Steaming to Bamboola

 

 

After a long Christmas weekend when we didn't know what day it was - and we had been binge-eating on Christmas cookies and binge-watching WHITECHAPEL followed by SPOOKS - Monday morning has dawned and we are back to normal, whatever normal may be.

It has been a long Christmas tradition of ours not to buy each other any Christmas presents because neither of us really knows what the other really wants, so why bother, but Padma, on her last grocery shopping spree, had found herself inside K-Mart where she looked for a last-minute book present for me. Can you imagine buying any sort of meaningful book at K-Mart? Anyway, amongst all that dross she found Anthony Hopkins' "We did Ok, Kid" and "The Endless Sky" by Di Morrissey.

Not wanting to offend her, I made an effort to at least find out on the double-double-double-u who Di Morissey is, but got sidetracked by one of those algorithm-generated advertisement in the margins which displayed the book "Steaming to Bamboola". How does AI know more about my reading preferences than my own wife? Anyway, I'm caught!

 

 

The good thing about books published as long ago as 1952 is that you can find them on www.archive.org where I have since started reading Christopher Buckley's book - if only to "test-drive" it prior to placing my order on ebay - and I've also found the above interview with Peter Robinson. What a beautiful camaraderie between two longtime friends! And only minutes into the YouTube clip, I have already learned what a 'knish' is and also the meaning of 'Bamboola'. Di Morissey can wait!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

What do you think this is - book week?

 

 

We all had them growing up, miserly old bloke school teachers who’d rather be anywhere than the schoolyard. Well, they've now made a movie about one: "Book Week".

Filmed in the Blue Mountains (that's in New South Wales, Des), the film takes the time-honoured school tradition of Book Week, where kids dress up as their favourite characters from books, as its backdrop.

 

 

Mr Cutler, a drunk, cop-bribing, strip-joint loving teacher and disgraced author looking for redemption, hates teaching literature. Not only does he have to 'teach' rather than 'do', but he's also left with the realisation that kids these days just aren't that into reading. The one bright spot comes in the form of a trashy zombie novel Cutler's managed to pen. Staring down the barrel of a return to the literary scene, Cutler's got to fight against his worse impulses and keep it together for Book Week.

While this little Aussie movie got some pretty mixed reviews, David Stratton's three stars were enough for me to lash out ten dollars for it on ebay. Or maybe it reminded me of the old response to a request, implying that one is being unfairly imposed on or taken for a fool, which was so prevalent in Australia in the sixties but never heard again since.

 

 

"I'm just going to have my dog shit on your lawn, hope it's ok?"

"Come on, mate, what do you think this is, bush week??"

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Once we cease to dream, it is simply time for us to die.

 

Click here to open the online book
in a separate window

 

In 1975 I worked in Burma and lived, for the first six months at least, in Rangoon's Inya Lake Hotel which, together with the Strand Hotel, was one of Rangoon's two luxury hotels. However, Burma, being then the most isolated country in South-East Asia, allowed us no access to Western goods, Western food or Western books, and so my employers, TOTAL-Compagnie Française des Pétroles, sent me on a shopping trip to Singapore.

Knowing nothing about Singapore, I had booked myself into a hotel also called the Strand which I assumed to be of a similar standard to Rangoon's. Today's website certainly suggests that it has received a major make-over but back then it was a real dive in what was a very unsanitary Bencoolen Street.

I spent my evenings along Singapore's famous (or then infamous) Bugis Street which was just around the corner ...

 

 

... and my days inside the MPH Bookshop (which these days no longer exists except online) where I became acquainted with W. Somerset Maugham's Short Stories, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the large collection of James A. Michener's novels.

James Michener's novel The Drifters became my much-loved and much-read 'Bible' during those footloose and fancy-free years, and I completely fell under its spell. The novel follows six young characters from diverse backgrounds and various countries as their paths meet and they travel together through parts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Mozambique: Joe, a disenfranchised twenty-year-old youth who is enrolled at the University of California during the Vietnam War; Britta, an 18-year-old girl from Tromsø, Norway; Monica who lives with her father in the African Republic of Vwarda; Cato, the son of the Reverend Claypool Jackson; Yigal, the son of a dean at a college in Haifa, Israel; and Gretchen, a very intelligent girl from Boston who, at the age of 19, has already completed her bachelors degree, and is working for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign.

The story is told from the perspective of the narrator, George Fairbanks, who is an investment analyst for the fictional company World Mutual Bank in Switzerland. Mr. Fairbanks is connected with nearly every character in some way, and they all seem to open up to him throughout the novel in one way or another.

