For much of my life, my hunger for books has been greater than my hunger for food, and I've always spent more on books than on food, which then became a virtuous - or vicious - circle in which the less I'd spend on food the more I'd spend on books (resulting in book-buying orgies when my employment provided me with "all-found" accommodation, either in construction camps or hotels).
In recent years - last two decades, really - the scales have tipped the other way. Not just because I'm eating more or better (domestic cooking has its plusses but it can't rival the menus of the Al-Harithy Hotel in Jeddah or the SAVOY in Piraeus; even Camp 6 on Bougainville offered more choices than the take-it-or-leave-it offerings by my current cook whom I can't even complain to - but we won't go there, okay? 😀)
No, it has to do with my buying most of my books these days from the local op-shops at $2 a piece. There are three op-shops in the Bay, and another half-dozen within a 50-kilometre radius, and they are all stacked to the ceiling with pre-loved and even some brand-new books.
I would be happy to support a 'proper' bookshop, except that there are none left. We have had a succession of bookshops - three, from memory - but none lasted, while liquor outlets proliferated, from the two local pub drive-ins to Woolies and Coles and, more recently, Dan Murphy, which is larger than the other four combined. Social commentators may find it of interest that the only reading done in the Bay is on JIM BEAN labels or 5-litre cardboard boxes full of Coolabah Sweet Fruity White.
With all that cheap and easy access to a seemingly endless supply of books, I still harbour a certain nostalgia for the days when, tucked away in some remote corner of the world where there were no bookshops or, if there were, they only sold books printed in some unintelligible language, I had to wait for a much-coveted book in English for weeks, sometimes months, and sometimes forever, after some zealous censor had added it to his own private collection of banned publications.
The same goes for movies: we now have television with its scores of channels and iview (and I won't even descend to Netflix which I don't subscribe to); then there is YouTube; and on ebay I can buy any movie I want from here or overseas. Contrast this with the once-a-week open-air movie show in Camp 6 on Bougainville Island which was limited to "action" movies as the noise from the brawling audience or from the tropical downpour on the tin roof would render futile any attempt at listening to the soundtrack (if it wasn't already worn out from too many previous re-runs).
And, of course, in both New Guinea and Burma at that time television didn't exist at all. There was television in Saudi Arabia but it was limited to endless re-runs of "Bambi" and the equally endless "news clips" of the hundreds of royal princes departing from or returning to the Kingdom (although the unannounced telecasting of a - usually - foreigner's re-enactment of his crime and subsequent beheading would add a frisson of excitement). As for movie theatres, they were 'haram' (forbidden).
There were movie theatres in Greece which were very popular, especially during the winter months, to keep warm as most Greek houses had inadequate heating. Most movies were in Greek which made it diffcult for me on two counts: my knowledge of the language was no match for a Greek actor's oratory in full flight, and yet I depended almost entirely on it as there wasn't much to see on the silver screen which was hidden behind the blue haze of every smoking male patron.
All those many years away from home, I longed for quick and easy access to books and movies. Now that I have an absolute surfeit of both, I long for the endless days of waiting for them in hopeful anticipation.
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." No, for once not mine; Oscar Wilde's!
