It's still three months to go but ALDI in Ulladulla are already selling "Christmas Stollen"! Mind you, for me it felt like Christmas when I found another book by Robert Dessaix in Ulladulla's LIONS CLUB Bookshop, plus a slim volume of Solzhenitskyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "The Vintage Quarterly" which is an anthology of Australian writing, and "The Last of the Bonegilla Girls" which I bought mainly for its description of life in the Bonegilla migrant camp in the 1950s where I had spent my first two nights on Australian soil.
While Padma emptied the shelves in ALDI, I spent a whole hour in the LIONS CLUB bookshop when a chap walked in and ask, "Do you still sell cakes?" I nearly called out, "Listen, mate, this is a bloody bookshop!" before realising that the LIONS CLUB also sells Christmas plum puddings as a fundraiser. Anyhow, they'd already sold out on cakes but there were plenty more books to choose from, and I walked out with a big bag full.
I'm back home. Padma has dashed off to catch the end of the weekly "Bitch & Stitch" meeting. I've made myself a cup of tea and am now sitting by the window overlooking the river and a pile of books. Bliss!
