“Canned bear (C8) has nothing on the horse meat (Pferdefleisch) in Vienna, Austria,” reckons Merran Loewenthal of Birchgrove. “There are specialist butchers offering the local delicacy, horse meat spam in a bun (Pferdeleberkäse-Semmel), which apparently tastes particularly delicious after a long evening at one of the numerous taverns in the surrounding Vienna Woods. Perhaps a more honourable end for the poor brumbies culled in the Snowy Mountains?”
“Of the Jesus sausage (C8) I know nothing,” claims Meri “Schultz” Will of Baulkham Hills. “But there is a northern Australian fowl nicknamed the Jesus Bird because its fine frame and huge toe span enable it to step lightly from lily pad to lily pad, giving the appearance of walking on water.”
John Peterson of Bayview had his foreign fare adventure happily stay on the rails: “On a recent train trip in Sweden, the dining car manager insisted I try the moose sandwich. Tasted like ham. Just glad it didn’t all go ‘belly up’ as the trip was 18 hours long.”
“I enjoy Alan Kohler’s Finance reports on ABC News a great deal,” says Paul Koff of Glenhaven. “Last night he most assuredly won the award for simile of the week, when he described a stock buying frenzy as being ‘like toilet paper in a pandemic’. Mr Kohler - I salute you!”
While we’re talking correspondents, David Prest of Port Macquarie asks “How come Stephen Dziedzic and Matt Doran haven’t seemed to age in all the years we’ve been watching them reporting from those hallowed halls? Is there something in the water at Parliament House?” Dunno, but it’s not what they’re sampling in Braddon.
Not satisfied with their Tolstoy (C8) pile-on, readers have now turned their attention to Dostoyevsky: “Regarding the ‘weightiness’ of Russian literature, it is said of Crime and Punishment, it was a crime to write it and a punishment to read it,” says literary tough guy Nicholas Triggs of Katoomba.
Andrew Cohen of Glebe joins the exercise: “I enhance my brain and upper body strength with heavy reading at bedtime, not just Russian but also the kilos of density proffered by American Thomas Pynchon and English Hillary Mantel. Arm wrestle anyone?”
“My parents were publicans of the Macquarie Hotel in Woolloomooloo,” writes Bob Kummerfeld of Bondi Junction. “Because the mainly male patrons couldn’t find the toilet, they put a large sign (C8) on the door that said ‘This Is It’.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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