But there’s always time to crank the seat back, reach down for a book, and read a few pages before the next passenger shows up.

Lately the reading material has been a book on changing lives. An inspirational book talking of the beneficial impact of very small loans to the world’s poorest people. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, was once a professor of economics, who looked out of his office window to a small village and wondered how the theories he was teaching related to the residents.

On investigation, he found that the poorest people in the village were very poor indeed, held back by poor access to money offered at usurious interest rates. A woman would work all day weaving intricate crafts for a profit of a few cents, which she spent on feeding her children. If she could gain just a small amount of money to escape the money-lenders who were also her raw material suppliers and the tied buyers of her work, she could prosper and profit.

From a small seed loan came a great organisation, breaking free of money-lenders, private banks and government corruption and ineptitude. Aimed at small loans to the very poorest, Grameen Bank prospered, spinning off programs and organisations across the globe.

His book, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, has been my taxicab reading material for the past week.

He struck a chord with me. For too long the great charity organisations have thrived in the developed nations, growing platoons of well-paid executives in modern office towers who plan advertising campaigns for donation drives staffed by unpaid volunteers. The spokesmen for these groups are always immaculately dressed in business suits or tailored adventure kit, posing before the cameras, asking for yet more money. The donations with which they are entrusted are diluted by administration costs and advertising. Delivery is facilitated by payments to government officials. Consultants jet in, stay in business hotels, hire cars and dine in the best restaurants.

I’ve had the opportunity to study one of the more visible charity saints, and I have rarely seen a more horrid, selfish, bigoted and intolerant bastard in my life. Before the cameras he is sympathetic smiles. In private he is ruthless, vicious in eliminating competition and fiercely protective of his public image. Every inch the manipulative politician.

He gets the funds in, sure, but how much good does he do to those who need it most? I wonder.

In contrast, Grameen Bank executives are to be found riding bicycles to remote villages, sleeping on rush mats, sharing bowls of rice and vegetables with their clients, dodging attacks verbal and physical from the established political, financial, social and religious groups who depend on the status quo for their standing.

In particular, Grameen Bank helps women. In the poorest nations, women often carry the greatest load and have the lowest status. A mother will cut her own food short so that her children may grow and when food is very short indeed she will starve, but before that point she suffers the agony of being unable to breastfeed her baby.

Now, I’m not willing to cut back my own comfortable lifestyle too much. I could sell everything I owned, give it to the very poorest, and never make a dent in global poverty.

But I can help. My passengers sometimes give me tips. The businessmen and the government officials so rarely tip that it is a cause for wonder when they do. But those who pay the fare from their own pocket, those who are least able to afford a generous gesture, they are my best tippers.

From now on my tip money goes into microfinance loans. Not a huge strain on the resources, but a gesture that helps others, and makes me happy in the knowledge.

Kiva.org is one of those internet creations that enables people like me to lend money to those in need, with very little administrative costs, no huge organisation, no Business Class Saints. I can choose where my money is to go, and I can see how it is spent, right down to the individual receiving the loan.

Typically loans are small, for a few hundred dollars, repaid over a year or two, and aimed at gaining resources that can be turned to profit. A sewing machine, a second-hand fridge, a new engine for a taxi. Each loan is financed by multiple lenders giving twenty-five dollars each. Loans are often approved and disbursed, and then “backfilled” using the internet money. The borrower commences repayments immediately. Small regular repayments until the total is repaid. And when the money comes back home, it can be re-lent, gifted to Kiva, or withdrawn.

A brother cabbie

Lives are enriched. The world gets ever so slightly better off.

I’m starting small. I’m helping out a cabbie in Azerbaijan. My Kiva lender page is here. I’m feeling very warm and happy and positive about this.

And, for a night cabbie who has occasionally been roused from honest sleep by a collector for one of the glossy charities, and been mistaken by that collector for a snarling attack dog, this is good news indeed!

–Skyring

Bonus video: PBS story on Kiva

Worse, because for the moment, it was pain.

She’d been here before. The aching muscles, the complaining joints, the burning lungs. All signposts on the road, and as Ann climbed the long hill up Monash Drive, she took it steadily, imagining one of those curvy athletes from the Thirties jogging along in front of her. She’d gradually catch up, lose the kilos, become the woman she’d been not too long ago.

And then, she’d be imagining one of those hard bodies from the same Olympics jogging ahead in firm masculinity. She’d catch him. And keep him.

She thought of Tom for a moment, tanned and taut and terrific. But Tom was gone and Ann was here. Maybe her clock was running out, but Ann wasn’t sure she wanted a family. Not children, anyway. Someone to share her life, her flat, her bed. Someone that wasn’t a cat.

