"Writing and reading are the two most civilised things you can do."

 

And after reading any one of Paul Theroux's many books, you can add travelling. At my age, I'm more of a mental traveller, and Paul Theroux's books help me to escape the everyday monotony to return to places I've been to in an earlier life, or to other places I've never been to before.

In the above video clip, the lady-moderator briefly mentions Saint Jack which to me is all about the Singapore I used to know when I lived and worked in Burma and visited Singapore in 1975. It is one of Theroux's novel that was made into a wonderful movie, so even if you don't share my passion for reading, you will enjoy this full-length movie on YouTube:

 

 

Afterwards, you may even be tempted to read the whole book online at www.archive.org. As for me, I've just started re-reading Paul's "Dark Star Safari" which I brought back from town. I had already read the book but then given away to someone I thought would enjoy it as much as I had.

 

 

Talk to you again when I get to Cape Town! (which, I'm sure, has greatly changed since I briefly lived - and almost settled - there in early 1969)

Sitting it out in Cape Town, waiting for my passage back to Australia

On the balcony of the boarding-house in Cape Town

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It must be Valentine's Day when even the milk has got a date

 

And so I relented in helping Padma sort through her large wardrobe to find something special that would still fit her. We finally settled on the one thing that still did - a scarf! - and drove into town for lunch at the Thai restaurant.

Of course, no day is complete without consulting my "Form Guide" which to my old mate Noel used to cover every TAB horse race in Australia but to me it's the Australian Stock Exchange, and more so the price of BHP.

BHP is down ten cents to $47.77 from yesterday's price (or, depending on your view, down by more than five dollars from its 52-week high), and I think it will fall even further, as Macquarie just reported that it expects the company to report a sharp decline in first-half profit on February 21, given the pullback in commodity prices recently.

It's probably enough excuse not to buy her a Valentine's gift, but I did assure her I knew what her favourite flower is. It's self-raising, isn't it?

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P.S. ... and the greatest solecism in the punctuation world continues:

 

Early-morning visitors

 

Apart from the large flock of ducks and other waterbirds on the pond, "Riverbend" in the main attracts only the "Einzelgänger" in the shape of the one resident possum, the one resident kangaroo, the occasionally visiting black swan, and this morning a passing stingray and a pelican.

The grass keeps growing almost as fast as I can cut it, and then there are the five tonnes of topsoil I brought in a few days ago to fill out the hollows left by the trees I had removed a week earlier. Spreading it all, one small shovelful at a time, may stop my waistline from spreading.

With all this outdoor work and the time I need to catch up with my reading, and I wonder how I ever got enough time to do all the other work when I was still in what they used to call gainful employment.

 

 

As they sing in the (c)old country, "Seitdem wir Rentner sind da haben wir keine Zeit ..." (Since we are pensioners we have no time ...)

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Another good day in town

Padma in Young Percy’s Café at the Catalina Golf & Country Club

 

It is now eighteen years since I first began to dream of telling the story of the wreck of the 'Batavia'. I collected nearly everything that was published on the subject; then I went to stay on the Houtman Abrolhos where the disaster took place. For years, I kept pondering the project and jotting notes, but never actually settled down to write the first page of a book which, amid the increasingly derisive scepticism of my family, began to take on a mythical aspect. From time to time, I learned that some new book had just been published on my topic - invariably sending me into a cold sweat - and each time, I would rush to get a copy of it. But no - it was always a false alarm; I saw quickly, with relief, that the author had again missed the target, and this only reinforced my false sense of security. Once or twice, though, I felt the whirr of a bullet, but disregarded the warning. Then came Mike Dash. With his 'Batavia's Graveyard', published in 2002, this author hit the bull's eye and left me nothing more to say. Dash managed to disentangle the various threads of the complex tragedy and to set personalities and events in their historical context. Above all, he did amazing detective work in the Dutch archives. After carefully reading his detailed study, I put away for good all the documents and notes, sketches and photographs I had gathered over the years; I had no further use for them. In publishing the following pages, my only wish is that they may lead you to Dash's work."

