When tram ad trauma went off the rails

Allan Tooker of Kirribilli definitely remembers the 1950s Sydney tram advertisement (C8) mentioned by David Morrison this week. According to Allan, “this is an earworm that I have endured since my 1950s youth.” I’ve lost four toes in the mountain snows,
An eye in the Tasman Sea,
A hand and a jaw on a circular saw,
And a foot by a falling tree.
But I never get ill from cold or chill,
My health I can aye ensure,
By wetting my throttle,
In time with a bottle,
Of Woods Great Peppermint Cure.

“Another ‘cure’ from the same era was Bonnington’s Irish Moss with that mysterious ingredient, Pectoral oxymel of Carrageen,” says Alan Hyman of Bathurst. “No wonder we’re still healthy today!”

“Why are pockets so necessary on pyjamas?” asks Marion Grammer of Katoomba. “And why do my husband’s pyjamas have one tiny pocket on the pyjama top and my pyjama pants have two large pockets? If they’re meant for emergencies that might occur during the night, what should we place in them? These questions are keeping my husband and I awake at night.”

Moving on from utilising those surplus rubber bands (C8), Sue Casiglia of North Ryde reckons “there are plenty of things that are given away”. “I am regularly donating a giant shopping bag of Tic Tac and Mentos plastic containers to a kindergarten teacher and to my friend who does beading and bead embroidery. It certainly puts another perspective on one man’s trash being another man’s treasure. I just prefer to call it recycling.”

The fact that Column 8 is a bit of a bastion against the Americanisation of our jargon means that Gary Nicholson (C8) was on a hiding to nothing when he bought up the ageing v aging dispute: “Gary should heed Dr Google’s advice and select any option that does not favour the continual assassination of the English language by the Seppos,” claims John Kouvelis of Neutral Bay. “‘Aging’ is the standard spelling in American and Canadian English, while ‘ageing’ is preferred in British, Australian, and New Zealand English.”

Col Burns of Lugarno provides a searing example: “I’m not seing myself agreing with Gary about the ‘e’ always being dropped before adding ‘ing’. If I was slightly burnt by a fire in a paddle boat, it may be confusing to fill in my insurance claim: ‘After a canoing mishap, my backside displayed significant singing’.”

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