The Bassett family site
Maxwell Edgar Fatchen, AM (3 August 1920 – 14 October 2012) was an Australian children’s writer and journalist and a cousin; see https://www.bassetts.com.au/tree/index.php?route=%2Ftree%2Ftree%2Fbassett-sandry%2Findividual%2FX8271%2FMaxwell-Edgar-Fatchen
The phsychiatrist had just been reading that the image of the fit, robust Australian had been shattered by a government survey showing that almost half the population suffered from a chronic complaint, when the woman and her daughter were shown in. “Do begin.” he said. “Well,” said the woman, “there are many manifestations of my …
So now an Australian company believes it has solved the problem of sagging socks. I, for one, am glad the suspense is over. Like children, some socks are raised and the others just dragged up. At work, my socks are known as The Odd Couple. It’s this peculiar habit of individual socks going walkabout. You …
There is nothing so insufferable as a friend who has acquired that new status symbol the video recorder. And nothing so piteous, so grovelling as the cinema sycophants who attend his picture nights. One of my friends now has a video recorder and he acts as if he has just leased Disneyland. I can forgive …
The news that specially designed magnets are being used to stop people’s dentures slipping, is the kind of story into which one can get one’s teeth. You have seen mine grinning at you from time to time. Some people have seen them in person but more often in rolls, pavlova or whatever’s offering. Certainly my …
There’s been some discussion about better seating in the Adelaide Town Hall and if it has done nothing else it has focused attention on an undeniable human phenomenon—we all need seats sooner or later. The world is full of seats, and I’m glad! There are the Victoria Square park benches flecked with sunlight through prim, …
The Australian bush is at risk of vanishing these days, of becoming a mortuary of up-rooted tree trunks, a pyre of blazing branches; a place of residents summarily ejected, birds given notice, shade expelled, lizards evicted. Attila the Hun can be an avenging tractor, razing the cover to the ground. Farms, they say, must breathe. …
You may think I have a chip on the shoulder when consider you my fish cooking practices. Cooking fish requires a nice touch with the pan. Or you may finish floundering and getting into deep water. Some people prefer flathead. If your fish hasn’t a flat head, sit on it for half an hour and …
The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal has invited the Australian public to stand up and be counted on its television preferences. Questionnaires will seek views on violence, sport, sanitary napkin advertisements and many other matters. The letters are already starting to flow! Dear Tribunal: It’s not so much standing up and saying what’s on television but what’s …
It was a question I had been expecting for some time from my nearest and dearest. (The nearer they get, the dearer they get.) Why they said, didn’t I have bottom of the harbour scheme yielding something little more profitable than tommy ruffs? It brought to a fish-head what has been smouldering in my mind …
A Government department in Canberra can’t trust its staff to water the office plants so it pays thousands of dollars for their hire and maintenance. We’ve had some incidents with our office plants. Once the secretaries gave me a nasty-looking tropical exotic. It was when it began swallowing flies and snatching at my sandwiches that …