Strangely, I didn't identify with any of the young people but with Harvey Holt, who is introduced only in the ninth chapter. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is a fan of classical music and old movies and very old-fashioned. Enough said?

 

 

I dread to think that today I should perhaps identify with Britta's father who was a radio operator during the war whose mission it was to alert the Allies to the arrival of German ships in Norway, and who dreams of going to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) once the war is over. As Britta grows up she watches her father endlessly listening to Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers during the endless arctic nights while his dream slowly fades into a distant vision never to be realised. I don't even like Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers! Carmen yes; The Pearl Fishers no!

Fifty years later I only marvel at Michener's genius in having made me once enjoy a 700-plus page book about a group of unlikeable characters who no longer resonate with me. I guess the permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality, and the permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. Perhaps Michener's message is that once we cease to dream, it is simply time for us to die.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The Rest is History

 

 

We all have to find our own way to keep those demons at bay that assail us in the dark hours of the night when sleep won't come. I found my remedy in the 1980s when I started listening to Richard Ackland's lawyerly voice as he was hosting ABC's Late Night Live at ten past ten.

He was followed by Phillip Adams in - when was it? - 1991, whose lip-smacking and opinionated hosting of Late Night Live kept me sane for the next thirty-three years, until, in mid-2024, he handed over to David Marr. Since then the show's calibre and topics seem to have deteriorated - and I'm not saying this just because I recently read David Marr's book PANIC, where on page 2 he discusses panic and panic merchants, particularly those who repesent themselves as guardians of decency, which closes with the sentence "Perhaps I'm alert to the subject because I'm gay." Oops! - maybe it does; after all, I'm old-school.

Fortunately, I have found a replacement in the BBC's "The Rest is History", which is available on YouTube, from where I copy it with the nifty YouTube-to-MP3 Converter Y2Mate onto a memory stick before walking it back to my bedside radio for another fight with my demons.

The series has 825 episodes which should keep me going for quite some time even if I cheat a bit and have another helping for my afternoon snooze on the verandah, but just in case I run out of things to listen to, I already have another equally enthralling BBC production lined up, "In Our Time", which explores a wide variety of historical, scientific and philosophical topics and has already amassed an amazing 1089 episodes.

I'm all set up for 2026 as I report another bit of progress: after twenty-five years of marriage, I have finally persuaded Padma NOT to clean every plastic container and glass jar within an inch of its life before committing it to the recycle bin. Things can only get better from here!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The changeable world of the oyster

 

 

Perhaps no other creature's sex life has been so carefully scrutinised as that of the oyster, however, it wasn't until the early 1880s that a Dutch scientist named Hoek discovered the changeable nature of the oyster's sex.

Oysters have the unusual ability to switch their sex, continually during the warm months in some species, or once during the year in the winter months in other species. This fascinating phenomenon is known as protandrie hermaphroditism, from protos, meaning first, andros, a man; Hermes, Greek god of travel; and Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love.

The change of sex is controlled by a number of environmental factors. The most important of these is nutrition. Huge amounts of plankton appear to encourage the female state in oysters, while lesser quantities of food result in male oysters. The sex organ of an oyster is also activated by water temperature, tide, and the salinity of the water.

(I am happy to report that sex changes in humans are far simpler and are usually prompted by teachers using "inclusive" language when discussing gender identity and school policies focused on supporting gender-diverse students rather than the "Three R's", whereas in my days a boy turning up at school in a girl's dress would get a "dressing-down" and sent home to change, together with a stern note to his parents.)

 

Read it online here

 

I read about this in the book "The Changeable World of the Oyster" while Padma spent two days helping an oysterfarmer friend selling his oysters during the Christmas (c)rush. Not that this will ever let a 'trans' oyster cross my lips but it's interesting to read about the sexual proclivities of others, especially when one's own have turned into declivities.

 

Go to GOOGLE Maps

 

It also piqued my interest to visit our oysterfarmer friend at his depot on the Clyde River downriver from us at Chinaman's Point sometime in the new year. If only all my New Year's resolutions were so simple!

 

 

(I know I should be suffering from withdrawal symptoms if I stopped binge-watching WHITECHAPEL on iview; or stopped buying more and more books from my favourite op-shops; or weaned myself off drinking countless cups of tea; or ... so, no more New Year's resolutions for me!)

 

Googlemap Riverbend