lifeasdaddy - Barry Jones recollects Sir Isaac Isaacs.

I've just started reading Barry Jones' autobiography A Thinking Reed. 

It's a fascinating book, packed with facts of course, and lots of social history of his milieu and the world at large.  It's thoughtfully reflective and as Phillip Adams points out in his foreword, honest.

Since I've mentioned Sir Isaac Isaacs this week, I'll give you a snippet, albeit unexciting.

On pages 63-64 he mentions that he was a habitue of the Melbourne Public Library (now the State Library of Victoria) as a child and

"Occasionally I saw Sir Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian to become Governor-General, a vernerable figure in his nineties, reading in the Public Library and I once sat opposite him on a Toorak tram.  I recognised him as a link with the past, but never plucked up courage to speak to him."

With a certain circularity I myself saw Barry Jones in a Thomas' Record store in Melbourne, circa 1981.  He was wearing a pale grey coloured suit, with the side jacket pockets bulging outward from the  contents.  He was quickly flicking through most of the classical music CDs in the racks.  A very well known figure in Melbourne I was fascinated to see him in person, but did not even think of approaching him because I felt he was entitled to do what was obviously a pleasurable activity in peace and without interruption.