Bing Crosby’s Death:Saturday, 15th October, 1977

Via a news bulletin, at 8.30 a.m., I heard of the death of crooner, Bing Crosby, at the age of seventy-three. He had collapsed on a golf course in Spain whilst playing the game with three Spanish professionals. In the same bulletin I heard that Mount Everest’s conqueror, Sir Edmund Hillary, is seriously ill, some five thousand metres up in the Himalayas, yet can’t be brought down due to bad weather. Sir Edmund is fifty-seven years of age.

For the first time in ages, I weighed myself. I am only eleven stone two. We drove, in drizzle, to Miranda Fair. In Myer, Tiki stood in a queue for twenty minutes to pay $6.30 (a discount of ten per cent had reduced it from $7.00) for a dark blue cardigan. It is a birthday present for her younger sister, Wendy.

In the high humidity, I drove to town, via Redfern, eventually parking in the Kent Street parking station, at the rear of the Hoyts Cinema complex. I paid $3.25 for each of us to see “Rocky” (voted the Best Film of 1976), written by its principal actor, Sylvester Stallone. Prior to this, a film, on Mount Warning and Surfers Paradise, had been followed by a poor cartoon featuring two blue anteaters. During the interval we each devoured a packet of crisps.

At a quarter to five, we crossed Kent Street in the rain and I drove to Manly. As we were entering a marked lane on the Harbour Bridge, a light blue Holden sedan attempted to push up on the inside of our vehicle and had to brake suddenly, in the wet conditions. The young couple, with children, knew that they were in the wrong. As we crossed The Spit Bridge, it was mentioned on the ‘2UW News’, at 5.00, that “Ming Dynasty” (9/1), trained by Bart Cummings, had won the one hundredth running of the Caulfield Cup, from “Unaware” and “Salamander”.

I parked in the asphalt car park on Wentworth Street, facing the old buildings at its eastern end. Once inside ‘K’s Snapper Inn’ we were shown to the same table, in the rear section of the restaurant, that we had occupied a few weeks ago. A seafood cocktail, curried scallops, pavlova  with ice-cream for Tiki; scallops kebab, a king prawn salad, pavlova with ice-cream for me — two glasses of lemon squash each, two cups of cappucino: all for $20.80.

Tiki requested that I drive to Tania Park, at Dobroyd Point, to look out through the rain at the lights. Ours was the only car there and when another containing four youths stopped suspiciously before slowly moving by, we agreed that we should drive on, in case it should appear again. This time, I drove to Edgecliffe Esplanade, at Seaforth, and we looked out over The Spit. At 8.00, we left for home and found it to be bone dry on the southern side of the city. We arrived home by 8.50 and watched most of the movie, ‘Doctor In Trouble’ (1970), with Leslie Phillips and Harry Secombe.

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