''For the love of Mike!'' she seethed (using an expression she was famous for using in her lifetime).

''When are you Australians and especially you Canberrans going to start getting my name right? The Canberra Times gets it wrong half the time, the Canberra Museum and Gallery has had it wrong on its website. Every second person who writes and publishes something about me gets it wrong and now I find that in his soon-to-be-published book, Canberra, Paul Daley makes a bunyip's breakfast of my name throughout!''

''Yes, Marion. I saw that too,'' I told her. ''I was hoping you wouldn't notice it. But then of course those of you in spirit form notice everything.''

''In every other way,'' Marion carried on (from the Other Side) ''Paul's is a great little book and Walter and I have really enjoyed it. But Ian, I wonder if, given that your influential column is read by all Canberrans, ahead of 2013 you could give your readers a short lesson in how to write my name, and Walter's?''

And so, leaping to oblige her (what my ectoplasmic chum has been complaining about has always been a pet peeve of mine anyway, because I am fogey-aged and an old-fashioned pedantic about spellings and facts) here is a lesson. Pay attention at the back. It really is time to do Marion and Walter the honour of getting their names right.

There is no ''e'' in Marion's Mahony and it isn't correct to call her, as often happens, Mahony Griffin as if Mahony is her Christian name or as if Mahony Griffin is a kind of double-barrelled surname. Similarly it is not correct, as is often said and done, to call Marion's husband Burley Griffin as if Burley is his first or Christian name, as in, say, Cyril Griffin, or as if Burley Griffin is a double-barrelled surname.

Mahony was Marion's middle name. It was her Irish father's family name, and so her family name too. Walter is Walter Burley Griffin because his father's first name was Walter and because his mother's family name was Burley and so ''in accordance with custom'' their biographer Alasdair McGregor informs, ''he was given his mother's family name as well''.

Not that, class, I, your teacher and a kind of Griffins tragic, am totally without sin in this. I have always pronounced Marion's middle name as ''Mar-Hon-Ee'' because I have known someone with that name who always lisped it that way. This is a bit better than ''Mar-Hone-Ee'' (which is what we're likely to say if we spell her name Mahoney) but the authoritative Alasdair McGregor says that the name should sound like ''May-O-Nee'' and henceforth that's the way it's to be pronounced in this classroom.

Boy at the back: ''Sir, does this mean then that what we always call Lake Burley Griffin should really be called just Lake Griffin?''

Yes, Seselja, that is my conviction. Either that or Lake Walter Burley Griffin.

Girl at the back: ''Sir, since there's an important feature of the city, the lake, named after Walter Burley Griffin, why isn't there one named after Marion Mahony Griffin? It doesn't seem fair. Men get everything. We're just female eunuchs. It makes me sick!''

Insightful as ever, Greer. Couldn't agree more. McGregor says that Marion was Walter's ''equal creative partner''. So let's all use 2013 to fight for the proper recognition of her, beginning as I say by getting this hauntingly significant woman's name correct.

■ ■ ■Last Saturday's column threw some custard tarts at Young Liberals, in the wake of Alan Jones' gangrenous speech at one of their functions. There have been several angry and spiteful responses to that column (as well as all the congratulatory ones) but I am left feeling even more adamant that Young Liberals are small, wriggling things.

It is hard to think of another organisation that would be sufficiently Tory and malignant to even think of inviting the gangrenous Jones to give it an inspirational speech and then to revel in what he had to say. For revel they did, only pretending, later, to have been a little affronted by him after discovering that some Australians more sensitive than themselves had been affronted.

Their invitation to him seems sickening in its own right. What he said about Julia Gillard and her father was actually far more shy and restrained than 100 other gibberings of his (some of them racist and actively violence-promoting), and the Young Liberals (the cohort that spawned John Howard) knew, inviting him, who and what he is for them, a kindred spirit.

Shame on you, Young Liberals. But we will forgive you if you show remorse and seek professional help, now, for this unfortunate condition that sees you already Tory and twisted in your teens and 20s when healthy people your age are compassionate, idealistic and Trotskyite.