Here I go again...Olga, where are your helpers??

This morning I started looking for a French textbook, as the holidays will soon be over and my little Chinese boy will be having lessons again. I dragged some of my stuff (top photo) from the depths of the storeroom and started sorting through in the laundry end. 

Poor Grandma - the Japanese one - came downstairs with a load of washing and nearly dropped her bundle when she saw the mess.

After a few hours of oohing and aahing over Philip's kinder drawings, I looked weakly at all the letters I've ever received, letters written by my father to my mother in the late 1940s, French lessons from the Saturday morning classes I started in 1974, university essays, dozens of framed photos, diplomas, degrees, certificates, several photo albums, knick-knacks given to me as presents over the years, vases, a pair of crystal candlesticks, numerous bags saved from shopping, etc, etc.

No French textbook was to be found. But I did find some photos of my grandmother's grave, the one I visited the other day in Brisbane. It was before grandfather died, with the bottom of the headstone blank.

I started putting certain things into the bathroom for further sorting. Then I lost interest. Easier to go and watch the tennis.

I need to add that not all the stuff in the storeroom is mine. Most of it belongs to Philip and family. Untidiness obviously runs in the family.

Sign of the times?

Some months back I arranged to meet a friend who was staying on the other side of Sydney at this cafe, about halfway between our homes. When we arrived from our different directions, it was closed, and we were dumbfounded to find the above sign.

At the time, I thought I'd never seen anything sillier, and was quite annoyed, but now I'm beginning to think it's a bit like my brain - not open for business very often!

I'm finding modern life too complex and confusing and I know I'm not the only one. There are frequent radio discussions and newspaper articles about the information overload and such things as 'Are our children unhappier because of social media?'

I don't have to tell you how frustrating it is nowadays trying to make a phone call to a government department or business, or to book a ticket for a flight or a show online.

I find I lose the plot very quickly and end up asking Philip to do things for me. Poor darling, he tells me since his job is in IT, he is nearly driven mad all day every day. Nothing is simple or straightforward. To do the least little thing you need about three hours. He is getting more and more frustrated and usually yells into the phone - no human there, of course - and, when given the opportunity to give feedback online, uses words I've never heard of!

Tired and talked out

Since my last post I've been on a little trip to Queensland with my sister to meet new-found cousins. Since I hate going anywhere, especially flying, the trip itself was awful - just as I expected - but actually meeting the people was most enjoyable, though we all talked ourselves silly.

We flew to Toowoomba, a city about two hours' drive west of Brisbane, where we stayed with Judith, a cousin discovered through Ancestry.com. Our common relatives, a brother and sister, go back three generations.

(I'd completely forgotten about a dreadful flood five years ago that had nearly washed Toowoomba away, despite the fact that it is perched on top of a mountain. The downpour caused a wall of water 8 to 20m high to flood the area in the photo above, washing away everything in its path, drowning 20 people and continuing on to inundate Brisbane.
Check it out online: Grantham flood images. My cousin lost her house in Grantham.)

In Brisbane we caught up with Joseph, the Jewish dentist's, side. In spite of marrying twice, he had no children apart from my father, but his sister did, and we met her great-grandson, Graham. If you remember, Joseph got my grandmother, Annie Louise, pregnant, and, as she was a Catholic nun, it must have caused quite a stir back in 1907.

We visited Joseph's grave - nothing but grass, which is hard to understand, as have you ever met a poor dentist??? Then we visited a double grave, complete with headstone, containing the remains of grandmother Annie Louise and the nice man she later married, Matthias Philipson.

Now, for the really interesting bit. That afternoon, when Yvonne, the sister-in-law of the Jewish cousin Graham, was walking her dog, she chatted to another dog-walker, a lapsed Catholic, whose name I do not know. This nameless person's vivid imagination, together with her knowledge of Catholic stuff, enabled her to put together this story, which I think is what must have happened. The already known facts are in straight black letters and the imagined bits in red Italics:

Annie Louise Fairbrother, born in London and christened Anglican, emigrated to Brisbane aged 7 with her family in 1887. Several more children were born, and some years later her father was charged with beating her mother and I presume they separated. At the age of 15, Annie Louise was sent to a Catholic nunnery or school (probably All Hallows in Fortitude Valley), as a domestic servant. There she converted to Catholicism in return for being taught the piano to a level high enough to enable her to become a piano teacher. She was either called or planned after taking her final vows to call herself, Sr Stanislaus. 

In Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley, right opposite the railway station, Joseph had his dental surgery. Annie Louise became pregnant before taking her final vows and went to Sydney by steamer to give birth to Joseph Stanislaus Fairbrother in St Margaret's Hospital for 'respectable' unmarried mothers.

She called the baby Joseph after the baby's father and Stanislaus after herself as it had been a love affair, but she would not allow herself to marry a Jew, so, two years later married Matthias, a good Catholic.

Sounds spot-on to me! The sad part is, it seems neither of Joseph's later wives loved him, as the first one left him and the second one outlived him and didn't even give him a grave or headstone, and he wasn't a Jew by religion, anyway!

Ironically, St Stanislaus was the patron saint of Poland and that's where Joseph's Jewish family came from in the 1700s.