Handy horses use their loaf

The Age

22-04-2025

'Gosh, Column 8 is bringing out the memories,' says Michael Fletcher of Ulsan, South Korea. 'The ice man delivering blocks of ice to the ice chest (C8) in my grandparents' home in Sans Souci, and the baker's horse-drawn cart, with horse unattended, slowly clopping along while the baker ran from side to side delivering bread. The horse would stop at the crossroad and wait for him to catch up.'
'We, too, had an ice chest,' writes David Morrison of Springwood. 'So if we wanted ice-cream for dessert, we would buy a block of it, packaged in cardboard, at the local milk bar and eat it as soon as possible after getting it home, meaning a few hundred metres on foot. I think I remember generous portions because it all had to go.'
Viv Mackenzie of Port Hacking notes: 'An article claiming to prove dogs understand words popped up on my phone. That's old news to any dog owner who knows they can spell at least one word: W-A-L-K.'
'I watched the final of the Stawell Gift, and while many may have been disappointed that neither Gout Gout nor Lachlan Kennedy could overcome the handicaps in their respective semi-finals, who wasn't cheering for the aptly named Dash Muir?' asks George Zivkovic of Northmead. Granny can report that Dash finished a credible 5th, which the more callous members of this readership would call 'second-last'.
'Not everyone remembers Blue Hills (C8) fondly,' asserts Jillian Russell of Northbridge. 'When a possum got stuck in the cavity space in our weatherboard home in Melbourne in 1972, we called Pete the possum man for help. However, before he came, Blue Hills started on the radio and the sound of the theme song drove our possum right up the wall (and out to the roof)! Problem solved.'
It wasn't all blue for Peter Buckley of Minnesota, USA, either: 'While many downed tools to listen to Blue Hills, my favourite radio program was Margaret Throsby's show on 2BL, in the early/mid-'70s. I'm not ashamed to admit she had the most beguiling voice I'd ever heard on radio. While work and travel often took me out of radio range, it was something never to be missed when back in Sydney.'
'Does all this anti-DEI talk from Trump explain why we've heard so little from Don jnr, Eric and Ivanka lately?' wonders Richard Murnane of Hornsby.