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.

Christmas

As usual, Christmas lunch was very nice. After ham, chicken, roast beef, prawns and Persian salad we had this delicious trifle and chocolate cake with home-made ice cream, all washed down with champagne. It was just Manami's family and me. 

The day started with Emma coming down to wake me about 5:30. I tried to hold her off till 6, before waking her parents and Hugo. The kids spent the whole morning playing with their new toys. We sat down to lunch about 1pm and were still at table at 4 (with Philip disappearing frequently to take a nap).

Weather was perfect. Not so for the unfortunate Victorians who lost their houses in bushfires and the people in north west England whose houses were inundated after heavy downpours. So distressing.

Doing another one

I won't attempt to repeat the things I lost, but will give a quick run-down of the mating habits of two of my grandparents.

My paternal grandmother had an ex-nuptial son - my father - in 1907. She was a Catholic nun and he was a Jewish (though not by religion) dentist. I am going to Brisbane in early January to meet the descendants of the dentist's sister, as he had no more children.

The result of the liaison - my father:

He used to tell people he got that flat ear from playing the piano by ear! It was really the result of an operation.

My maternal grandfather had an ex-nuptial daughter in 1905. For reasons difficult to understand, the mother of the child was not allowed to marry him, so he took the baby home from the hospital and brought her up himself. He had a live-in housekeeper, whom he married in 1916, and they had a daughter, my mother.

This is my maternal grandfather:

The number of ex-nuptial births in previous generations is astonishing and sadly shows how hypocritical they were about sex.

Oh no oh no oh no - this is so typical of computers

I have been standing here doing my blog for over an hour and now I find it has almost completely disappeared!!!!

I went into the website you gave me, Olga, on tidying up and then, when I went back to my blog it had gone. I'm so cranky I'll have to leave it for now.

Our new baby

This is Navi, Cupcake, Raindrop, Biscuit, Cherry, Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Button and dozens more trial names, to today's Poppy, which I think really suits her, so will probably be the one. She belongs to Emma and was hard-earned - she had to get 20 points for good behaviour, and the points kept going up and down like snakes and ladders, over a period of months.

We got Poppy from Pet Rescue and had to wait till she weighed 1 kg, at which time she was 10 weeks old, before she could be desexed, vaccinated and microchipped. She was the runt of a litter of three. The mother and two brothers were both fine-haired and jet black. At this stage, though it doesn't show in the photos, she's wild and woolly.

She has a delightful personality and is so cute we all just want to sit and look at her. Muffy hasn't met her yet. I have read that some cats leave home when a new one arrives, but Poppy actually lives upstairs and they can be kept apart. But I would like them to meet, just to see Muffy's reaction.

I'm sure Muffy and Poppy are photographed more than the royal children!

Just one more. Hugo asked me to print this one for him to take to preschool for news tomorrow:

Today's task

This is the card table at the foot of my bed, put there some months back to accommodate ancestry files, but which seems to have grown into a dumping place for everything. Today's task (which may well grow into weeks), is to tidy this mess up.

For my own edification, as I remove each piece of this stuff I'm going to categorise it here:

On the floor:

• Paper bag for recylable rubbish (too lazy to get my shredder out, so just rip it into small pieces)
• Old address books to be updated into a new one (as people have a habit of moving, marrying, divorcing and dying)
• Booklets of sticky notes; crossword book (which I've never opened, as every morning I do the Herald online crossword); birthday book (in spite of this, I reliably forget all my friends' birthdays, anyway)
• Bag containing things for weekly preschool French lessons
• Yellow Esky containing the treasured purse my mother had when she died in 1998, with coins and her house key in it; a purse containing foreign notes and coins from travel and superseded Australian notes and coins; a beautiful fabric-covered folder (a gift from my Japanese piano teacher); printed class times for Aquatic and Leisure Centre (where I no longer go, but might one day); list of tax paid between 1985 and 1993!!!; magnifying sheet (didn't know where it was, so haven't been using it); WWF information (I donate monthly to orang-utangs in Borneo - easily talked into this by a handsome young Frenchman in the shopping centre one day); green cleaning recipes; operating manual for my Dyson stick; details of MyPost account (for cheaper stamps for pensioners); copy of letters to and from local member re cutting the grass on footpath near Emma's school; brochure explaining online government services; brochure explaining Opal transport card; Seniors' Directory 2015 (which I never use); 2012 and 2014 personal planners (the others and a lifetime of diaries are elsewhere!); and papers related to the development of the Oz Phonics apps.

I'll have to stop here and do what's on top of the table another day. I do have several filing cabinets, so will put what I can into drawers, but that still leaves where to put the miscellaneous stuff like my mother's purse, etc.

Tell me, please, where do you put all your stuff????

Facebook is a mystery to me

Lina, you have been putting pics of your hydrangeas on Facebook, and, since I have no idea of how to do that, I'll put mine here! Interesting, isn't it, how the flowers are different colours according to the soil.

Winifred, your problem with putting a comment on this blog is a mystery to me, too. I have no idea how these things work.

I'm off to see  The Dressmaker right now.

No place like home...

The other night I was listening as usual to BBC radio 4, to a program coming from New York. The presenter asked all three speakers where they would rather be if they were not there doing the program. Two out of three said, 'At home in bed'.  You see, it's catching on! It's certainly my favourite place, and has been for many years.