White Rabbit

There I was, gazing out from the departure lounge at Newcastle airport thinking of not very much other than the fact that Jetstar had cancelled my flight and had kindly arranged to put me on another which would take me to a different destination and I'd get home around 6 hours late when there, before my unbelieving eyes, just metres away and surrounded by paddlepop wavers, baggage tractors and huge noisy airplanes was a cute little white rabbit. It ignored me too.

The connection is somewhat tenuous, but bear with me...

I had written, a day or so earlier, to a friend who'd just bought and sold an Indian-made Lambretta:

Hearty congrats on the Lambrindian deal. Can't believe anyone would pay that amount of money for a sheetbox like that. I paid $5 (or maybe it was five pounds) for my first (and last, thank God - it tried to kill me) Lambretta.

Ha, just remembered who that was I bought it from. Stewart, who lived in Neutral Bay in the house next door to the one Nancy Wake grew up in, lest I'm much mistaken. "Nancy Wake" is the book I've brought with me this trip. There's that magic Jungian word again!

And? So? Nana nana intro music, please...

White Rabbit was the code name for one of Nancy's colleagues, Yeo-Thomas. During Nancy Wakes' first stint in the Resistance the Gestapo's code name for her was White Mouse. I had just looked up from reading Peter Fitzsimons' biography when I saw the rabbit.