Here comes the lady with shallots. And it wasn't the mirror that crack'd from side to side but the camera's lens that almost did. And I almost cracked when I looked at some of the prices: six dollars for a kilogramme of turnips. Turnips!
That makes one small-sized turnip worth about $1.70, which after the war was enough money to have kept us in turnips - stewed, boilt, made into soup, or eaten raw - for a whole week. It was the poor man's food!
Shopping is such a drag; no wonder it turns your mind to the past and to poetry. We've since (re)turned to the peace of Riverbend after a day's shopping, swimming, lunching and feeding the seagulls at Ulladulla's picturesque harbourside, and I'm going through today's op-shop loot:
"Marilyn's Man", a DVD-documentary about Marilyn Monroe; "The State Within", a BBC spy thriller; Greg Craven's "Conversations with the Constitution - not just a piece of paper", a book about Australia's Constitution; and another book, "The Art of Making Money", a tale about a slum-kid-turned-counterfeiter who made millions cracking the US Treasury Department's toughest bill ever, the 1996 hundred-dollar note.
I think I grab a turnip - I did buy two for $3.49 - and "The Art of Making Money" and withdraw to the quietude of the 'Clubhouse' by the pond.