These were good, positive, motivational thoughts, and they carried her up the hill. The current pains of her body would, in due course, give way to other sensations. Her burning thighs, for example, not to mention the tightness of her chest.

Just listen to me, she thought. She’d be reading romance novels next. Or worse, writing them.

“Softly, yet firmly, the eager lips of the Greek tycoon sought those of the bookseller. Slowly, gently, her reluctance melted. She sighed as his tongue met hers in bilingual embrace.”

Ann groaned in disgust at her thoughts. There was a certain sort of woman who bought romance novels. She had a bookcase set aside near the front door, and the old dears bought them a dozen at a time. And sold them back to her at half price. A nice little money-spinner.

The rest of her circuit was downhill or level, and she relaxed, even walking for a few hundred metres occasionally. The building site, when she turned onto Constitution Avenue, was looking even more desolate. Piles of earth were appearing as yellow-painted machines tore into the ground. The magpies were enjoying it all. For the time being.

She had given in to temptation yesterday. Sometimes it felt good to succumb. She didn’t expect a result, not today, not yet, but maybe…

Quint was again visible in his window, staring dolefully out. Again she waved, but this time he waved back, smiling at her. Good old William – he had his moments, but he was a rock, when you knew how he worked.

A final rush up the little hill, almost burning up as she reached Legacy Park, and then she was warming down, slowing up, bending to pick up The Canberra Times from the front yard, opening the door and ignoring Grace’s hungry miaows.

Shower and coffee before she dared open the paper to the Letters page. And there it was! Her impulse acknowledged, printed in black and white, just like the magpies she wrote about. Trivial, she knew, but who else would stand up for the birds?

She read it again when she arrived at it in legitimate progression. It still sounded clever and sincere – the effort of a concerned member of the community.

She lingered over breakfast. Wednesdays she opened late. It was her day for bookscouting on her own accord, and today she was on a winner. One of the suburb’s oldest residents was moving out of her house to a retirement unit and she wanted to sell her library of books. It was a familiar story: how to fit a lifetime accumulation of possessions crowding a big old family home into the small bedroom and lounge that made up a retirement flat. It couldn’t be done.

Ten o’clock, and she walked up to a split-level Sixties house in Spanish Mission trim, patches of exposed bricks, wooden beams and red tiles. Once it must have been the coolest house in Canberra, now it just looked tired.

But it had a fantastic view over the lake through mature trees. Galahs clustered around a feeding bowl, while king parrots waited their turn. And a silver-haired old lady opened the door and smiled her inside.

“Ann Ounce,” Ann said, mentally chiding her stepfather for her whimsical name for about the millionth time. “You dropped in last Thursday to make a time to view your library?”

“Of course! Violet Campbell, but you wrote my name down.”

“Any relation?”

“Robert Campbell was my great-grandfather,” Violet stated. “They say I’ve got his eyes. And some of his books.”

Campbell the suburb was named after Campbell the squatter, who had first farmed here. The military college of Duntroon was the old homestead, named after Campbell’s Scottish birthplace.

The Campbell eyes were twinkling, and Ann warmed to the old lady. It was never easy selling a lifetime collection of books. Many would be old friends, others would have memories attached, and some would be the childhood possessions of sons and daughters, far too precious to throw out.

“I’d be especially interested in the older books, Mrs Campbell. Have you done any sorting at all? You know, pulling out the ones you want to take with you?”

“They can all go. Might as well say goodbye to them now. I won’t be around forever, you know.”

Ann privately doubted this. Violet must have been well over eighty, but she seemed as trim and agile as any schoolgirl, bright and alert. So many old people lost heart, especially when their spouse died, and they just marked time until it was their turn.

“Nonsense! You’ll be getting a telegram from the Queen before you know it. I hope I’ll be as energetic as you when I’m your age!”

“Oh, I’ve got a while to go yet, dear. I’m ninety-two, would you believe it?”

Ann shook her head in disbelief. “And still living by yourself! You’re a wonder!”

“My son comes in now and then. He’s a good boy. He gives me a hand around the house.”

Any son of Violet’s would be a senior citizen in his own right, Ann thought.

“I see so many retired people,” she said, “and most of them can barely get up in the morning. Sick or crippled or bedridden…”

“Oh, I’ve been bedridden! Hundreds of times. And once in a taxi!”

“Ah,” Ann sighed. “I’d best take a look at these books.”

“Oh, they’re just through here. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve already got the kettle on for this nice young man.”

Ann nodded. There, sitting at a heavy old table, surrounded by piles of books, was Quint. This was going to be tricky.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Her smile was joy. “Yes please, Ben! I’ll put these books on the shelf and be right back.”

