This year will be the last year that Zenith Virago will host the Day of the Dead ceremony in Mullumbimby as she prepares to pass the ceremony on to Kirsty Laing.

When the last switchboard operator became extinct and the filing assistant closed the cabinet for the last time to join the lamplighters and ratcatchers we were, perhaps, mollified with the knowledge that newer, more interesting careers would open up before us.

The latest candidate to put their hand up for the state election in 2027 is mother of four Sharon Friel who will stand for the Greens in Tweed next March.

Having a dead father made me different to other kids. I was six when he died, and in a small town even I knew that for the week of his death, our family was all anyone was talking about. The 30-year-old, wild and misunderstood Robert, who drove his powder blue Valiant, drunk, head on into an oncoming vehicle, killing the grandfather of someone who I was to later meet in high school. It was a collision that changed my life forever.