For a cheap Greek holiday, come to sunny Australia! 😂
I hope Dan Murphy's perpetual inventory control is working because I've just grabbed the last two large bottles of Retsina while we were in town for another pool session at the Aquatic Centre.
We met so many new people, and then I spent so much time looking for more books while Padma shopped for the ingredients for tomorrow's traditional baked cheese-cake, that we also dropped in for a Thai lunch.
The Batemans Bay Heritage Museum has a 'Book Emporium' where I discovered another Julian Barnes, "The Only Story"; a beautifully presented edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Best Pacific Writings; Peter Jones' "QUID PRO QUO - What the Romans really gave the English Language"; and a whimsical little book, "FIRMIN", who is the runt of a litter of rats born in the basement of Pembroke Books, a ramshackle old bookshop run by an equally shambolic owner. Forced to compete for food, Firmin ends up chewing on books. Thanks to his unusual diet, he acquires the miraculous ability to read and develops an insatiable hunger for literature, and a very unratlike sense of the world.
In keeping with the story, the bookcover has a deliberately chewed-off top edge which must've fooled the dear little ladies who run the shop because they marked it down as a 'damaged' book. To make up for it, I left a handful of coins in their donation jar which was cleverly labelled, "IF YOU'RE AFRAID OF CHANGE, LEAVE IT HERE!" I am, and I did!
