Yamba - Day 10

Lots of walking today. We travelled 6kms in all, with our first decent walk of the holiday which took in Lovers Point and Pippi Beach in the morning and then town in the afternoon.

Coffee and shopping in town, Sue had her ears pierced for the third time on Yamba holidays but all through the same spot on her ear lobes. She has just never managed to maintain the anchor point very well or worn the wrong ear rings and infection and laziness has caused the site to repair. Don't understand the whole/hole puncturing thing but to each their own. Sue also grabbed groceries whilst I just wandered, grazing on retail until finding myself, inevitably, in the bookshop. An illustrated history of Led Zeppelin seemed so reasonable and lonely that it will return with me to Tamworth.

In between walks we had home made bread rolls for lunch, stuffed with salad.

Pacific Hotel at sunset and a longer than usual stay. We met an interesting couple - Celestine and Bill - who opened the conversation by commenting on my Hawaiian shirts, a ploy which made them immediately interested. Bill is a retired TAFE teacher - among other things - and Celestine (spelling?) a Careers Advisor in high school education. Of course, these are just their jobs, rarely a definition of the person. How often do we meet people and ask them their job in order to box them into a stereotype? What a totally useless line of enquiry. I had a longish chat with Celestine as she was within a year of my age and had grown up in The Shire. There was much to be compared.

I took this willingness to engage as a sign the dark clouds had passed.

Early night after watching Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis in "The Outoftowners", a very funny Neil Simon story of a couple who travel to New York for his job interview. He's a left-mode, super organised, list following man whose world falls apart when planes run late, hotels give his room to someone else, transport systems are on strike and he is twice robbed. They sleep in Central Park, steal food from a dog for breakfast and are skyjacked on the way home. Just the tonic for us who leave Australia to be at the hands of others in four weeks!