After a London physician diagnosed Mona Lisa's inscrutable smile as being due to her pregnant condition, an American doctor replied that such a smug, sly smile could have only one explanation: Mona Lisa had just discovered that she was not pregnant.
Perhaps because their last pregnancies were at least thirty years behind them, the ladies at the CWA Tea Room in Moruya welcomed us with warm and genuine smiles as we sat down to some home-made scones with cream and strawberry jam and a real pot of good ol' BUSHELLS tea.
They also had a book sale on where I found Hugh Mackay's "Generations - Baby Boomer, their parents & their children", and "Beyond the Blue Horizon" by Alexander Frater, which turned out to be an entertaining read about the legendary Imperial Airways Eastbound Empire service, the world's longest and most adventurous scheduled air route.
Padma spent some more on bits and pieces of craft which I call "dust-collectors" - she calls my books the same - all of which added up to a sizeable donation to this now already more than a hundred-year-old worthwhile organisation, but it's tipota after the multitude of tests my newly found German doctor signed me up to, after I had told him about my recent fall from a 100% vertical to a 100% horizontal. Of course, it had to happen on the hard, tiled floor in the hallwall, and, of course, my nose was between my face and the floor. Luckily, I didn't break my nose nor anything else, but there was blood on the floor and the skirting boards, and Padma said she'd never seen such a dazed look on my face.
I'm scheduled for another blood test, a chest x-ray, a brain scan, and a stress test, all of which will set me back $815. I tried to get out of the stress test by claiming to be already married to Padma, but the doctor - being German and humourless to the last - wanted to hear nothing of it.
