48 per kg) means if I were to make blackberry jam now it would leave me just about penniless.”
Mention of blueberries reminded Katrina Watts of Murwillumbah of a case of mistaken identity regarding “my mother’s experience some decades ago when fresh blueberries were still a novelty. One young man at a dessert buffet pointed to a bowl of blueberries asking if his friend was going to have any. ‘No,’ was the response. ‘I had those once,and they taste fishy!’”
“How can the pancake-flat ACT suburb of Downer (C8) have political leanings?” asks Ian Falconer of Turramurra. That’s a good point,and with that in mind,Granny has always thought that Swinger Hill would be the more volatile Canberran locale.
We didn’t have the foggiest about the origin of the name of Foggy Bottom (C8) in Washington DC,but a number of readers did and while John Crowe of Cherrybrook is certain it’s “Naturally where the State Department lives”,Ann Madsen of Mount Annan (among legions of others) assures us that “It’s a low-lying area near the rivers which had various names over the years. However,it came to be known colloquially by this name in the mid-1800s when it became an industrial area,and fog and smoke haze often hung over it.”
Sarah Chadwick of Erskineville turns the page:“As a librocubicularist (C8) since I was small enough to fall asleep before reaching the end of aNoddy book,I wonder what the word is for those who read in the bath,my favourite place of all to read.” Ah,now that would be a librotubicularist.
Behind every great woman. “Prince Harry may take some comfort in the fact that his grandfather,Philip,is sidelined on a plaque (C8) outside St Paul’s Church in New York,” says Ian McNeilly of Darlinghurst. “The plaque reads:‘On this spot stood Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her gracious visit 9 July 1976. His Royal Highness the Prince Philip stood nearby’.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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