The Book Whisperer

 

To watch the whole movie, click here
(There's something weird about 'wierd'; 'I before E, except after C' doesn't always work)

 

Remember that scene in "They're a Weird Mob", in which Nino for his first job as a builder's labourer wears his Sunday best? It's not in the book, but in the movie Pat's last words to his departing boss are, "Why didn't you bring me Prince Philip?"

 

To read the book, click here

 

Well, I was reminded of this scene when I walked into my favourite op-shop, Vinnies in Moruya, and met Paul, the book whisperer, who tends to the second-hand book section. "Where's your tie?" I felt like asking him.

 

 

As he told me, he's a retired high-school teacher in maths and history, and never lost his habit of being dressed like a high-school teacher. I, too, seemed to have been born with a collar and tie on, and for most of my working life I have worn both, and, if the climate allowed it, also a proper suit. It left me with a wardrobe full of business suits and dinner suits and even a tuxedo, and I have often wondered if I should wear them out while I'm driving my ride-on mower up and down "Riverbend". It'd finally give the neighbours something they could really talk about!

 

To read the book, click here
(Yes, I could've read it online, but I bought it for its beautiful slipcover)

 

The things Paul and I talked about were books and movies. Of course, as an ex-teacher, he had seen the movie "Wake in Fright", based on the novel by Kenneth Cook, after which we briefly touched on "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad, "The Shiralee", and "Doctor Zhivago" with Omar Sharif — whom Paul resembled, or so Padma insisted. I left with a beautifully produced slipcover copy of Okakura Kakuzo's "The Book of Tea", which is all about tea and Taoism and Zen, and Hermann Koch's "The Dinner", after which we had our usual lunch at the Moruya Bowling Club.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

H&R "Blocked"

 

 

I like to keep the taxman at arm's length, not because I have anything to hide but simply because I hate the aggravation he causes me with his silly questions, as he did several times in the late 1970s when I was still working overseas and he kept asking me what my "gross income from all world sources" was.

There had always been the ‘183-day’ test, which I easily passed every time, but the taxman kept asking away, as he had first done in 1978, when he asked me, "1. Were you born in Australia?" and "7. State your reasons why you consider yourself to be a resident or non-resident of Australia", and, of course, "14. Details of all income earned by you from sources within and outside Australia in the year ended 30 June 1978".

 

 

All this was done in those pre-computer days by typewriter, and so I would pull out my portable OLYMPIA typewriter, which I had bought many years earlier in New Guinea, and type, "Please explain your definition of 'resident' and 'non-resident' which presumably is quite different for tax purposes from the casual sense of the word" (which was long before "Please explain!" had become an iconic catchphrase).

Deafening silence for another year, until, like a dog with a bone, he trotted out the same questions the next year, and all the other years while I lived and worked in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Burma, Indonesia, Samoa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, on and on and on. Perhaps he thought I lived inside that PO Box 42 in Duffy in the A.C.T.

I've been back in Australia for decades now, but my distaste for the taxman is as strong as ever. To keep keeping him at arm's length, I still prepare my own tax return, but then let H&R Block lodge it for me.

Better them than me to "Block" the taxman's silly questions. This has been my first year with H&R Block, and I can highly recommend them.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Those days will never CAMAY again!

 

 

I've just had one very long and very hot shower in an attempt to warm myself up on this cold and wintry morning. The soap I lathered myself with was the same rich pink which will always remind me of CAMAY soap and my time on Bougainville Island.

During the construction phase of Bougainville Copper in the early 70s when I lived in Camp 6 at Loloho, we received with our weekly towel change a new piece of CAMAY soap, whether we had used up the old one or not. Usually we hadn't and there was CAMAY soap all over the camp.

A certain surveyor working for BECHTEL would collect all the CAMAY soap he could get his hands on and also regularly empty the crib rooms of all their LIPTON tea-bags and ARNOTT'S Scotch Finger biscuits, all of which he would parcel up and regularly send back to his family in Perth.

If you have ever been to Perth and seen a family with a lovely CAMAY complexion and a strong aversion to LIPTON tea and ARNOTT'S Scotch Finger biscuits, you will immediately know whom I am talking about.

Ah, beautiful Bougainville Island! Those days will never CAMAY again!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. I have just spent the first half of the morning removing the 'm' from 'whom I am talking about', and the second half putting it back in again.

 

Dedicated to Paul Erling Johnson and all the wandering souls out there

 

Click on FULL SCREEN and enjoy!
This is a cautionary tale. By the time this movie was made, Paul Eling Johnson had become a bit of a sad sack who still lived on his boat alone, had nobody and no-one and his boat was in a barely floating condition, and he didn't sail anymore. He had found an accepting and non-judgemental community who treated him lovingly and with respect, despite his addiction and often wandering about in an inebriated state. A story of freedom bounded by alcohol and poverty. As the filmmakers stated, "This film is a contemplation about his choices after a lifetime of freedom before he embarked on his final journey of no return."

 

You know, when you go to youtube.com's front page to search for something and you see a whole list of their latest "suggestions" which you normally ignore and move on from? ("This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put", I hear you whisper.)

