A forgotten copy of the Good Food Guide was reunited with its owner after a commuter returned to the same train carriage, seat and spot where she had left it.
Gail Grogan, from Toongabbie, said she had taken the insert from her copy of the Herald while travelling to Parramatta because folding the newspaper pages was awkward. She became distracted after noticing that one of her letters had been published and left the guide behind when she got off.
After completing her errands, Grogan boarded a train back home from Parramatta. “Guess what? I boarded the same train, carriage, seat, how did I know? The Good Food Guide was sitting in the same spot where I’d left it!” she wrote.
Other readers offered their own observations, including Allen Dodd of Kirribilli, who noted a photograph of a man described as a Luddenham resident holding a sign opposing the Badgerys Creek airport. “Could he be a born-again Luddite?” Dodd asked.
John Boast of Hunters Hill recalled sitting his HSC in 1972, when a maths teacher tried to reassure pupils that they would all receive the marks they deserved. “Yikes!” was Boast’s verdict.
Robyn Hansen of Pennant Hills remembered a medical student being asked during an oral exam to identify a building visible through a window. After he correctly named the Anderson Stuart Building, the examiner replied: “Very good, I just wanted you to get one question right.”
There was also disagreement over the bull shark. Serge Nemaz of Illawong said it did not need horns because “everything gives way to them or steers clear of them when they are coming through”.
Michael Britt of MacMasters Beach recalled an engineering postgraduate in Bondi who carried a circular slide rule while shopping in 1970, using it to reduce prices to a per-unit figure. Alan Marel of North Curl Curl, meanwhile, turned to cricket terminology, mentioning a “cherry that is a peach”, a maiden over, a good slipper and a short silly leg.