I read this amazing first paragraph in Simon Leys' beautiful little book "The Wreck of the Batavia" while sitting in the Catalina Country Club's newly remodelled coffee shop with a large piece of hummingbird cake and a mug of hot chocolate. Padma had mumbled something about tomorrow being a special day - could somebody explain the meaning of Valentine's Day to me? - and wanting to show off her new jacket with plenty of zips and buttons. Who am I to argue? (indeed, who am I?)

 

My startled looks when I heard about Valentine's Day

 

But back to what's far more important: books! Of course, I had already read Dash's "Batavia's Graveyard" to which Simon Leys' 50-odd-page book has now become a very handy retrospective introduction. I acquired it for a mere gold coin in our local Vinnies op-shop, together with two beautifully bound volumes of Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" and "Brighton Rock", and an autobiography by the man himself, "A Sort of Life". Oh, and Penguin's edition of Hermann Hesse's "Gertrude".

Another good day in town!

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P.S. All of which you can read online in case you've run out of coloured crayons for your other book:
"The Wreck of the Batavia"
"Batavia's Graveyard
"The Power and the Glory"
"Brighton Rock"
"A Sort of Life"
"Gertrude"

 

Dedicated to Paul Erling Johnson and all the wandering souls out there

Click on FULL SCREEN and enjoy!
This is a cautionary tale. By the time this movie was made, Paul Eling Johnson had become a bit of a sad sack who still lived on his boat alone, had nobody and no-one and his boat was in a barely floating condition, and he didn't sail anymore. He had found an accepting and non-judgemental community who treated him lovingly and with respect, despite his addiction and often wandering about in an enebriated state. A story of freedom bounded by alcohol and poverty. As the filmmakers stated, "This film is a contemplation about his choices after a lifetime of freedom before he embarked on his final journey of no return."

 

You know, when you go to youtube.com's front page to search for something and you see a whole list of their latest "suggestions" which you normally ignore and move on from? ("This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put", I hear you whisper.)

This morning I was going to type in "Yuval Noah Harari" to see if I could find something about his latest book "Unstoppable Us - How Humans Took Over the World", when I was facing their latest "suggestion" of "The Sailor | Full Movie - What is the price of freedom? Paul Johnson sailed the world all his life. He loved, drank, and lived foolish, never truly living on land. Now he is turning eighty. What is at the end of such a journey? Is there loneliness?", uploaded as recently as Oct 18, 2022. I hope YouTube won't delete it because, while this world-renowned sailor and builder of boats died in June 2021, aged 83, his legend lives on.

My own sailing-days are well and truly over! The nearest I ever got to casting off completely was in 1974 when I worked for AIR NIUGINI in Port Moresby and saw a wooden yacht, "Spirit of Barbary", advertised for sale at Popondetta on the north coast of New Guinea. An old mate from my Bougainville days, Brian Herde, was also interested, and we flew across to spend a couple of days sailing and living aboard it, after which our minds seemed made up. I had just enough saved up to pay for my half of the boat, but Brian was notoriously reluctant to spend money and to sell even a tiny fraction of his many SANTOS shares, and so the deal was off.

I've had a variety of small sailing boats ever since: in Port Moresby, in Lae, in Honiara - I even owned a small LASER on Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra! - and until recenly sailed my small motor-sailer, the "Lady Anne", up and down the Clyde River, but now my sailing-days are over!

But I can dream, can't I? And so I keep a large library of sailing books, from Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World" and Francis Chichester's "Gipsy Moth Circles The World" to "The Long Way" by Bernard Moitessier and Robin Knox-Johnston's "A World of My Own".

However, even that library is thinning out as I pass on the books before they become my funeral pyre. One of the lifeguards at the Aquatic Centre, Sam, owns a yacht with her partner, and they plan to head north again in May, and I've been feeding them with Alan Lucas's sailing instructions and "Fitting Out Below Decks" and "Fitting Out Above Decks".

No more fitting out for me, but there's still time to watch this most poignant, beautiful film of this amazing sailor whose motto in life was "Never be afraid to be terrified."

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P.S. And here's the documentary of the making of the movie: