After an hour in the warm-water pool and my first visit to the local skin clinic - after having travelled for many years to a far-away dermatologist who became more and more interested in the colour of my money than the colour of my skin - we looked at each other and simultaneously said, "Let's go for a drive to Ulladulla."
Which is code for "Let's visit the Uniting Church Outreach Centre" which is always full of wool for Padma's crocheting and lots of books for my reading pleasure, and this time was no exception. I know that Padma was pretty happy with her bagful of wool and I was absolutely amazed at the books I found: not just one but TWO of the latest books by Australia's leading social psychologist, Hugh Mackay, "The Way We Are" and "The Kindness Revolution"; a hardcover copy of "The Price of Everything - Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do"; another hardcopy cover of Thomas L. Friedman's "The World is Flat"; and "I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That" about selected journalism and other stuff; "Word Watching - Field Notes from an Amateur Philologist"; "Why Broome?", a story of why twenty-six of the many expatriates from all over the world have come to live in Broome which I want to read as I've been obsessed with Broome lately; and for the first time I found a Charles Bukowski book, this one being "Ham on Rye". I hope I live long enough to read them all!
Of course, as they say in the commercial, "But wait, there's more!" but I don't want to bore you with all the others, except for one, "Make the Most of Your Time on Earth", an absolute treasure for armchair-travellers like me whose travelling is now limited to the fifty kilometres to Ulladulla and the few steps up to the Milton-Ulladulla Bowling Club where we sat down for a sumptuous lunch of some Thai chicken salad for Padma and a lashing of curried prawns for me, all washed down with a glass of chardy and topped off with what was probably the best baked cheese cake I have ever tasted. Or was it just the exuberance of watching BHP climb back up the stairs after its nine-month-long drop from over $50 to just around $38?
When we got home, I found in my mailbox a quarterly PAYG instalment notice from the Australian Taxation Office, and by the time I had lit the fire and settled down by it to start reading Hugh Mackay's latest offering, BHP had closed at $$43.36, one offsetting the other. As I write this the morning after, I notice that BHP's overnight New York price at four o'clock their time is US$60.91 for the American Depositary Receipt (ADR) which is their equivalent of two shares. At the current exchange rate of 69 US cents to one Australian dollar it would suggest an opening price in Sydney this morning of $44.13, enough to buy me many more books in Ulladulla.
Now let me get back to my Hugh Mackay and "The Way We Are".
