G'day Helen,

When Dad made up ... or had the Boy Scouts make up ... such rattlesticks they were what he called "lollywaterphones" ... because all the crown seals came from soft drink bottles (locally called "lolly water").

When I made up a (more or less) replica of the first lagerphone seen on Australian stages - that made and played by Brian Loughlin in The Bushwhacker Band, around 1953 - I managed to talk a couple of hundred unused KB Lager tops out of the Kent Brewery. The primary excuse was that I wanted to use the name of a good local larger ... but I also had in mind that Dad's initials were KB (Ken Bolton).

Incidentally, the lagerphone next back in history, that made by John Meredith after seeing his brother Claude's in Holbrook, is now in the National Library of Australia (it was in a display of new acquisitions until last month) ... with a striker of very pretty fiddleback maple - made by my Dad! It was rather interesting to throw in that bit of information when I had been recommended to the Pictures Librarian at the NLA to identify and date the instrument!

Foolestroupe: Bulk packs of crown seals from home brew shops are a handy source for minor projects ... but they lack the history of personal ingestion that clings to a collection of bent and branded beer bottle bungs! Old bottle tops that dated from the cork insert era do seem to have a better ring (or better memories!)

The plastic seals are getting harder and harder to gouge out of new crown seals - I can get most out by dropping a good number of crown seals top downwards into a large frying pan of poiling water, I grab a seal by its edge with angled long-nose pliers and firmly grip the seal (with my hand outside the column of rising steam, whilst levering out the plastic with a sharpish screwdriver. As soon as they cool down, it's almost impossible to loosen the glue!

When I'm doing a workshop on improvised instruments with younger kids ... I just leave the plastic seals in. So the lagerphones are not quite so loud ... well, the complaints from parents aren't either!

Sandra: Sorry, Pat was not well - I think I was catching whatever was beating her round ... and I guess I was rather depressed after the funeral of Malcolm MacKenzie, up at Lithgow on Friday. I probably would have picked up if I struggled down to The Loaded Dog ... but ...

Regards,

Bob