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| By John Ray |
Some Memoirs
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| I have a very quiet social life -- which is how I like it. My social events are almost entirely with old friends and family. So a social event about once a month is pretty right for me, and that is usually about how it works out. But there is one time of the year that throws all that into a cocked hat. On Saturday it was Anne's birthday; last night (Monday) was Burns night and today (Tuesday) was Australia Day. Nothing will ever make me a party animal but the last few days were about as close to that as I get. For Anne's birthday, I took her to a Tunisian/French restaurant. I had discovered in advance that they had Merguez available so my menu choice was foreordained. Ask almost any French person whether Merguez are good sausages or not. It's rare to find them on the menu in Brisbane but I know a butcher who makes them so I do get to have them from time to time. Anne had some sort of lamb shank which she said was very good. The restaurant is La Kasbah at Woolloongabba, which is actually walking distance from where I live. It's a bit on the expensive side so that meant that it was not crowded, which I liked. But everything was well-done so it's a good place to go for a "special" dinner. They have somehow been left out of the phone book so the number is 33917439, if anyone wants it. Then last night was Burns night, which I always celebrate. It was only for six of us this time. The best entertaining area at my place is small and Anne doesn't like cooking for multitudes. Present were Anne and myself; my son Joe with his gf. Samantha and my old friends Jill and Lewis. Lewis had a stroke over a year ago so doesn't get about very easily these days but a Burns Night is still one of his priorities. I don't think I have ever had anyone refuse an invitation to a Burns Night, in fact -- unless they were overseas or something. We followed most of the usual customs, with Scotch and water being the only beverages on offer. Anne and Samantha shamed the men present by being the only ones to drink their Scotch neat. The rest of us cowards put cold water in it. My haggis supplier was up to his usual high standard and Anne says that it was better than the haggis she recently had in Scotland. One of the Burns Night customs is of course the loyal toast and I have been rather aghast in recent years to find that lots of people no longer know how to respond to it. So I always tell people in advance these days that when I say "God save the Queen!", the appropriate reply is simply "The Queen!" And for dessert we had a small variation. I normally supply clootie dumpling but this time we had apple and rhubarb pie. It seems mainly to be a Scottish idea to add rhubarb to an apple pie but the result leaves ordinary apple pie for dead in my opinion. And after the pie there was tablet, which is not remotely pharmaceutical. We read some of the poems of course but I also had an old LP with a lot of the Burns poems put to music and very competently sung by a Scottish tenor -- so that was a bit of an improvement on our usual enjoyment of the poems. And today was Australia day. Commemorating the landing of the first white settlers in Australia, it is a national holiday that is becoming increasingly popular. Lots of cars are driving around today with Australian flags on them, which never used to happen. I suspect that it is a backlash against all the multicultural preaching that floods the schools and the media. My relatives on my mother's side have for many years marked the day with a family get-together over a BBQ lunch and we did so again today. I spent a fair bit of time talking to Peter, my cousin once-removed. He is an academic like me and very well-informed about most things, but particularly China. He married a Han Chinese lady and his Eurasian daughter, Michelle, was there today, as she usually is. She is still in High School but growing up fast and it was a pleasure to see how bright, confident, articulate and animated she is. With good looks as well, she will go far. Peter was one of the earlier examples of a tall Caucasian man grabbed by a Chinese lady -- something that is now very common in Australia. Chinese ladies tend to like tall Caucasian men and when they want something they get it. I said that to Peter and he said: "They sure do!" With a daughter like Michelle, however, he has every reason to be pleased with his decisions. My son Joe has a commendable modesty. When someone remarked that Joe is now on staff at university, Peter asked him "In what capacity?" Joe replied "duster cleaner". It was a joke of course and taken as such but a bit of self-deprecation always goes over well. He is in fact classed as being a faculty member solely because he is a Ph.D. student. He receives a well-paid scholarship while he is studying that is very competive. Many apply but few are chosen. So he has no financial pressures or worries. He is still frugal, however. He tells me that he often has porridge for breakfast "because it is cheap". I was like that when I was young too so heredity strikes again. It is a good warranty that he will always have a comfortable life. My cousin Shirley is the family genealogist and she brought along a lot of photos of relatives that I have not met, which was interesting. The number of relatives I have in my home State of Queensland is quite amazing. There were a lot of big families in the past whose children also had big families and I come from one of them. The do was held at my brother Christopher's place, as it usually is. He is always a quiet but genial host. There were probably around 20 of us there all told. I flew the saltire of St Andrew from my flagpole on 25th for Burns night and the Australian flag today. A small addendum I told Michelle that she was my cousin twice removed, which both interested and amused her. So she then asked how she was related to my son Joe. As quick as a flash he answered: "Second cousin once removed". These geneological terms are a bit of a brain-buster for most of us in modern Western society but I think he had it right. For any geneological maven who wants to figure it out, Peter is the son of my cousin Lexie. A small reflection on the complexities and perversities of modern-day life As I have mentioned above, I have a LOT of blood kin (people to whom I am genetically-related) -- a number best expressed by the statistical term "n". And that is only on my mother's side. My father's ancestors were equally prolific. And I think well of them all. But I only ever see a small minority of them -- the Australia day crowd. But I do associate quite a lot with another "family" -- in which I have only one blood kin -- my son Joe -- though he himself is blood kin with 5 others in the family concerned. It's all perfectly congenial and well-understood by all -- but not at all traditional | ||
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Baby Sahara with mother, grandmother and great-grandmother -- on Christmas day | ||
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 Just 3 weeks old, the daughter of Susan and Russell. It looks like Russell is bathing her in the sink! I was at their place for Christmas lunch but Sahara slept right through it. | ||
