Just returned from our weekly visit to the heated indoor pool at 'Ooolladoola' where they've given me my own talking lane. After a few laps of discussing the woes of the world, I lapsed into a coma in the bubbly spa before driving down to the club for lunch.
Then, while Padma shopped for yet more wool for her 'Wrap with Love' blankets (which by now must cover half of Africa), I dropped in at the Mullala Nursery where I've been a regular customer for many years.
Dave, the manager, always cut me a special deal but he retired last year and good luck to him. So when I walked in this time, I casually asked, "And how's Dave enjoying retirement?" "He's passed away", I was told. It sounded so matter-of-fact that I thought I'd heard "He's moved away" and was about to ask where he'd moved to, when the gravity of what I'd really been told started to sink in. I bought eight callistemon 'Western Glory' - also known as bottlebrushes - and five tibouchinas which, I guess, I won't see to grow to their full height - but then neither did Dave. There are days when I feel like the last man standing!
Bad as well as sad news always brings out the shopper in me, and so I went looking for some books. I discovered a slim volume of students' study notes on the Australian soapie 'SeaChange'. Study notes on a soapie? I mean, study notes on 'Macbeth' or even 'The Grapes of Wrath' are useful, but study notes on 'SeaChange' which in the notes are described as 'a celebration of the joy of under-achievement'? Quite!
Instead, I bought a volume of D'Arcy Niland's short stories to celebrate a writer who gave us 'The Shiralee', 'Call Me When the Cross Turns Over', and 'Dead Men Running'. This, his final novel, was for a time banned because of a certain four-letter word used by a cockatoo in the context of "There was a widow woman who lived on the common with three dogs, a cat and a white cockatoo that said &#@% regularly as if he were still alive, her husband Tom Lowry". How times have changed!
Finally, I picked up a cheerfully incomplete book(let) entitled 'The First Men's Guide to Cleaning House', subtitled 'How to do a job that's bigger than you are on the strength of your admittedly puny endowments'. I asked them to put it in a plain paper bag and I hope to furtively read it under the blanket by torchlight tonight. How times have changed! ☺
