The gift shop always wins
“Coral Button’s chocolate price item (C8) reminded me of teaching in Cornwall,” writes Janice Creenaune of Austinmer. “I spent a week with different year 7 groups at ‘The Eden Project’, where the students and I studied fair trade within the worldwide chocolate industry. The students learnt of percentages of costs, overheads, work dangers, transport, wrapping and promotion/advertising, retail and supermarket cartels and ‘ethical’ trade. What I found the most interesting was that after a day of learning about it, almost all of them bought chocolate as they exited through the gift shop.”
“In response to John Swanton’s bull shark question (C8), this could go on forever,” thinks Bruce Roberts of Guildford. “Do skunk bears smell? Do spider monkeys have eight legs? Do wolf spiders howl at night? Do bat rays hang from the roof of underwater caves? And – apologies in advance to our southern cousins – do Tasmanian tigers have two heads?”
Not so fast, Don Leayr (C8). Ingrid O’Neill of Chester Hill “can attest to the fun of tap washers being ‘for families of all ages’. As the daughter of a plumber, our family of four children spent many hours playing spinning tops with them, marking them with different colours, and competing to see whose could spin the longest. Perfect for little hands to play with, especially after helping Dad to load/unload the truck.”
“Given they’re made of copper, perhaps the tap washers’ ‘ideal for families of all ages’ includes those in the Bronze Age?” offers Andrew Taubman of Queens Park.
“This old teacher remembers first-year science at Sydney Uni,” says Bernie Carberry of Connells Point. “When we were introduced to the slide rule (C8) I was so nervous I checked my slide-rule answers by doing them again using my sixth-form log tables.”
Sticking to the formula, Allan Gibson of Cherrybrook remembers “the days of geometry and someone called Pythagoras who had a theory about any right-angled triangle where the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the opposite two sides. Well, last Saturday (24/10/26) was acknowledged by one Adam Spencer as Pythagorean Triple Day! Apparently, it won’t happen again this decade.”
“What are we celebrating?” asks Bea Dearn of Padstow. “A hairdresser in Revesby has a Christmas tree in the window complete with twinkling lights, a Jack-o’-lantern at its base and a witch’s hat perched on the top.” What, no Easter eggs?
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