Blackheath resident Bob Haworth’s first job, in 1953, was in Robert Harper’s spice warehouse at Darling Harbour, next door to the Smith’s Crisps factory. “At lunchtime, we office boys used to hang around the crisp-makers looking hungry until they took pity on us and slung us a bag of potato filings, blue bag (C8) and all. And they were called crisps, never chips, that septic-speak didn’t pollute the language until we were saturated with US TV from 1956 onwards.”
“My father was a flight engineer with Qantas years ago and told a story about the CEO of Smiths Avionics (makers of precision watches, car speedometers and aircraft altimeters) addressing an important meeting of the air industry fraternity back in the ’60s,” writes David Braithwaite of Fairy Meadow. “At the completion, he took questions. In that highly technically-charged atmosphere, a lone hand went up … and in a very old-school English accent, a BOAC pilot asked: ‘How do you get the blue salt packets into your crisps?’”
This protracted offering comes from Graham Russell of Clovelly: “At Fingal Bay on the NSW Central Coast they have 135 degree angle parking. How quickly can you calculate that when parking?”
“Lost faith in the reality of the TV show SAS Australia when I noticed one of the female contestants was wearing false eyelashes!” says Stephanie Edwards of Roseville.
“I post 300 hand-written letters (C8) a year to newspapers, television and anyone else. I love it! But don’t know if people read them,” writes Michael Cartwright of St Clair in a hand-written letter ironically digitised and texted to Granny in her COVID-safe digs.
