We don't get much swimming done in the pool. Mostly we talk: Padma to her new Indonesian friend Yati in Bahasa; both of us to oyster farmer Rod and his wife Janet; and I sometimes to an ex-Navy man who started to warm to me after I'd mentioned to him "The Hunt for Red October".
We had both watched it, and also "Das Boot", and I had also recently discovered the book "Blind Man's Bluff" about the dramatic history of America's highly clandestine, dangerous, and sometimes deadly submarine espionage missions, from the Cold War right through to the Clinton administration. This is the real-life "Hunt for Red October".
The book reads like a spy thriller - except everything in it is true. It's an epic of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and disaster beneath the sea; a story filled with unforgettable characters who tapped the enemy's underwater communications cables and shadowed Soviet submarines.
I'm not very good at reading a book online, so "Blind Man's Bluff" is on my list of books to buy, either on ebay or, if I'm lucky, at an op-shop.
