I bumped into a former Sydney Morning Herald colleague, Freddie Cheah, at the Epping club a couple of weeks ago and Freddie invited me along to a lunch with some other Herald refugees.
We dined at a budget Indian restaurant near Central Station which had good food and ambience. Most importantly it could be trusted to serve vegan food – important for a couple of our group. Those who came along were Richard Todd, Freddie, Tony Scullion, and John Sinclair. All of them had worked closely with me when I was Chief Sub and when I edited the Spectrum and News Review sections of the SMH.
We are mostly retired, but Richard had just been made redundant from Medical Observer which was dumping some print editions. He was looking for tips about surviving retirement so Freddie and I suggested golf, but he didn’t seem keen.
There was lots of catching-up and gossip about former and present SMH people. Good conversation about politics and the state of the world. We’ll do it again soon.
On what was a busy social day, that evening Jan and I dined with Roxarne and Ron in Paddington. We met them at Rox’s house then strolled up to a gastro pub at Fiveways, the Royal Hotel. This was full of young people having a good time – ie it was so noisy we couldn’t hear ourselves speak! Luckily we managed to get a seat in the restaurant area which was a lot quieter, but still buzzy. Food and company was really good.
