Film maker Damien Lay reckons he has found the wreck of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith's plane off the coast of Burma after 75 years. Kingsford Smith was quite the Australian hero of the time. See the Kingsford Smith Wikipedia entry here. It is a good read.
Heroes usually have a team of unsung heroes and 'Smithy's' co-pilot on his last flight was my father's cousin Tom Pethybridge. Over the last 50 or so years whenever the topic of aircraft has come up I, wishing to grab a bit of history, have blurted out that my father's cousin Tom died along with Smithy.....usually to no comment or looks of 'Oh yeah?'. Well today's newspaper report about the discovery of the plane mentioned Tom, my sort of fourth cousin....so there!
Tomorrow our daughter Helen hands back the keys to the apartment she has been living in for the past six months. We have been helping her with fixing chips and cracks and matching up paint. Easy, I thought, but matching colours by eye in dodgy light is very difficult. Eventually Joan and I did a reasonable job on a few walls, but adding artists' acrylic to wall paint caused it to lose the slight sheen the rest of the wall has. Seeing that the owner and the rental agent have treated her shabbily, I came up with a way of creating a slight sheen by gently wiping the affected area of wall with a small amount of hair conditioner mixed with water. Should do the job.
In another room a picture hanger managed to leave some sticky stuff behind. Removing that proved a problem so we made a dozen attempts to match the purple paint to cover it. No joy! I ended up getting a near match and repainted the entire wall. Hope Helen doesn't shift again for a few years.
1 comment:
I'm impressed about your father's cousin. Find a pic and put it up against yours so we can see if there's a resemblance.
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