The Heartbake manager had let her set up an OBCZ – an Official BookCrossing Zone – in a corner. Ann had stocked a small shelf with free books, each registered and labelled with its BookCrossing ID. A sign read “FREE BOOKS!”

The shelf had a steady turnover. Reading a free book while having coffee: a perfect match!

She arranged her latest paperbacks on the top shelf, moving older titles lower. If they staid too long on the shelf, she “wild released” them into the world somewhere. A park bench. A bus stop.

A new book caught her eye. Not one of hers. 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith. A delightful book by a favorite author, and some kind customer had donated it.

Ann glanced inside. Not registered on BookCrossing.com. Not yet.

She returned with the book. Barista Ben had her latte ready and she bent over the cake display in her Mark Twain t-shirt. A lot to be said for a tight top.

“A smiley cake today, please!”

He gave her a smile and put the cake on a plate. She paid, and made her happy way to her own shop. Definitely making headway with Ben.

Ounce Books was her little kingdom. Queendom. Princessipality. Whatever, it was all hers and she loved it.

To tell the truth, it was a fake. Campbell residents might buy a paperback novel here and there, but the big business was done online. Quality second-hand nonfiction and good first editions. More than once she’d made several hundred dollars profit from a single book.

She had a copy of Leni Reifenstahl’s Schönheit im olympischen Kampf, a classic 1937 large format book of stills from Reifenstahl’s documentary of the 1936 “Nazi” Olympics in Berlin. She’d paid two hundred dollars, but it was worth an easy six, maybe seven hundred. Postage would be a killer, though. It was heavy.

She took a bite of her cake, sipped her coffee and turned to the book she’d picked up in the cafe. On the BookCrossing.com website – permanently open on her computer – she clicked the “Register book” link, entered title and author, and the site gave her a ten digit number, which she copied onto a printed instruction label. This went inside the front cover. Outside, more stickers with the site logo of a little yellow book running away on stick legs, arms pumping as it headed for freedom.

She had attended the World BookCrossing Convention in Christchurch earlier that year. The combination of New Zealand’s spectacular fall scenery, great friends, and a lightning romance had made it a weekend to treasure. She had stayed on for a precious week with Tom, who ferried yachts about the South Pacific.

It had been pure magic, but they talked long into that final night, agreeing that their different lives ruled out anything permanent. They chatted on the internet when Tom had a break ashore, but even that contact was cooling.

Ben had possibilities. Younger than Tom, but so very handsome! A pity that his interest in books was slim. He came into the shop to collect cups, but their relationship was mostly pursued in the fragrant atmosphere of Heartbake.

Ann was ready for another whiff. She drained her latte, set it on the empty plate, picked up the freshly registered novel and went next door, smiling her way in.

Nobody on the counter, so she went to the back of the cafe and set the new book on the top shelf, glancing sideways into the kitchen, hoping for a glimpse of Ben.

There he was, and her heart skipped a happy beat before exploding. Locked in an embrace that linked bodies from toes to tongues with never a gap between, Ben and some skinny young blonde were making their own heat in the kitchen.

Ann wasn’t sure how she came to be sitting down at her own counter, alone but for an expensive old German book losing value with each teardrop.

Oh, Tom, Tom. Where was he now? Alone on some swelling ocean when he should be here, comforting her, caressing her, whispering love, telling her she was beautiful.

Just a few days, and so many happy memories. Driving down a scenic highway, snow-capped mountains to either side, golden leaves of fall in glorious splashes on the green meadows. Holding hands in the back seat. Walking in the glowing evening. Kissing beneath a smiling moon.

Tom’s smell had made her shiver as he ran his fingers through her hair, his lips soft on her cheek, her neck, her shoulders.

The first time they’d undressed each other, she had gasped at the glory of him. Tanned from ten thousand summer sea miles, trim and muscled from hauling on ropes and balancing his weight on a rolling deck.

The salty taste of his skin as she kissed his chest through a tangle of dark hair. The hardness of muscle, the blaze of his eyes, the sweet joy as his hands moved on her body.

Oh, Tom!

She opened the book, looking at pictures of Greek temples and columns. Marble athletes coming to life in Riefenstahl’s camera as naked gymnasts posed and moved and hurled the discus, the javelin. One tousled athlete was the image of a younger Tom, skin taut over perfect muscles beneath.

She stroked the page, remembering the times afterwards, hearts slowing, fingers entwining, bodies touching. Her head on his chest as he told sea stories. The light in his eyes as he looked at her telling of her own adventures in life and dreams for the future.

Oh Tom! Come to life for me, darling. Leap out of that book and hold me tight.

She looked up from the page, and saw through misty eyes a man in front of her.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Not to mention a superior rock cake. Their pies had won prizes too.

