I don't need an island to myself

 

Read the book here

 

All I need is time inside "Melbourne" where Tom Neale's book is always waiting for me. "I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking."

Surrounded by (some of) my books and (some of) the memorabilia of my former life, I am transported back to a time and place that will forever be part of me. And when, after a chapter or two of Tom Neale's book, a certain lassitude overtakes me, I lie down on my daybed - which all too often also becomes my nightbed - and let my dreams carry me away.

 

 

"So why do you need an alarm clock?" ask those of you who have studied the photo in greater detail. It is an exact copy of the alarm clock that travelled with me all over the world. I picked it up in an op-shop for a mere two dollars since it no longer works. Nor does it have to, just as I no longer have to. All it has to do is add to my sense of timelessness.

 

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Yes, they walk amongst us every day!

 

 

I'm sure good ol' Chris Hill of Albury is also a LABOR voter! Yes, they walk amongst us every day!

 

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Translated by the translator of "Mein Kampf"

 

Read online at www.archive.org

 

Headbirths or the Germans Are Dying Out describes a young couple’s agonizing over whether to have a child in the face of a population explosion and the threat of nuclear war.

They are visiting Shanghai, immersed in a jungle of bicycle riders, when "[we] were suddenly hit by an idea, a speculative reversal: what if, from this day on, the world had to face up to the existence of nine hundred fifty million Germans [which was China's population at that time], whereas the Chinese nation numbered barely eighty million, that is, the present population of the two Germanys ...

... In the midst of the cycling multitudes we were seized with terror. Is such a thought possible? Is such a thought permissible? Is such a world conceivable, a world inhabited by nine hundred fifty million Germans, who, even if the rate of increase is kept down to a bare 1.2 percent, will nevertheless multiply to something over one billion two hundred million Germans by the year 2000? Could the world bear it?"

 

 

While Grass's ironic and witty little book - it's a mere 136 pages - mainly explores the German mindset regarding culture, progress, national and global politics, birth rates, literature, and much more, the question it posed as to whether a world with over one billion two hundred million Germans in it would be conceivable, has since been answered by the Chinese who numbered 1.4 billion in 2020 and have begun to throw their weight around almost as much as an unreformed Germany once did.

 

Watch this ABC FOUR CORNERS documentary

 

Headbirths was written in late 1979, shortly after Günter Grass returned from a trip to China, and translated into English by Ralph Manheim, the same who had also translated "Mein Kampf" in 1943.

 

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Do they want to book a property inspection?

 

 

The Labor government's proposed tax changes have thrown the housing market into a state of limbo and there have been even fewer inquiries to my FOR SALE advertisement than before.

Those who do respond mustn't have read much beyond the "MAKE AN OFFER!" headline because as soon as I refer them to the postscript paragraph "When we wrote, 'MAKE AN OFFER!', we meant a reasonable offer, always bearing in mind that the property's land value alone is already close to three million dollars", I hear no more from them.

Owners who are desperate to sell still find a buyer, but they are being picked off by bargain hunters who pay well below the asking price. A friend's lifetime work - click here - recently sold for $2,625,000, well below its initial asking price of $3,500,000, and a far-away neighbour was able to downsize from his waterfront house - click here - but only after having reduced his price from its original $1,300,000 to $880,000.

 

 

Having borrowed the land value comparison from me didn't help him much either, but the rest of the prose sounds enticing enough to use some of it in my own advertisement, but only after I have dealt with the people who just anchored their hired houseboat off "Riverbend".

 

 

They keep looking and shouting and waving at "Riverbend". Do they want to book a property inspection? Should I put out the WELCOME mat?

 

 

I've just checked the Clyde River Houseboats' website and see that their off-season 3-day houseboat hire costs them $3,190. Not quite enough for a deposit on "Riverbend" but it means they have a bit of spare cash. Do they have enough to add three noughts to make it $3,190,000 ?

 

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He just about sums it up!

 

For more of Jonathan Pie, click here

 

Waking up to the headline "Iran closes Strait of Hormuz again, but US says traffic still flowing" makes me groan, "Here we go again!" Is there no end to this Trump folly?

Yes, I am lost for word, but a neighbour, right on cue, sent me this YouTube clip of a chap who obviously isn't. He just about sums it up!

 

 

They should've listened to his mother!!!

 

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