An old friend of mine used to tell me, "Peter, you've done enough for three lifetimes!", whenever I voiced my regret about having missed out on something. He had gone down the well-trodden 9-to-5 path, and he didn't seem to mind.
I do mind not having done more when there was still time, and so today I lost myself in another travel book which I had read before but in too much of a hurry to do it full justice. Simon Winchester's "Outposts - Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire" makes you want to pack a bag and follow his footsteps. I chewed on every word on every page, stopping just long enough to write down the titles of two books, "Shelter from the Spray" and "Rocking the Boat", for further reading.
I had never heard of "Shelter from the Spray", the story of two German brothers, Frederick and Gustav Stoltenhoff, who had fantastical Robinson Crusoe ideas (or delusions) to settle on the aptly-named Inaccessible Island, which lies 40 km southwest of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, in 1871. It's a rare book and I hope I can find a copy.
The other one, "Rocking the Boat", is by Ruth Boydell, with whom Simon Winchester sailed to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. While googling for it, I found the above announcement by the Queanbeyan Library, just "up the road" from here, of her book talk this coming Tuesday, 22nd September. It's too short a notice and too far away for me to attend.
Having at one time moved from one end of the world to the other at the drop of a hat - or at the end of a very short telephonic job offer - and now being unprepared to attend a book talk which is only a one-and-a-half-hour drive and still two days away tells you all you need to know of how much my life has changed. No more "Rocking the Boat" for me!
P.S. Not being able to attend the book talk, I consoled myself with this ABC broadcast "Ruth Boydell reflects on the beauty of travelling solo".
