Seven minutes to midnight

 

 

When at seven minutes to midnight on Friday I received a message full of wrong spellings from an old friend who is a stickler for correct spelling because he knows that I am a stickler for correct spelling, I knew that there was something wrong.

I immediately texted back, "OH NO!!! What shocking news!!! It's just on midnight and my phone makes a noise and then this! I tell Padma tomorrow morning and we come up to see you. Hang in there, mate. This is just so terrible to hear. We all know the old man will come one day, but when it happens, it's too much of a shock. You'll never be forgotten, mate! You lived a good life, and you have many friends."

My friend and I had worked for the ANZ Bank in the 1960s, I for just two years; he for the rest of his working life. If that made him an ordinary man, he was an extra-ordinary man who defied convention in many other ways. In recent years, having both battled with cancer, a strong bond had developed between us and we had been in regular contact.

 

Ready to leave "Riverbend"

 

We "saddled up" very early on Saturday morning for the long trip to Wollongong. For someone who used to relocate from a job in Samoa on a Saturday to start the next one in Malaysia on a Monday morning, to call a 200-km trip 'long' seems silly, but that's what old age does to you.

 

From Batemans Bay (red dot) to Wollongong (grey dot)

 

We popped in at our friends' Chinese restaurant just across from the Bomaderry railway station, where we received a hearty welcome and a light lunch over heavy discussions about the current state of the world.

 

 

Then on we drove for the next hour to arrive at the hospital to find our way to my friend's private room. For years we had planned a road trip to Bonegilla where he had done his National Service and, after the former army camp had been turned into a makeshift migrant reception centre, I had spent my first two nights in God's Own Country. My suggestion that I had come to pick him up for our long-planned trip evinced only a tiny smile from him, as he was highly sedated with painkillers. We spent several hours reminiscing and making light of what was a sad situation.

 

Published with the family's permission

 

We left just in time to snatch the very last vacancy at our favourite motel at Figtree, where we were known from many previous visits.

 

www.solomoninn.com.au

 

We were back inside the hospital the following morning, but what a difference one night makes! My friend had deteriorated to the point of no longer recognising me and being even more highly sedated than the day before. Out of respect to him and his family, I took no more photos and I must confess I left in tears. Perhaps the doctors' prognosis was right. Perhaps it is only seven minutes to midnight for my old friend.

 

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Pin the tail on the donkey

 

Click on image to enlarge

 

If you can correctly locate "Riverbend" on this aerial photograph — which I "stole" from this Blackshaw advertisement, which I am sure they won't mind as it gives them free advertising — you are welcome to come down to claim your prize of a glass of retsina and nibblies while sitting on the jetty overlooking the river.

 

 

You are welcome to pop in on any day of the week, except Mondays, Fridays, Sundays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

 

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The vision splendid

 

Looking across from Pallarenda Beach to Magnetic Island
(not me, but someone else with more "Sitzfleisch" than me)

 

Sitting on a tropical beach in my retirement, with the sun on my back and in good company, listening to the waves lapping on the sand and enjoying the view. Was it a vision splendid such as this that made me buy that little beachside shack at Cape Pallarenda just north of Townsville back in 1981?

I had grown more and more tired of demanding overseas assignments and fixing up other people's problems. I just wanted to be like everyone else: an unimportant cog in the wheel who went to work five days a week to do an undemanding job that didn't totally exhaust me, and who on Friday afternoon could switch off from it all to enjoy the weekend.

 

 

And so I took an undemanding job in Townsville, bought a little house, both undemanding in money and maintenance, near the beach, and thought I was all set for an undemanding life. But real life isn't like that. Real life demands that you be true to yourself and do the things that you are meant to do. And so I went off again, first back to New Guinea, then to Saudi Arabia, then to Greece. Three years later I was back in town but the ease with which I used to slip in and out of jobs had left me - in fact, there was no job! - and I fled to the "Deep South". I had proven Heraclitus right: "No man ever steps in the same river twice".

 

Click also here

 

Marooned in the "Deep South", I drew a line under that vision splendid and sold the little house near the beach at 3 Bay Street, Pallarenda, but there are moments when I still wonder if I have done the right thing.

Remember "Ol' Blue Eyes" Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way"? Its iconic opening to the second verse reflects on living a full life, taking responsibility for one's actions, and facing the end on one's own terms:

 

"Regrets, I've had a few / But then again, too few to mention."

 

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Another Bill Bryson

 

 

While in the Bay, I will pop into my favourite op-shop to check out their book section. If I do find anything above the usual dross — Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" would be nice — I'll let you know in my next post."

 

 

Which is how I closed off yesterday's post, and, while I didn't find Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus", I picked up a hardcover copy of "The Body - A Guide for Occupants" by Bill Bryson. I had bought it many months ago as a brandnew paperback, but there it was, as a hardcover and still in mint condition. Someone had bought it in Indonesia for 280,000 rupiah.

 

The notation 'NF' means the same in Indonesian: 'nonfiksi'

 

I still haven't read the paperback from cover to cover but merely dipped into the sections that interested me most, but now I shall go straight to my still new hardcover copy and read all 450 pages right to the end, which begins with the quote, "Eat sensibly. Exercise regularly. Die anyway." And that's you gone. But it was good while it lasted, wasn't it?

 

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From the pages in my Trading Diary

 

 

I shouldn't really call it that, as I don't trade very much, but I do keep scrupulous notes every day of how my shares in BHP, the world's biggest miner, are performing. I have held the shares for decades, and my patience seems to have finally been rewarded.

 

Click on bhp.com

 

Yesterday, while I was floating in the warm-water pool, they shot up to $58.71, before flatlining at $58.25 for most of the day. When I was back at home and in front of my computer by mid-afternoon, I placed two belated SELL-order: one at $58.70, in case they shoot the lights out again, and a lower one at $58.50, after which I took an afternoon nap.

 

 

When I woke up again in time for the evening news, the $58.50 order had been executed at $58.52. I viewed it as an insurance policy against a possible price reversal — which usually happens after such a huge price surge — and an opportunity to buy back in again afterwards.

 

 

It's early next morning, and I have looked up BHP's closing price in New York: DOWN 2.11% to US$82.55, or AUS$114.36 at the exchange rate of 0.72182. Since one BHP American Depositary Receipt (ADR) is equal to two shares in Australia, this translates to AUS$57.18 for one Australian share, or down $1.34 on yesterday's Sydney closing price of $58.52.

 

 

If Sydney follows New York today — and it usually does — I succeeded in averting a "paper loss" of $1.34 a share on that portion of the shares I sold yesterday, and created an opportunity to buy back in again at a lower price in the hope that they will return to yesterday's price.

(Of course, at such an elevated share price, brokerage accounts for about seven cents a share, both buy and sell, so a profit is made only if the sales price is at least fourteen cents above the purchase price.)

Who said life in retirement was boring?

 

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