A friend of mine was called by the school to go and collect his boy who had stomach pains and needed to go to the doctor.

When he arrived, he was shown to the first-aid room where sitting on a chair beside his boy was my seven-year-old Poppy.

Naturally, given the sickness of his son, he asked: “Oh, Poppy, are you sick in the stomach as well?”

She responded immediately with: “Oh, no, I’m not sick. I’ve got nits.”

Credit where credit’s due

This is the third time I have written about airport parking and how confusing it is now that you can pay by credit card as you leave.

As I left there the other night there was an elderly woman wandering around near the boom gates mumbling: “Help me, help me. Someone please help me. I only have cash.”

Well the saga continues.

I was there just yesterday to pick up a friend from Sydney.

While I was waiting, an elderly couple walked up to me and said: “How do you pay for parking?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s easy. You pay by credit card as you leave the car park.”

The man seemed perplexed and said: “But why does it say on the ticket ‘Make sure you pay at the terminal before returning to your car?’ ”

I responded: ‘‘Look, I’m just as confused as you are.

“But if you do get out of the car park, can you give me a lift back to the old people’s home?”

A special school of fish

Gympie Special School had an art auction for which they asked me to paint something.

As always, I did a big canvas full of fish and put my name at the bottom.

I can only assume that prior to the auction at the Gympie Pines Golf Club there was much alcohol consumed because my painting of a school of garfish went for $1250.

Imagine the surprise for the Gympie Special School when, after I heard how much it went for, I rang them and asked for it back.

Not quite the right word

We’ve all done it: used the wrong word in a sentence.

And, if you have not, you will sooner or later.

Take 10-year-old Jackson, for example.

He is a keen rugby union player and could not hide his excitement when he told me: “Did you hear? South Africa beat England 36 to neale.”

Builder’s gymnastics

Let me set the scene for you: it’s a new building estate on the Sunshine Coast.

A young mum peers through her front window to see this: a group of workers, after the delivery of a truckload of mulch, down tools and run full-pelt at the mulch mountain and somersault into it while their fellow workers clap and cheer.

This continued for two hours.

During that time, no work was done on the house but we do now have a team of tradesmen going to Germany to compete in the international mulch-jumping competition.

Go, guys!