Visiting an Old Friend's Penguins

I used to work with a speech pathologist quite a few years ago who was a good 20 years older than me. Well, the years went by and we have now both retired and I still see her once in awhile for a coffee.  Actually it is funny because there is a coffee group of retired speech pathologists that meet once a month.  I always think of all of us as the "old crumblies" with affection of course.

This friend of mine recently sold their family home and went into smaller accommodation.  I have said to her for years she really should sell me any old Penguins she has. ( I knew she had quite a few.)  Of course the time wasn't right and I didn't think anything more of it.

I particularly like the cover of the F. Scott Fitzgerald book and of course The Natural is a good baseball tale.

The other day I had a voice mail from a book dealer in Battery Point. "I've got a box of Penguins here and you're welcome to go through them."  Now, that is always music to my ears so I said I would be in the following afternoon.

I was happy to find another Iris Murdoch book I didn't have and doesn't the Richard Bissell book look so 60's.

The shop is called Kookaburra Books And Antiques and they sell second hand books, some antiques and vintage clothing. Quite a combination.  They don't have a web page but they do have a Facebook page.

I stopped in yesterday afternoon and in fact he did have a box of Penguin books. He had collected a whole big  shipment of books from someone in the area who was moving and he took the lot.

Yet another Iris Murdoch and I love the covers of all of these.

I went through the box and found 10 I didn't have and 2 more that were first published ones that were going to replace a couple of reprints I had.  He was going to charge me a reasonable price (I have noticed that Penguins have dropped in price significantly now the Collectors tv program is not all the rage).  

As I thumbed through them I found a receipt for services in one of the books. It was dated 1994 and guess what.  It was addressed to my old speech pathology friend whose Penguins I always wanted to buy.  So I ended up getting them anyway and probably didn't pay anymore for them than I would have from her.  It really is funny how things work out.  Of course everyone knows in Tasmania there is only 2 degrees of separation.