Remembrance
“Airport, please!” he said, helping his wife into the back seat. Red remembrance poppies in their buttonholes, and she was wearing a row of ribbons over her right breast. Armistice Day today, and there had been the annual ceremony at the Australian War Memorial.
Odd
Blowed if I know what’s going on. The site and general layout isn’t secret. Entry is restricted and the airspace is closed to about six kilometres up – we were way above that – but there are good images online. Maybe it’s general curiosity, maybe it’s terrorists planning an attack, but people come and look at my photo all the time.
The Presidential visit
The visit to Canberra of the US President went off well. Incident-free entirely, and there were none of those whining letters to the editor complaining about road closures and the fighter jets overhead and the enormous expense and couldn’t we have Martin Sheen from The West Wing instead? George W Bush and John Howard were soulmates, you could see it in their eyes in the press pool photographs, and when Bush stayed for a day and two nights here a while back, there were two F-18 fighters patrolling overhead at all times. Sometimes there would be four in the air when they changed shifts.
Charles and Betsy
Friday it all came together and we swapped the patched-up Charles* for renewed Betsy. I got to drive her first shift as a reborn cab, just like I drove her first shift as a new cab last year.
Not my best Friday
On Friday night I went through a red light near Parliament House on the mistaken perception that the green turn arrow was my green go light. You don’t muck about in the taxi game on the way to the airport, so I hit the gas and halfway across the intersection collected someone innocently turning right,
A lonely hunter
The last houses disappeared and then we were on the Cotter Road and soon on Lady Denman Drive, past horse paddocks, bushland, the zoo and the dam. Not quite your howling wilderness, but neither was it a busy road. I started wondering about someone printing a name on a bit of paper and luring an innocent cabbie out into a deserted layby.
If this is Samedi…
One stallholder was slicing meat patties in half – two semicircles – which he cooked and crammed into a half-baguette with salad and sauce. Consensus was that these looked quick and tasty, but what were they called so we could order them?
Weekend delight
“Ooh, look at this!” Kerri laid a page of the Sunday paper before me. It had a picture of a tiny book. A book with a BookCrossing sticker. A book I recognised, because I had last seen it at an airline lounge in Japan, where I had tucked it away from the ever-tidying hands of the lounge attendants in a window niche. My jaw fell open.
The best meals…
The plane landed, the kids were there to pick us up, we came home, did a few chores and fell into bed. Some hours later, a BookCrossing meeting to attend, I woke up. And I had not the foggiest notion of where I was. In bed, obviously. Time, date, continent, all a total blank. Was [...]
A diversion
Netherlands to Belgium to Germany to Luxembourg to France to Germany to Switzerland to France to Germany to Belgium to Netherlands. Sometimes six border crossings in a day, sometimes three nations in five minutes.