This morning I was going to type in "Yuval Noah Harari" to see if I could find something about his latest book "Unstoppable Us - How Humans Took Over the World", when I was facing their latest "suggestion" of "The Sailor | Full Movie - What is the price of freedom? Paul Johnson sailed the world all his life. He loved, drank, and lived foolish, never truly living on land. Now he is turning eighty. What is at the end of such a journey? Is there loneliness?", uploaded as recently as Oct 18, 2022. I hope YouTube won't delete it because, while this world-renowned sailor and builder of boats died in June 2021, aged 83, his legend lives on.

My own sailing-days are well and truly over! The nearest I ever got to casting off completely was in 1974 when I worked for AIR NIUGINI in Port Moresby and saw a wooden yacht, "Spirit of Barbary", advertised for sale at Popondetta on the north coast of New Guinea. An old mate from my Bougainville days, Brian Herde, was also interested, and we flew across to spend a couple of days sailing and living aboard it, after which our minds seemed made up. I had just enough saved up to pay for my half of the boat, but Brian was notoriously reluctant to spend money and to sell even a tiny fraction of his many SANTOS shares, and so the deal was off.

I've had a variety of small sailing boats ever since: in Port Moresby, in Lae, in Honiara, and crewed on boats at Kieta and in Rangoon and Apia and Penang - I even owned a small LASER on Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra! - and until a few years ago sailed my small motor-sailer, the "Lady Anne", on the Clyde River, but now my sailing-days are over!

But I can dream, can't I? And so I keep a large library of sailing books, from Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World" and Francis Chichester's "Gipsy Moth Circles The World" to "The Long Way" by Bernard Moitessier and Robin Knox-Johnston's "A World of My Own".

However, even that library is thinning out as I pass on the books before they become my funeral pyre. One of the lifeguards at the Aquatic Centre, Sam, owns a yacht with her partner, and before they headed north again, I've been feeding them with Alan Lucas's sailing instructions and "Fitting Out Below Decks" and "Fitting Out Above Decks".

No more fitting out for me, but there's still time to watch this most poignant, beautiful film of this amazing sailor whose motto in life was "Never be afraid to be terrified."

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. And here's the documentary of the making of the movie:

 

It is a dark and stormy night ...

 

Oh, you can kiss me on a Monday A Monday, a Monday is very, very good Or you can kiss me on a Tuesday A Tuesday, a Tuesday, in fact I wish you would Or you can kiss me on a Wednesday A Thursday, a Friday and Saturday is best But never, never on a Sunday A Sunday, a Sunday, 'cause that's my day of rest Most any day you can be my guest Any day you say, but my day of rest Just name the day that you like the best Only stay away on my day of rest Oh, you can kiss me on a cool day, a hot day A wet day, which everyone you choose Or try to kiss me on a gray day, a May day A pay day, and see if I refuse And if you make it on a bleak day A freak day, a week day, why you can be my guest But never, never on a Sunday Indulge yourself and listen to the soundtracks here

 

... and I want to be transported back to a time when both the world and I were still young - and decidedly warmer than tonight's "Riverbend".

Greece may still be envisioned by some as old guys in sheets wandering around the Acropolis spouting wisdom before somebody pours hemlock in their ear, but my guess is that they will change their minds after having watched Melina Mercouri do her stuff in "Never on Sunday".

The film is a mix of Pygmalion plus "hooker with a heart of gold", and tells the story of Ilya, a self-employed, free-spirited prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist and classical scholar who is enamored of all things Greek.

 

Homer Thrace: She killed them. Medea herself, does she not say, “I killed my children”? Ilya: And you believe her? You don’t understand the women. Medea loves her husband, yes? Homer Thrace: Yes. Ilya: Her husband is interested in another woman? Yes? Homer Thrace: Yes. Ilya: So she said to her husband that she has killed her children to frighten him, to get him back. Homer Thrace: No! Ilya: Yes. She gets him back, and everybody go away and everybody is happy and they go to the seashore. And that’s all! Homer Thrace: If I show you that everything that was ever written about Medea talks of her killing her children. If you ask 10 out of 10 people who saw the play and they tell you it’s true, then by simple logic. . .You’re a Greek, you should be logical. Ilya: Why? Homer Thrace: Because the greatest Greek of them all, Aristotle, invented logic. He said – Ilya: Who? Homer Thrace: Aristotle. . . Ilya: Aristotle! The one that the Captain said thinks men are everything and women are nothing? I don’t care what he said, Aristotle. Homer Thrace: It's extraordinary. Where do you learn all those languages? Ilya: In bed.

 

Both Greece’s film industry and the entire nation took centre stage when the film was released in October of 1960, and it led to massive increases in tourism and location-shooting there.

Some twenty years later, I lived and worked in Piraeus by which time Melina Mercouri was already a not-so-sprightly 64 years old. Piraeus was still as lively and, in parts, as bawdy as shown in this movie, but never on Monday when I went back to work in my office at # 3 Agiou Nikolaou to manage my Saudi boss's commodity trading and fleet of bulk carriers.

 

 

 

"And everybody is happy and they go to the seashore." Some memories can get you through even the darkest and stormiest night.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. See also Armchair-travelling on a windy day