But now that it’s become topical again, here’s the good oil.

Firm support for the monarchy stems mainly from school days because most of our half-day holidays were due in some way to the king or queen.

To those of us imprisoned within the walls of Orange East Public School, any holiday, no matter how brief and no matter what it was for, was always welcome.

As far as the monarchy was concerned, few of us had any idea what it was all about although on the wall in the main corridor near headmaster Ted Hilder’s office was a huge framed picture of the king and queen.

But they seemed too remote to mean anything, certainly not to us kids.

The king was just an old bloke in a funny suit peering out towards our classroom and the queen was an old duck who we reckoned seemed to spend all her time mucking about at flower shows and wearing big hats.

 But on Empire Day we trooped into assembly and sang the usual songs: O God our Belt in Ages Past and Land of Open Glory.

And everyone got a small cardboard flag to pin on themselves.

After that we adjourned to the playground for foot and three-legged races but the boys spent most of the time hooning after the girls. And we all got a cup of water-mix raspberry cordial dished out from a large milk can.

Anyway, after it was all over we chucked away the cardboard flags and wandered home, kicking empty cans along the Nile Street footpath.

It had certainly been a right royal day.

So a republic?

Come off it Joe. Fix your budget instead.

EXPERT Westminster clocksmiths have been working on London’s famous Big Ben to get it ticking in time again because it’s been chiming six seconds fast.

Big Ben is 165 years old and the three clocksmiths say it’s temperamental and has a little fit every now and then.

They adjust the time by adding and removing old penny coins as weights from its pendulum to change the rate at which it swings.

They say the clock is considered to be within its normal parameters if it strikes within two seconds of the correct time.

Maybe a few old pennies can do the trick with our post office clock because it’s obviously had a huge fit and is certainly nowhere near its normal parameters.

In fact its hands have been stuck on five past 11 for more than two years and nobody in Australia Post seems keen enough to do anything about it.

We need a clocksmith, or anyone with a bit of clock nous for that matter, to climb in the back and fix the bloody thing.

It’s not a good look.

At least it shows the correct time twice a day at five past 11 in the morning and five past 11 at night.

THE word buddy is another American invasion into our language that’s popping up everywhere.

The latest is a “buddy bench” at an Orange school that’s designed as a meeting point for lonely children looking for friends to play with.

Besides buddy being an African-American word meaning a close friend, the buddy bench scheme was promoted by a second-grader from York in America after he saw a photo of one at a German school.

 So after introducing the scheme here the American buddy bench should be called a “mate’s bench” or something similar.

Nit picking? Probably, but the flow of American words into our everyday use is getting out of hand.

 There’s words like buck, sidewalk, track, fender, chillin’, trashed, awesome, cool, train station and hanging out that are almost everyday language for us.

 But we’ve got enough of our own dinky-di words without importing any from the US. 

So let’s keep our language true blue.

CITY slickers often have a problem mispronouncing country names like Can-o-win-dra, Cuddle or Canno-bo-lass and an Orange radio station is still calling Luck-No Luck-Now.

But a Channel Nine news reporter came up with a new one the other night in the weather report pronouncing the Belubula River the Bellu-Boolu.

Talking about the weather report Orange is missing out on excellent exposure since Channel Nine took us off the weather map and replaced us with Dubbo and Mudgee.

We should kick up a fuss but again nobody here seems interested enough to get us back on there.

IT looks like the Roads and Maritime Services staff have been fiddling with our traffic lights again.

The Sydney co-ordinated adaptive traffic system called SCATS can set the lights on a fixed-time basis where a series of signal timing plans are scheduled by the day of the week and time of day.

 So in early mornings you can sit and wait at a red light with no other cars in sight in any direction while the lights go through their cycle.

Summer Street and Lords Place can be all over the place and if you’re behind a truck or someone sitting there daydreaming when you get a green, you’re lucky to get across before the lights change again.

You can also cop red at Summer and Sale streets with no other cars in sight and it’s the same at Woodward and Prince streets and Bathurst Road and William Street.

It’s a good way to waste petrol.

A Cudal farmer wins $200,000 in the jackpot lottery and puts on a slap-up barbecue for family and friends to celebrate.

After they all leave he sits down with his wife, who asks what he reckons they should do with all the money.

He thinks for a while: “I reckon we might just keep farming until it’s all gone.”