We went to Ulladulla for lunch at the bowling club and then had some more aqua-therapy at the heated swimming pool. We really got our money's worth this time: several laps in the large pool followed by an hour in the 33-degree therapeutic pool followed by half an hour in the hot-tub spa. Wunderbar!
Then we headed to ALDI to buy a soft-close toilet seat. Question: why, after all the preceding noise, would you want to silence the drop of the toilet lid? However, at $19.95, who am I to argue? Anyway, it was manufactured by Leinss GmbH in Göppingen in Germany which means it'll be the first time in several decades that I sit on 'home soil'!
Our final visit to a second-hand bookshop turned up some interesting books:
Lucky For Me by Frank Robson
At eighteen months of age, Lucky, a cream-coloured terrier, was dropped off at a vet′s clinic in Queensland, abandoned by his owners and suffering from ticks and other terrors. A week from being put down he was adopted by Frank Robson and his partner, Leisa. From the start, the fluffy new member of the household proved an enigma, displaying a twelve-snort vocabulary, an ability to climb trees (the better to chase parrots) and a disdain for suburbia. In this full-blooded account of a friendship between man and dog, Robson puzzles on the sentient being who trotted into his life and taught him about survival, mateship and the joys of an independent spirit.
The Constant Gardener by John le Carré
The wife of a minor British diplomat in Nairobi, Tessa is an active campaigner for human rights. When she is murdered, her husband Justin rouses himself from his careful indifference and, unravelling the threads that led to her death, sets off in her footsteps. His journey will take him around the world, to a village retreat in Italy, a non-government organisation in Germany, an ostracised scientist in Canada, a food distribution area in southern Sudan, and in the end back to Kenya and the scene of Tessa's death. The book takes hard look at a specific issue — the abuse of power by pharmaceutical companies, touching on the testing of defective drugs in Third World countries, the corruption of governments and corporations, and the twisting of scientific research agendas.
The Hills Is Lonely by Lillian Beckwith
When Lillian Beckwith advertised for a secluded place in the country, she received a letter with the following unusual description of an isolated Hebridean croft: 'Surely it's that quiet even the sheeps themselves on the hills is lonely and as to the sea it's that near as I use it myself everyday for the refusals ...' Her curiosity aroused, Beckwith took up the invitation which results in this comic and enchanting story of the strange rest-cure that followed and her efforts to adapt to a completely different way of life.
Not a bad day all round!
P.S. As soon as I have finished reading The Constant Gardener, I may buy the DVD of the movie based on the book:
