Eyes like strange sins

To all those women who walked into those sheds on Saturday morning and said, in a disappointed voice, 'oh, it's all men's stuff' I say : pfffft.  Oh happy days, sheds full of old, rusty, grimy boxes of stuff.  I was down to a couple of skiploads of the stuff, so I was more than happy to top up the supplies.

As a side product, I have one container of airbrush bits, and a box of car bits like new fuel filters, spark plugs, and so on.  Maybe I can swap them for something interesting, since I have neither vehicle nor airbrush.

Yesterday, friends delivered an Albany Advertiser (newspaper) from Thursday November the 8th, 1934.  Fear not, they are not the world's slowest paper persons ( for paperboy would be both politically dubious and 50% gender-incorrect) but had found it when pulling up the lino in their lovely old house.  Today, a very nice lady brought me forty - forty! - that's four zero - maritime charts.  Primarily Western Australian coast, with Northern Territory ones as a bonus.  I barely know where to start. 'Thank you' doesn't even start  to cover it.

As it happens, I've been spending the weekend with Raymond Chandler.  There's a lot of terminology which would probably be seen as politically incorrect now, but as a lyrical description of the time (in this case, 1943)  it holds it's own.


"A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes.  She had eyes like strange sins."

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

Pure gold.