“Flat white, please. Hot. Big.” His hands sketched out a shape approximately the size of a beer keg. “And a stone-cold rock cake.”

The barista, an altogether too handsome young man, smiled politely behind his mirror-gleaming machine. He’d seen Harley’s comedy routine far too many times. He wished he had a dollar for every time he’d heard the same jokes.

Harley paid and took his coffee and cake outside. Cold in July, but he could keep an eye on the cab. One other hardy soul sat at a table, his chair angled to catch the sun, steam curling gently from a mug. Eighty years old, at a guess.

Harley glanced at him, sensing a kindred spirit. The signs were there for those who knew the code.

“Where’d yer do yer laggin’?”

The elderly gent looked up, a trail of blue tattooed tears faintly visible dropping from the corner of one eye.

“All over,” he replied. “You?”

“Goulburn, in the main.”

“Did me first laggin’ there. Evil place, that.”

“Not going back.” Harley stuck out his hand. “Harley Barnardo.”

“Sharkey, they call me.”

They shook. Harley set his coffee down on the table and turned to face the sun.

“It doesn’t get much better than this, eh?”

“I should be on the Gold Coast with the bikini birds,” Sharkey said. “Not stuck in this cold old hole.”

Harley raised his cup. “Let’s both bust out, hey?”

Sharkey shook his head. “They only let me out of Humane last month. Gotta stay in the Territory for a year. Gave me a room in that place.”

Harley glanced over at Erstwhile Garden Retirement Village, a grey slab with windows. “Looks like X-Block without the bars.”

They chatted on, a shared brotherhood of crime. Sharkey told of the old days in Goulburn, when as a teenager he had been assigned a cell with one of the last bushrangers, a man who had ridden with the Governor gang in his youth. The nation had been founded on other peoples’ convictions, unbroken chains of sentences and cant stretching back to the old lags on the First Fleet.

A woman within a sniff of thirty came out of the grocery, pushing a stroller with a couple of infants. Her arms were laden with plastic bags full of disposables, and the children were barely visible noses poking out of hooded garments, eyes gleaming in their caverns. Her own face was grim.

“Ever get married, Harley?”

“I run too fast,” Harley grinned, taking a bite of rock cake.

“Three times for me,” Sharkey sighed. “and me girl’s inside watching telly.”

“She should be making you coffee.”

“She only does instant. Instant everything. Microwave crap and boiling water. Not like the old days.”

“Never is nowadays.” Harley took another bit of rock cake, working his way around the cherry in the centre. “My Mum could make a rock cake so hard you’d be spitting out fillings for a week after.”

“Sounds like me first missus. Scones of Stone, I used to call ‘em.”

The door of Ounce Books opened and a woman emerged with an armload of books. One look at her and you could tell that a life of books, cats and chocolate was a comfortable one. She was smiling, and her t-shirt had a bust of Mark Twain on the front.

“Nice set of buns right there.”

“Nice all over,” Harley agreed. “She gives out free books. Can you credit that? Runs a bookshop and hands them out for nothing!”

“Oh yeah? I could do with a bit of that. Don’t mind a good murder, meself.”

“She fills up a shelf in the bakery. Up the back it is. Only catch is that you have to go on the internet and make a note or something.”

“Bloody computers and internet. It’s just another way of ripping off the little guy,” Sharkey said. “Me girl’s always chatting away to her mates. Twittering, she says.”

Harley took another mouthful of rock cake. The sultanas slipped under his teeth. As a kid, he’d pulled them out and set them aside, worried that a blowfly might have found its way into the mix. One Christmas, he’d spent ten minutes working on a pudding so full of dates and prunes and currants and cherries that all that he could get out of it were tiny shreds of duff. After that he hadn’t bothered.

Life was too short to worry about the little things. So what if a nut got into his cab? He’d be out again in a few minutes, and Harley could drive on in the sunshine. Canberra was a good place to be a cabbie. The roads were wide, the traffic flowed smoothly, the passengers were well-behaved.

And so what if they were putting up an ugly building at the end of the street? There’d be work coming out of it. Engineers and architects needing cab rides while it was going up, and public servants when it was in business. The more passengers in his taxi, the more money in his pocket.

He drained the last of his coffee. Life was good and the future was better. It would be spring soon. He popped the last fragments of rock cake into his mouth, feeling the preserved cherry slide under his teeth, sweet and delicious. That was the best part.

Sharkey was looking at him, smiling.

“Got to get back on the road, mate. Make a quid.” Harley said, putting his coffee mug down firmly. “Good to meet you!”

“Yeah, you too, cobber. Look, I might have something you can help me with.”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay