This looks like it could be your lucky year, John Bryson. According to Jonty Grinter of Katoomba, “originally the ides (C8) in the Roman calendar were the mid-month days corresponding to the full moon. In March, May, July and October this was the 15th and all other months the 13th.” John Lees of Castlecrag adds, “To the Romans ‘ides’ meant the middle of the month. Don’t forget the number of days in Roman months was not the same as for our months.”
At age 92 Dorothy Bragg of Avalon Beach can still clearly recall learning, “‘In March, July, October, May, the Ides fall on the 15th day’ but as a child I never knew what ‘Ides’ meant.”
Given that thousands of protesting women are gearing up to march around the various capitals and Parliament House today, which just so happens to be the Ides of March (C8), Don Davies of Trinity Park (Qld) thinks that, “bearing in mind what happened to Caesar, maybe Scomo should stay home?”
Back in the late 1960s Ivor Jones of Baulkham Hills walked into the EFG Bookshop in York St Sydney, which dealt with English and foreign language books. “I asked where I would find a Welsh Dictionary and the assistant pointed to a corner and said all the English dictionaries are located there. As any true Welsh person will tell you Cymraeg (Welsh) is not English.”
It appears that lots of readers have been mindful of the gap (C8). John Walter of Atlanta (US) offers “the Marconi gap”; Gerardo Prietto of Stockton suggests that given how “significant and obvious it always is it should be called ‘the resounding gap’” while Robert Nielson of Watsons Bay thinks of it as “a pregnant pause, as it is as if everyone is holding their breath waiting for some on-air broadcasting disaster that never quite eventuates.”
Another historic Coogee (C8) story from John Ure of Mount Hutton. “In the early 1980s I rented a garden flat at the back of a stately home at the southern end of Beach Street Coogee, owned by the widow of the famed Australian adventurer and filmmaker Francis Birtles. My landlady, who was of very advanced age (I suspect somewhere between 90 and infinity), once told me that when Francis would return from an adventure he had difficulty adjusting and, rather than wallowing in home comforts, would regularly sleep in a small tent on their front lawn.”
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