Charles Atlas's advertisement used to haunt me when I was still in Germany and still in my teens. I was the one who said, "The big bully! I'll get even some day" - in German, of course! - but I never became the 'Hero of the Beach' as I stayed skinny and self-conscious of it for most of my life.
Without Mr Atlas's workouts, that 97-lb. (44 kg) weakling from sixty-fifty years ago now weighs 72 kg and is still skinny but not self-conscious any longer. Every time I go to our beautiful warm-water pool to join those other geriatrics, I'm delighted to be still as skinny as a rake because the other alternative would be the grotesque weight and shape they are in.
Today's unselfconscious visit to the warm-water pool was followed by a roast-beef lunch at the Moruya Bowling Club and my usual support of the local charities by 'rehoming' an armful of their second-hand books.
I am always amazed what turns up. Today it was two in-mint-condition books by Douglas Murray, both of which I already have but still bought as they make a great gift for someone else who may also be interested and concerned about the fate of Europe. Then there was a well-read copy of "The White Divers of Broome", "A Shorter History of Australia" by the famous Geoffrey Blainey, Tim Flannery's "Here on Earth", and Robert Ardrey's "The Territorial Imperative - A personal inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations". All I need now is time to read them!
Stacked away in a dusty corner were boxes full of old vinyls, including one by the "Two Beards and a Blonde", Peter, Paul and Mary. I spent my first pay cheque on this album and practically 'grew up' with them and the Seekers after I had come to Australia in 1965. I will never forget "Lemon Tree", "If I had a hammer", "500 miles", and "Where have all the flowers gone". Where indeed have they gone, and where have the days gone when even folk singers wore collar and tie? Some of today's diners at the Moruya Bowling Club wore baseball caps and rubber thongs.
One of those diners, wearing the same baseball cap as shown in the photo above but, thankfully, no thongs but shoes and socks, was Giovanni Carrus - and what a small world it turned out to be! He was born in Italy but moved to Berlin in the early 1960s where he married his German wife Ute and where his two children, Manuela and Claudio, were born in 1965 and 1967. All of them migrated to Australia in 1969.
At age 87, he's still fighting fit and living south of us just an hour's drive away in Tilba where we plan to visit him soon to look at his paintings.
You can already do it here and here.
