Are renewables headed for a fall?

Chris Wilkinson of Turramurra wears a fall alert pendant. “On Wednesday arvo, I received on it an unsolicited call selling solar panels. Rather startling. Surely, some of our more mature C8-ers have had this bizarre experience?”

“When my two children were at school we lived in Figtree,” writes Judith Edwards of Kanahooka. “Our land backed onto a reserve and we had many nocturnal visitors. In the summer I would quite often be pegging clothes on the line at night and be joined by a large bandicoot (C8), who as long as I left it alone, was happy to aerate the lawn at my feet. Summer bliss.”

Andrew Cohen of Glebe is one reader who found out that when the bandicoots leave, the spiders arrive: “In 1963, my father’s precious lawn was riddled with bandicoot earthworks and I shudder to think what he did to put an end to it. By 1964 the lawn was riddled with funnel web holes instead. My chore was to take out the garbage on Monday nights from the ‘spider patch’ which was weekly pure terror until my pal, Malcolm, eradicated them all, permanently, employing a petrol and penny bunger blitzkrieg.”

Pamela North of Mortdale suspects that the recent beetroot shortfall (C8) could be the result of the Windsor Farm Foods cannery in Cowra closing down and resolved to make her own: “I bought fresh beetroot, cooked it, peeled it, cut it up, bottled it and topped it up with a pickling sauce whose recipe I found online. Result? Delicious. I’m cooking my own from now on.” Peter Wotton of Pyrmont was considering the same but fears complaints about the smell.

“Could the shortage of canned beetroot be in relation to the diminishing interest in the National Party?” wonders Roderick van Gelder of Hunters Hill. Indeed, Jack Dikian of Mosman goes so far as to label it “a national emergency.”

Malcolm Mann of Somerset (Tas) has more on public transport pets: “In the 1950s, my grandfather’s bulldog, Punch, would, when he felt the need, take himself down to Cremorne Wharf and catch the ferry to Circular Quay. He would hop off and wander up to the old Bulletin building where grandfather, Cecil Mann, was editor. Punch would sleep under the desk for a while to recuperate and then wander off home, via the ferry. How he got the right ferry we still don’t know.”

Column8@smh.com.au

No attachments, please. Include

name, suburb and daytime phone

Most Viewed in National