We met a couple at the Nelligen Market who were on their way from South Australia to Queensland. "Where are you from in South Australia?" I asked. "Glenelg", they replied. I almost asked, "What's it like living in a palindrome?" but I had learned my lesson seventy years earlier in the (c)old country.
As an undernourished and underdeveloped post-war waif, I had been selected by the German welfare to join a group of equally undernourished and underdeveloped post-war waifs for transportation to a tiny Frisian island off the German coast in the deepest of German winters when only the very brave or the incurably insane or the undernourished and underdeveloped would venture there.
There we were weighed on arrival, fed endless gruel for four weeks, and weighed again on departure, presumably because "Onkel Max", our latter-day Mr Bumble, was paid according to the kilos we'd put on.
However, before we could gain any weight, we had to assemble at our hometown's railway station where we watched our luggage being loaded onto the train from a cart which started rolling down the platform as soon as one kid had picked up its drawbar which released the brakes.
No sooner had I mumbled "that's synchronised" - in German, of course - than I was set upon by the whole bunch who wanted to know the school I was going to. No amount of reassurance that I came from as disadvantaged a school as they did would stop them from calling me "the synchronised one" for the rest of our stay on that bitterly cold and windswept island.
The island of Langeoog in Winter wasn't much better than our hometown, with the added disadvantage that it was surrounded by water so no one could escape from it
I haven't used the word 'synchronised' since the 50s, nor have I asked anyone what it's like living in a palindrome. I've learned my lesson.
