MANNERS AND OTHER MATTERS

My 21st birthday dinner...Oh so formal then! I was talking with a friend the other day about friendship.  About how it impacts on our lives, from childhood and teenage friends, to becoming friends with boyfriends’s friends, husband’s friends and their wives, parents of other school children, social club friends,  friends after divorce or death of a partner, passing friendships, acquaintances…and now virtual friends. It’s complicated. And I am finding in my “middle” years that my need for friends has reduced…not that I don’t value and cherish my friends, but my actual need has lessened.  Why, I wonder?  I used always be a “People who need People” (with apologies to whoever wrote the song made famous in  Funny Girl ) sort of a person.  I was always out and about, making sure that I saw my friends, knew all that was going on with them and theirs.  Afternoon tea for the girls...with bubbles! However, as the years have moved ...

I am the child of parents who knew all the words to all of the musicals of the '50's and '60's, and my mother's favourite movie was West Side Story. ..so this song by Barbra Streisand and Josh Grogan was part of my emotional development. And as I reflect on my life of love and longing, it resonates with a singular truth. Recently I was asked by a friend for advice about her love life because, as she offered, she respected mine.  Well, that certainly opened the repository of memories! I have loved and been loved.  My first love is still in my life, albeit from the other side of the world.  We are friends who share memories of a teen love, but a very real love which impacted on both of our lives and remains a testimony to the innocence of youth. My children's father remains one of the great loves, and friends, of my life. So many of the friends I have loved, and sometimes lost, remain in my heart.  As I explained to my friend, friends can be loved without...

Teenagers in the early 1970s...(Google Images) I am going to celebrate a milestone birthday later this year and unfortunately it doesn't commence with the number "5"!  The year is going to be filled with adventure.  I am returning to France for a month to immerse myself again in a course at the Institut de Français in Villefranche-sur-Mer; I will be visiting my beautiful grandson on the other side of my continent;  and hopefully visiting Far North Queensland with my partner as well.  And in between, indulging myself with the contracts I will choose and enjoy with  The Percy Institute of International Protocol. Recently I have been trying to place myself in this "age" in which I find myself;  perhaps the easiest way to do this is to revert to remembering the people my parents and their friends were in their 60's? In the early 1970's I was still at high school, looking very similar to the girls in the photo above...somewhat awkward.  I al...

Class of 1973, CCGGS, Canberra, Australia An invitation to attend the 40th Reunion of the Class of '73 at the Canberra Church of England Girls' Grammar School has recently arrived, in a very modern manner, via a closed group on Facebook. For the "girls"with whom I have already spoken, it had been a surreal moment in time...is it really 40 years since we left school.? We all know we have changed, have had major life experiences along the way, and so why is it that we all feel so much the same? I have been thinking about the concepts and realities of friendship. I met my first girlfriend on my first day at school in 1961 at Loreto Convent Kirribilli, in Sydney.  We were seated next to each other and when we emerged from our very first day at "big school" we found our anxious mothers standing beside their cars speaking with each other.  For both of them it was the first day at school for their first born...many years later I was to empathise ...

Sculptures by the Sea...Bondi to Bronte beaches, Sydney 2012 (photo the author)  It has been an interesting week.  I had a trip back to Canberra, the national capital of Australia, where I finished my high schooling, and to where I returned after a year in Washington DC at our Embassy, to work for six years in the personal offices of two Australian Prime Ministers. As a woman in her early twenties they were days filled with wonder…about the people I met and worked with, the machinations of government at a time when Australia was going through major political changes and about the love affairs I had  and people I enjoyed as I matured over those six years. I read a great quote the other day before I left for Canberra which captured the essence of what I think friendship is all about…it talked about friends being the people with whom you can pick up up the telephone and talk as if months, or even years have not passed... I have friends around the world with...

A Guilderton pelican "overseeing" the fishermen Over the years  I have supported, and been supported by, my special girlfriends at my beachhouse.  It is situated only one hour north of Perth and as so is easily accessible for last minute invitations...and spontaneous  visits. Last weekend I rang my girlfriend, Diane,  at the last minute and said as the weather was going to be perfect, with chilly mornings but twenty degree temperatures during the day (yes, winter in Perth is wonderful!). I was going to head north for a few days and I wondered if she wanted a break from home.  As her husband was away working, she enthusiastically  said yes, and "what can I bring?" A very Australian habit is to take food and wine when staying away with friends. Diane watching the Moore River flow into the Indian Ocea n, a rare occurrence Saturday dawned with bright sunlight, after a few weeks of grey winter gloom, which renders me utterly despondent.  I w...

 The sky over the South Pacific 2010  I have been sympathising lately with an acquaintance who is suffering a profound sense of grief.  I actually met her at the funeral for her cousin the day after I returned from my recent trip to France.  http://mannersandothermatters.blogspot.com/2011/08/vale-paul-lockyer.html She had also buried her eldest daughter 6 weeks earlier, a young woman who had not yet reached 30 years of age. I had been in Europe when her daughter died and I had not heard the news until my return.  What to do?  Her friends advised that she was coping as best she could; that she wasn’t receiving visitors but that mail was being collected from her mailbox. Her Facebook page was filled with condolences.  But for me, the loss of a daughter required a personal, handwritten message of sympathy and support.  Old fashioned perhaps, but still that personal touch seemed to resonate even with the younger friends, who surprisin...

Discarded  flowers in full bloom in Paris, October 2011 (photo taken by the author) I wrote a post a few months ago Friendships...Gold and Silver... , after giving a radio interview on the subject, about friendship and the rise of “internet friendship” in the last few years.  l I questioned the reality and honesty of communicating via an effectively anonymous medium, one in which regular checks and balances are difficult, if the “friends” involved have “covered their tracks” with pseudonyms.  Facebook and Twitter are certainly employed as search and discover mediums.  In earlier times, the checks and balances were made more simply through friends and work colleagues. I compared these modern medium friendships with the ones in our lives which are silver and gold standard relationships; the ones which are long standing and able to withstand sometimes critical and deliberating conversations, face to face over coffee or cocktails. I app...

Graphic from the ABC memorial site The world lost a gentleman yesterday.  His family lost so much more. Paul Lockyer was a friend of mine in the mid 1970s in Canberra.  He was working for the ABC and I was working in Malcom Fraser’s press office.  He was about 5 years older than me.  And we became friends.  He encouraged me to achieve more than what I felt was possible.  When  I went to Perth to assist my family, and then decided to “migrate” he was one of the few friends who understood…he was a West Australian. Some years later I met him again.  He had married his Maria and I had married a West Australian;  we met at the home of mutual friends.  And as friends, we picked up where we left off…. Time passed.  And on Christmas Day, last year, outside the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Nedlands, our eyes met.  And it was such a pleasure to encounter such a friend…again, we picked up where we left off…and had the joy of in...

My 21st birthday dinner...Oh so formal then! I was talking with a friend the other day about friendship.  About how it impacts on our lives, from childhood and teenage friends, to becoming friends with boyfriends’s friends, husband’s friends and their wives, parents of other school children, social club friends,  friends after divorce or death of a partner, passing friendships, acquaintances…and now virtual friends. It’s complicated. And I am finding in my “middle” years that my need for friends has reduced…not that I don’t value and cherish my friends, but my actual need has lessened.  Why, I wonder?  I used always be a “People who need People” (with apologies to whoever wrote the song made famous in Funny Girl ) sort of a person.  I was always out and about, making sure that I saw my friends, knew all that was going on with them and theirs.  Afternoon tea for the girls...with bubbles! However, as the years have moved on, my children have become ind...