After work on this warm-to-hot day, Tiki drove me to her parents’. “Mum” looked ghastly, due to a painful neck. She showed us her new Simpson ‘Karumba’ electric stove. One of its knobs was found to be missing when they released it from its packaging. Tiki and I believe the stove looks old-fashioned but, of course, we did not make her parents aware of our belief!
Tiki and I left at ten past five to return home and dress for dinner, aboard the “John Cadman”. It was still twenty-three degrees Celsius at half past six as I drove along the Prince’s Highway and across the Harbour Bridge to arrive at the Jeffrey Street Wharf at Milson’s Point by seven o’clock.
We boarded the floating restaurant by a quarter past and I had a Nagrita and coke, and Tiki a gin and orange at the bar upstairs. Just before the boat stopped at Rose Bay to collect more diners, we asked to be shown to our table on the lower deck. It was next to the table, besides the stairs, at which we had sat on the eighth of March.
We both ordered the barbecued scallops as an entree, as well as the mignonette chasseur of fillet steak, which was served with delicious vegetables, for the main course. A bottle of McWilliams Cabernet Shiraz cost five dollars and fifty cents. Tiki selected the lemon pancakes for dessert, while I chose the disappointing strawberries and cream. We ordered a Galliano liqueur with our Romano coffee. Each liqueur cost us one dollar and fifty cents.
An affable septuagenarian took two photographs of us. He told us of how he fought in the Second World War and, yet, it was to be in Australia that he lost a leg. While he jogged at Ryde he was struck by a car, and the limb turned gangrenous.
Tiki and I danced on the small, crowded floor to songs that included “A Mean Pair Of Jeans” and “After The Lovin'”. I drove home by five minutes to midnight, as we listened to ‘Sam Galea Gold’ on 2UW.
A F-111 crashed today, near the coastal town of Iluka, in north-eastern New South Wales. Its crew of two did not eject. The force of the impact left a crater to a depth of three metres.