After the aborted visit to the warm-water pool, I had just paid for my car registration and a few insurance premiums and was wondering what sort of lunch we could afford with the money we had left, when we saw a friendly labrador behind the steering wheel of a parked car. Walking across to ask him if he had a driver's licence, we were joined by a young couple who also loved dogs.
The young couple (well, youngish! you have to be under 35 to get an Australian holiday working visa) turned out to be from France and on a twelve-month working holiday in Australia. He had been working in a metal factory in Cowra; she had been pet-sitting in Sydney; now they were off to see the nation's capital before driving to Falls Creek in Victoria where they will be working in the snow fields for the season.
Thankfully, the NRMA had given me enough loyalty and no-claim bonuses on my insurance premiums to allow us to have lunch for four at the Catalina Country Club, and so we spent the next few hours chewing the fat and on a beautifully cooked barramundi with chips and salad, and the drinks and the conversation just flowed. Padma talked what's called 'women's talk' with her, and I talked politics, books and movies with him.
"Being French, of course, you would have seen 'The Day of the Jackal'?" I asked. Blank look! "But you've seen 'Casablanca' with Humphrey Bogart, surely?" Blank look! "What books have you read?" None of the books he had read I had ever heard of, nor had he ever heard of any of the books I had read. And on and on it went, both of us seemingly living in parallel universes when it came to books and movies. Am I really that old?
When we began to bemoan the unaffordability of housing in both our countries, we seemed to have struck a common cord. I mentioned 'le viager' which he countered with a hesitant "Le viager - qu’est-ce que c’est ?" but then he remembered "Le viager consiste à vendre un logement à une personne qui verse en échange une rente viagère au vendeur jusqu'à son décès imprévisible". Always on the look-out to recommend another movie, I suggested he watch "My Old Lady".
Of course, they followed us out to "Riverbend" where we spent a few more hours over tea and biscuits and, of course, they will visit us again before they fly back to France from Sydney in nine months' time.
It's warm outside. The verandah is flooded in sunlight. I think I lie down on the old sofa and listen to the audiobook of "The Day of the Jackal".
