Just in case you've been missing my daily posts, let me assure you I'm not dead (yet!) In fact, I've been in Sydney to be assured by the good doctors at the LIFEHOUSE that all that nasty surgery and lengthy radiation therapy has paid off, and I may yet see the end of our stupid Labor government before they give away this nation to a mob of 'self-determined' Aborigines. I simply can't wait to see the end of this!
The trip itself was a very welcome change from our peaceful life at "Riverbend" as we travelled, first by PREMIER bus from Batemans Bay to Bomaderry, and then by train from Bomaderry to Sydney Central, to our centrally located bed & breakfast place at GOLDEN GROVE in Newtown.
A Mexican's introduction to Newtown. When will he sing 'South of the Border'?
This Mexican bloke knows more about Newtown than I know about Tlachihualtepetl
Newtown had lost none of its amazing vibes, good eating-places, many shops, and interesting nightlife since I "lived" there during my six-week-long radiation therapy five years ago. It almost felt like coming home!
"My" Vinnies is at 10:04; the old GOULD's BOOK ARCADE, now closed, at 22:02;
TRE VIET at 26:43; our Turkish friend, who at one time also had a shop in the Bay, at 28:07; our favourite chicken place owned by an Indonesian, CLEM'S CHICKEN SHOP, at 29:30;
should I have popped in at 30:25 and left a copy of William Golding's book behind?
Of course, it wasn't all beer and skittles; in fact, I was only allowed to drink water before they injected me with a radioactive tracer called F-FDG, which is essentially ordinary glucose with a radioactive tag, before they stuck me into a PET-CT scanner which is a large machine that looks a little like a giant doughnut standing upright. HINT: if you suffer from claustrophobia, don't enter! The whole procedure took about three hours, after which I continued to glow in the dark for another twelve.
Al Grassby, the father of Australia's multiculturalism, would have been smiling had he been able to watch the throng of multi-coloured patients waiting in the PET-CT Reception. The staff itself was equally multi-coloured: there was Paula from Samoa, who had five years earlier explained to us the difference between a cute puppy and a PET-scan; then came a Filipino who gave me the safety instruction, similar to those on board an aircraft but without the life jacket and whistle, on how the radioactive substance would be administered - his name was, incredulously, Joseph Conrad; "Oh, my favourite author", I quipped but was met with a literary Heart of Darkness; the doctor who followed him had a physiognomy familiar to me: "Are you Iranian?" I ask, "How did you know?" he replied, and I had to explain to him that I had lived and worked in Tehran in 1976, long before he was born; the nurse who came in after him to insert a canulla into my arm looked Indian even without a sari, and so I asked,"What part of India are you from?" She replied in a broad Australian accent: "I was born here; I'm Australian!" Touché! Trying to get past this awkward Lady Susan Hussey moment, I explained to her that, after more than fifty years in this country, even my own German background caught up with me every time I sat down in a restaurant and the waitress, pen poised over the menu, would ask me, "What'll it be, Hun?" When the next nurse arrived to administer the radiotracers into my vein, I wisely kept my mouth shut as well as my eyes as I could never stand the sight of blood and hypodermic needles but, as I said, good ol' Al Grassby would have been drooling all over his colourful tie.
All this happened in the morning after I'd been fasting since my last meal the night before, and so we settled down to a very satisfying Thai meal of chili and lemongrass barramundi at our old favourite, "Tre Viet".
There was just enough time to pop in at Vinnies on the other side of King Street where I had spent countless hours back in 2018 when they still had a comfortable sofa and chairs in their book section which was sorted by colours. "I don't remember the title, but the cover was red."
The sofa and chairs were gone now but the colour-system was still in place, despite which I did find "The New NEW Thing" by Michael Lewis (the author of "The Big Short") in the black section, Tim Flannery's "The Future" hidden away amongst the blue-coloured spines, and, best of all, "A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright, an author I had never heard of before and who out-Jared-Diamonds even Jared Diamond. What a find! I also picked up a DVD, "Indian Summers", from the media section which, thankfully, was neither in colour nor any other order.
Then it was back to the LIFEHOUSE where they first sprayed some numbing medicine into my nose before they shoved a small flexible telescope up it and down my throat for a fiberoptic laryngoscopy.
While all this was happening to me, Padma was amusing herself with the arty people in the LIFEHOUSE foyer, where she produced this amazing Blue Poles painting, soon to be on display at the National Art Gallery:
The result of the PET-scan and the laryngoscopy seemed to satisfy the doctors because I was allowed to join the crowds on King Street for a final night out and a very satisfying Chinese meal at the no-frills but very authentic Chinese restaurant "Happy Belly". Happy bellies indeed!
Then back to Golden Grove and a very early start by train from Sydney. The trains were already full of workers with grey Winston-Smith-like faces buried deep into their smartphones. To quote W. Somerset Maugham: "Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them ... They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron." Luckily, I got off this hamster wheel when I took the road less travelled by. It has made all the difference.
Did you notice the book in the bottom left-hand corner? It's "A Theatre for Dreamers" about Charmian Clift and George Johnston living on the Greek island of Hydra; it's a real gem which I picked up at the Animal Welfare League op-shop just down the road
Getting off at the railhead at Bomaderry, we met up once again with our Chinese friends at the "Welcome" Restaurant. From there we took the bus back to Batemans Bay. There we quickly dropped in at the Aquatic Centre for a short plunge into the warm-water pool to rid ourselves of "the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city". Home again! PHEW!
