Yesterday was Valentine's Day but no-one told me or else I would've bought Padma a new frying-pan or perhaps even a new electric iron. Instead, I met up with an old German friend whom I had not seen for many years and who had suddenly phoned me to ask if we could meet over a cup of coffee. And so we did!
Meeting up again and seeing what the ravages of time had done to him made me realise that when young girls smile at me they do so out of pity because, while he's already ninety-three years old and I'm trailing him by almost thirteen years, I'm just as skinny and almost as toothless as he has become. He came out - no, not "out" as in queer but out to Australia - in 1955 and went through Bonegilla and all the privations as the rest of us had done; however, unlike me, he'd been married for over sixty years until his wife "predeceased" him as they will say during his eulogy which he expects to be not far off. He still got teary when he talked about her. We only fully appreciate people after they've gone.
It wasn't all tears though as we remembered some of the good times but most of all our good luck to have come out to this wonderful country, and we agreed to meet over a cup of coffee more regularly, but left it to either of us to make the call as we no longer make plans at our age.
Since I was in town, I visited Vinnies and picked up two substantial books, "Tears of Mermaids - The Secret Story of Pearls" and another 500-page doorstopper, "The Age of Wonder - How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science". I don't know when I'm going to read them but as they say: if it's books, it's not hoarding!
So what's all this got to do with the taxi photo, I hear you ask. Well, I wrote a blog in May 2021 about the offending apostrophe in "Driver's Wanted", and just after my coffee meeting I saw the very same taxi with the offending apostrophe drive past me. I wasn't quick enough to take another photo of the sign which no longer showed the offending apostrophe. Instead, they had just left a space between the R and the S which left a smile on my face since someone must've read my blog.
I think I now make Padma a cup of tea to make up for the new frying-pan or electric iron I didn't buy her for yesterday's Valentine's Day.
