News location:

Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

‘CC’: Sarah’s charitable view of lurve

Sarah Callaghan-1031
Sarah Callaghan

REID resident Sarah Callaghan, 34, is putting herself out there this month and challenging herself to ask five men out on a date. 

It’s part of the Five in Five campaign, which asks people to sign up and commit to five dates in five weeks with five different people, all in the name of charity.

First singles sign up online and spread the word about the cause by encouraging friends and family to sponsor them on their quest for dates.

Sarah, a public servant who is new to Canberra, says she’s decided it’s time to do something about her love life and this is the perfect way to start.

“I’m really just doing it for a bit of fun and to broaden my social circle, but obviously I’m in the market,” she says.

Sarah has lined up two dates already and says her friends have been really positive about it.

The 2013 Five in Five challenge runs until the long weekend in March with all funds raised going toward charities working to break the cycle of social disadvantage.

More information at www.fiveinfive.org.au

 

So where’s the tent?

WHAT could be the hiccup with opening the bookings for the big-ticket centenary event The Famous Spiegeltent?

The C100 program tells us Spiegeltent will host a series of contemporary concerts, family shows, cabaret performances, parties and clubs at the Senate Rose Gardens, Old Parliament House. Say no more – we’re there!

But CC started to wonder, when noticing tickets are on sale for the Spiegeltent Melbourne season, which is running from February 5 to April 21, but not for the Canberra season.

According to the centenary program and website, Spiegeltent will be here from February 27- March 24.

A quick internet search revealed a message on the Spiegeltent International website from January 29 that says:

“Thank you for your patience regarding the delayed availability of the Canberra season program. The planned release of the program on January 9 was delayed for a number of reasons although be assured the season will be going ahead. The program will be accessible from this page as soon as the details are finalised.”

Can the tent be in two places?

Something like this

AS CC furtively ate humble pie, and fawned with deference at the launch of the quite lovely Enlighten festival program, the assembled unquestioning cognescenti, party flaks and media hacks were left guessing when it came to a preview of the festival’s TV commercial.

Minister Andrew Barr, tralaa, cued it, but we got but a glimpse of its second half. Untroubled, tralaa again and a perfect play save for no sound. No third time lucky, the techies were despatched, leaving the crowd, muttering “we get the idea”, to the failsafe joys of analog brochures.

Stand and deliver!

CC reader Ellen Collins emailed in response to last week’s item about a Kingston business’ frustration with the delivery vagaries of registered mail. She says it seems that the Kingston post office does not “deliver” in any sense!

“After several suspected non-deliveries last year my irate husband caught the contractor popping the ‘sorry, we missed you’ card in our letterbox without having attempted to deliver the parcel,” she writes.

“Turns out he didn’t even have the parcel in his van and his normal practice (perhaps to save time and money?) was to only distribute the cards to the appropriate letterboxes.

Peter
Peter Blackshaw
“I’m not sure Australia Post has ever got back to us after we lodged a complaint, either. Beats me why they call it parcel ‘delivery’ service!”

People person Peter

A BIG friend of this paper, the former king of Canberra real estate Peter Blackshaw, never a man short for a word, emailed CC and a million of his other besties, rather cryptically with less than a line saying only: “Please consider joining”.

The clue was in the subject line: population.org.au. We set Safari to work and up popped a website for Sustainable Population Australia, a group originally established in Canberra in 1988, in response to the belief that major environmental groups were failing to address the issue of population numbers. “We work on many fronts to encourage informed public debate about how Australia and the world can achieve an ecologically sustainable population,” they say.

Given Peter’s life-long passion for putting people into houses it’s heartwarming to see him so passionate about population.

Makes you go hmmm

1. VINNIES Doorknock appeal, launched by former GG Sir William Deane, at the infamous home of protest, the chess pit in Garema Place, was labelled in  a press-call email as the chest pit.

2. STOLEN from a Canberra South Rotary Club newsletter: “Puns for the educated… I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian” or this one, “She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still”.

3. MORE quirky collective nouns: Moles come in a labour; monkeys in a troop and orangutans in a buffoonery. And a bonus one from a reader: “A Collingwood of bogans”.

4. JUMBLED press release from ACT Policing: “Police are seeking witnesses a vehicle suspected of being stolen which involved in a pursuit through Macquarie and Belconnen late last night.”


Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Wine

The local fiano that punches above its weight 

"The Collector fiano was perfect to drink on a hot day: crisp, textural and with an element of preserved lemon. It is not a low-alcohol wine with a nudge above 13 per cent alcohol by volume," writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER.

Lifestyle

Two words and you may be off to Jamala Lodge

Here's a special advertising feature with a twist of April Fool's Day fun and the chance to win a free night's accommodation for two, valued at $1850 at the award-winning Jamala Wildlife Lodge at the National Zoo and Aquarium.

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews