MANNERS AND OTHER MATTERS

Camera ready...action! I had such a great day yesterday filming for the ABC show “Can we Help?”on the subject of courtship and marriage from the 1950’s to the present. While I am very comfortable with radio interviews, TV is obviously a completely different vehicle for interviews and I was nervous. But the presenter, Christian Horgan, the director, James, and the crew were fantastic and assisted in making me feel completely at ease. James directing on small matters of detail It was filmed at various places in my home, as each decade was broken up into its own segment with the filming style reflecting the style of the time: the 1950’s in the reception room over afternoon tea; the 1960’s and 70’s around the pool with Christian changing into a very retro 70’s looking shirt; the 80’s and 90’s in my kitchen, leaning on a bench; and the 21st century decades in my office with my computer and online dating sites as the desktop backgrounds. And all of this in 36 degree heat! Fortunately I h...

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day…a day of sentimental songs on the radio, ghastly rom-coms on the TV, overpriced red roses, overcrowded restaurants, declarations of love - many which will soon be retracted - and heartbroken singles. What does it all mean? These days, I think mostly commercialism. It’s not so relevant apparently in non Anglo countries – in fact, it’s a very American “thing” which has only been introduced into Australia, like Halloween, in the last 20 years or so. But I did send a sort of Valentine’s Day card to my beloved… it was in fact a postcard from one of our trips away together…and in it I said how fortunate we were that we didn’t have to celebrate our love on just one day…that it is a daily occurrence for us. And we live in a long distance relationship; he in Switzerland and me here in Australia.  With us being in our 50’s, it’s unconventional but it’s ours; encompassing in it mutual empathy with our periods of loneliness during the separations and exhilara...

My father meets me for the first time at the wharf The clean out of my cupboards to prepare my house for new carpet after 20 years has yielded some wonderful “finds”. A couple of days ago I found an envelope which my mother, who died in 1991, had kept and had obviously given to my father to keep for me. I found it when he died in 2006 but I had never opened it…until now. In it I found the story of my birth. It was filled with telegrams, military cables and loving letters between my parents. You see, my mother was told she was pregnant with me on the 29 April 1955 a week after my father had left for 6 or more months at sea as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy. In one letter, after my birth, she writes to him: “It must be hard (for you to visualise) as you haven’t seen me pregnant and being away all the time”… Dated 29 April 1955, a December birth is expected As with so many women of the time, with husbands away at war or absent for other reasons, my mother managed h...