Every man has his price but that price would have to be very low for him to be tempted to shoplift a two-dollar book from Vinnies.
I gladly spent another ten dollars this morning for "A Modern Selection of Johnson's Dictionary", "The Howard Years" edited by Robert Manne, "Worst Words" and "Death Sentences", both by Don Watson, former speech-writer and adviser to Paul Keating, and - oh, what a find! - the third of Yuval Noah Harari's magnum opuses, "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" (yes, I agree, a person would only have one magnum opus, but believe me, he has three: "Sapiens", then "Homo Deus", and now this.
I already have both Don Watson books, but these are for the bookshelf inside "Melbourne" for me to dip into every time I feel like reading about the sorry state of the English language and what we can do about it.
I also bought a beautifully crafted globe of the world, about the size of a soccer ball, which I quickly paid for and took out to the car before Padma could stop me by saying, "But we already have one in our living-room" which is true, but this one is also for "Melbourne" where I can look back on all the places I've been to before I became stuck at "Riverbend".
And this is it for another two days until Thursday when we go back into town for another aqua-aerobic session in the lovely warm-water pool.
