The Thirty-Nine Steps

 

 

I always thought that "The Thirty-Nine Steps" was just another Alfred Hotchcock movie until I discovered the slim hundred-page book by John Buchan of the same name. As the book's Introduction tells me, it is one of five novels which have Richard Hannay as hero, the others being "Greenmantle", "Mr Standfast", "The Three Hostages", and "The Island of Sheep".

"The Thirty-Nine Steps" is significant as being the first true espionage adventure, following "The Riddle of the Sands" by Erskine Childers, which was made into a beautiful movie in the U.K., and also in Germany where it was filmed in the Frisian Islands off the North Sea coast.

 

Listen to a radio dramatisation here
Read the book here

 

I've just copied the above audiobook onto a USB stick to take to bed with me for some four hours of listening pleasure under my electric blanket on this penultimate winter's night. See you all in the morning.

 

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P.S. Don't pick on me for using the word 'penultimate'. I'd never used it either until I worked for the American construction company Bechtel Corporation on Bougainville Island. Americans love big words - well, except for the Donald perhaps - and after one of them had used this word in one of his memos, it spread like wildfire, with some even adding an extra paragraph to their memos so that they could refer to the 'penultimate paragraph'. The words 'penultimate' and 'Bougainville' will be one and the same for me until I draw my penultimate breath.

 

I know you won't read this book ...

 

Read the book online at archive.org

 

Under the noses of British intelligence, London has become the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed Londonistan. In this ground-breaking book Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of traditional English identity and accommodation of a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism. Londonistan has become a country within the country and not only threatens Britain but the rest of the Western world.

 

 

I know you won't read this book - well, at least not until it's too late to do anything about it - so I've found you two video clips of a speech by the author, Melanie Phillips. It received a total of altogether FIVE!!! thumbs-up on YouTube which says it all about the apathy of the West.

Now go back to watching "Gardening Australia".

 

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Tea in the Library

 

 

A bookseller wins ten million dollars in the lottery. His estatic friends ask him what he plans to do with the money. With a huge smile on his face, he answers: "I'll keep selling books until the money runs out!"

Despite this joke, I have often fantasised about being surrounded by books all day long by opening a bookshop. I even went as far as doing some research on the subject, only to find out about the low margins, the long hours, the tough competition, and how hard it would be just to just cover the rent.

One particular book that helped me in my research was "Tea in the Library", and I even struck up a short acquaintance by email with its author, Annette Freeman, who was then already living in Europe. She had actually turned her fantasy into reality. As she wryly noted, her book is a 'how not to' for anyone thinking of venturing into retail, let alone bookselling although, on the whole, the book is a positive read.

 

 

I had found the book several years ago in an op-shop, read it, and put it away somewhere. It was during last week's trip to Ulladulla that I found another copy in another op-shop. It seemed like it had been waiting for me, and so I took it and gave it a new home in "Melbourne", to be read once more should the old fantasy of opening a bookshop reassert itself.

If you have had the same dream of opening your own bookshop, you will reap vicarious pleasure from her forays into choosing colours and designs for her logo and shop fittout; the excitement of deciding what books to outlay her budget on; the images of her Chesterfield lounges and wing chairs in cosy lamp-lit corners surrounded by floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves brimming with beautiful books. Bliss indeed. And if you are lucky, the cost of this book will be all you give up to experience it.

 

 

I bought this book - twice! and for a mere $2 each time - primarily for the vicarious experience, but I quickly found that Annette Freeman's prose (her day job is as a trademarks lawyer) is an absolute pleasure to read. The chapters conveniently cover specific aspects of the life of the shop: Yarn-a-Thon, The Duck Run, Sea in the Library (getting curious?), and throughout Annette interweaves a taste of her own modus operand for life. Here is a brave woman who deliberately ventures out of her comfort zone into the angst-ridden territory of the small business owner but does not end up completely disillusioned, bitter and twisted. Instead, you meet a woman who has accumulated great wisdom at great cost and in the process maintained her poise, grace and equanimity.

Reading this book will give you a whole new appreciation for your local bookshop and, if nothing else, will want you shake the hands of their owners in gratitude for what they endure for your reading pleasure.

 

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The Travellers

 

 

I suppose it is a bit ironic for someone in ancient Greece to update you on Australian cinema. But then again, we've had a few thousand years of headstart while your folks were still hanging out in the trees, followed by a sudden influx of convicts. Consider this a little cultural exchange from the cradle of civilization!"

Thus wrote my old friend and fellow-worker in Greece, Bozenna, after she had watched the Australian film "The Travellers", which hasn't even been released in Australia yet. It tells the story of Stephen Seary (Luke Bracey), a successful set designer who returns from Europe to Western Australia to visit his dying mother one last time. What begins as a short journey turns into a stark confrontation with his stoic, resentful father Fred (Bryan Brown) in a small, traditional town.

As I told Bozenna, any movie with Bryan Brown in it is worth watching. I mean, who could forget him from his appearances in "The Odd Angry Shot", "Breaker Morant", "Stir", "The Shiralee" - especially "The Shiralee" - and dozens more. I must try and watch them all - and certainly Bozenna's latest recommendation, "The Travellers" - even though some of them are now almost fifty years old and quite hard to get hold of.

 

 

"Stir" is one of those old ones, dating back to 1980, of which I could only find this incomplete copy on YouTube. It's still worth watching though.

 

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My social 'colander'

 

 

My social 'colander' is full of holes these days, but somehow a whole lot got pushed through today: an early-morning float in the 34° warm-water pool followed by an eye test for my driver's licence followed by a quick dash to the RTA to renew it.

At my age I hate to over-capitalise and would've been happy to renew it for six months, but they offered me five years for $234, which I took on the condition that, if I don't use it up, my heirs will inherit the refund.

 

 

With the whole day still ahead of us, we drove the fifty kilometres to Ulladulla for lunch at the local bowling club followed by some grocery shopping, which I sat out on the 'Waiting Husbands' Bench' outside a second-hand shop. I'd gone back there because during a previous visit it had displayed an old OLYMPIA typewriter which was almost the same model I had bought in New Guinea and then schlepped around the world for twenty years. It was still for sale at $200 but without a ribbon, and where would I be able to buy a new typewriter ribbon these days?

 

 

And so I went to my other favourite op-shop where I picked up several interesting books, such as "It's All Greek to Me!" and "The Summer of my Greek Taverna", to remind me of one of my more memorable and laid-back work assignments (I refuse to call them a career; they were more like a succession of occupations that seemed interesting at the time).

I also picked up two books by Hugh Mackay, "What Makes Us Tick?" and "Turning Point - Australians Choosing Their Future", but since none of my readers would be interested, I won't mention them - or did I just now?

 

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P.S. A frequent reader of this blog in my old hometown replied to this post with this clever little message typed on his very own OLYMPIA typewriter which still had an inked ribbon and includes the German character 'ß' and even the umlaut 'ü'. It's enough to make me homesick for a 'Vaterland' that had ceased to exist for me a very long time ago.

 

"Hello Peter, sunny greetings from your old hometown Braunschweig!"

 

 

And this is the German reader's very own OLYMPIA typewriter full of 'Ü' and 'Ö' and Ä's which, if you look at them, they look right back at you, but the no longer much used 'ß' is tucked away below the question mark. I still remember the rule: a double-s is used after a short vowel ('Wasser') but an 'ß' - which is just another form of a double-s - is used after a long vowel ('Straße'). Strange, how some rules stick with you all your life! Such as "'Gar nicht' wird gar nicht zusammengeschrieben!"

By the way, did you know that if a standard western typewriter keyboard were expanded to take in every Chinese ideograph, it would have to be about fifteen feet long and five feet wide? That would make it slightly less portable than my trusty old OLYMPIA typewriter.