I suppose Longford is typical of country towns around Australia: a mix of young and old, honest and dodgy, hard-working and lazy, financially successful and less so. You can learn a lot about a town nowadays by reading the local Facebook page and Longford is no exception. It's great that some people have no qualms about sharing their problems and worries, their hopes and fears, and their prejudices on-line for all to see.
"If the woman in Hobhouse Street who keeps yelling at my kids doesn't stop I'll take it further."
"Does anyone have a rabbit hutch I could borrow for a few weeks. My brother-in-law has given my kids two rabbits for Christmas."
Today, somebody was trying to sell a small collection of Biggles book. Biggles books! That's a blast from the past. I think I've read every Biggles books ever printed. I suppose I read my first one when I was about seven years old and scoured the shelves of the library looking for new ones. Christmas was always exciting because I could pretty well guarantee I'd receive one or two new titles. And they were all hard cover in those days.
I carried my collection around for years until a major clean-up in about 2015. With Jamie there for support, I took them in to a second-hand bookshop in Launceston and the young woman behind the counter gave me a few dollars for them. She was quite excited to have what might have been first editions and said they would not be sold. Instead, she would keep them in her private collection. Looking back, she was probably saying that to make me feel better, that they'd be going to a good home.
And, no, I'm not going to buy the ones advertised on Facebook. They're tacky, modern paperback reprints with lurid covers. Just not the same!
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