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These memoirs could be seen as somewhat misnamed. Since they concern current events, perhaps they could better be called "contemporary archives" (with apologies to the worthy Keesing project) rather than memoirs. Anyway, I have lately started to put up a few small recollections from years past so perhaps this blog will acquire some real memoirs from time to time. The latest recollection was sparked by the scholarly edition of Beowulf that Joe gave me for Christmas. Beowulf is of course the most famous text in Old English but I take an interest in Middle English too. And that emerged in a rather fun way some years ago when I was doing a bit of work for a market researcher named Mark Troy. At one stage I asked him where he wanted me to put some papers. He said: "Right here, on the table". BUT: He did not pronounce "table" in the usual way. He pronounced it as "Tarbla". Now most people would have thought that he was either a bit mad or having a joke but I immediately recognized what was going on. He was using the correct pronounciation -- the correct pronounciation of 600 years ago. I said: "That's a Middle English pronunciation" -- and he confirmed that it was. So I immediately launched into: 'Whan that April with hir showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour;' etc. Mark joined in and we must have recited together roughly the first 100 lines of the "Prologue" -- all in the correct Middle English pronunciation, of course. It gave us both great pleasure and satisfaction to do so but there was another guy in the room: Mark's business partner. And he looked at us with evident alarm. He apparently thought we had been seized by some sort of folie a deux (shared madness). He seemed relieved when Mark explained the matter. Anyway, it was a great pleasure to come across a fellow Chaucerian. There can't be many of them in Brisbane. | ||
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| I think I have had a rather good Christmas day. Anne and I had just croissants and coffee for breakfast. Alarmingly French. Anne gave me a blue-striped shirt as a present, which I quite like. I wore it to the 9:30 service at the Metropolitical Cathedral of St John the Divine. We got there rather early but there was already little seating left in the nave. I however have a particular spot just off the nave which I like -- on some plastic chairs (which are much more comfortable than the pews) so Anne and I had a good view of the proceedings. And they definitely kept the show on the road with lots of things happening one after another. The censer was energetically deployed but no bells! Very slack. They had a rather good-looking beadle, though: A young blonde woman. Rather a change from the usual elderly gents. The sermon was given by a woman, which was of course repugnant to my fundamentalist background. But I am rather deaf these days so I didn't understand a word she said, which I found satisfactory. I just sat admiring the stained glass. And the hymns were good of course. Anne was less impressed by the service than I was. Her Presbyterian rejection of "Popery" is probably stronger than mine. I then went off to a small family lunch. The big family do was last night, which was very lively. The lunch was excellent with ham, large prawn kebabs, calamari etc. cooked on the BBQ by our host Russell, husband of my stepdaughter Susan. Russell is a genial soul but I don't know him all that well as yet so I did at one stage ask him a question that I thought would get at least an untroublesome answer. I asked him: "Do you like steam trains?". He replied "I LOVE steam trains". So we had a good chat about that for a while. I am something of a steam fanatic too. I wonder if it's only conservatives who like steam trains? Could be something in that. I also had a bit of a chat with Joe about 5-dimensional matrices and such things. I am very pleased to have a son who is also a born academic. His Christmas present to me was a very academic one: An excellent edition of Beowulf, with the original Old English text and a poetic translation by Seamus Heaney. He knows I take an interest in Beowulf and have even been known to recite bits of it in the original Anglo-Saxon. But only an academic would do that. Speaking of the Anglo-Saxons, as I sit amid the great Gothic stone cavern of St John's cathedral, it does give me some feeling of unity with my Anglo-Saxon ancestors. I realize that Gothic architecture is Norman rather than Anglo-Saxon but Gothic churches were originally built to recreate the awe of being amid the great forests of primeval Europe so my impression is an accurate one in its way. The Gothic architects have successfully transmitted their message to me. I still have the order of service for Christmas in front of me and I wonder how many people noticed how discordant it was in a way. We went straight from the aggressive Hebrew triumphalism of Psalm 97 to the humble "justified by grace" of Titus chapter 3. But people are so used to the accepting the message of both the Old Testament and the New that few would notice any discordance, I think. Anne is now back from her family Christmas lunch so we will shortly have a late -- and light -- evening meal of ham and mustard sandwiches, with a cup of tea. | ||
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Anne put on a High Tea at 5pm yesterday for her two sisters -- June and Merle -- plus respective partners: myself, Colin and Ralph. Colin and Ralph are both real gents but I did my best to set them a bad example. I recently shouted Anne and June an afternoon tea at the Ritz in London and that seems to have been the inspiration for the occasion. Anne did up a big dish of sandwiches to start: Some dinky cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches -- which were delicious -- plus some slightly less dinky ham sandiches which were also delicious. Anne wasn't very sandwichy when I met her but she is now. I provided the champagne, both alcoholic and non. We were all Presbyterians in one way or another so the non-alcoholic option was strongly indicated. As I was driving I was a "non" man myself on the occasion. After the sandwiches we moved on to the scones -- with whipped cream and jam. Actually, it wasn't all jam. In a very Australian touch, June had bought along some "cocky's joy" (golden syrup), which several people chose to have on their scones. You usually have cocky's joy on damper, of course. And then there was the iced sponge cake with passionfruit filling. And then there was the fruit plate plus fruit cake plus coconut ice. So a filling time was had by all. It turned out that I was the only one who had received a Christmas card from Kevin Rudd, which was rather ironical. See below: 
Barnaby Joyce was well spoken of, however. But mostly we reminisced about old times, as befits our vintage -- sponge cakes cooked in wood stoves, headless chooks and all that sort of thing. Colin seemed to think we we lucky to be done with such times, however. | ||
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I hear that Suze is managing to breastfeed, and Sahara is sleeping well still -- and that she is a delightful baby! She's got dark hair at the moment but that could well change. | ||
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Paul enjoyed my little story below about having the last word with an obtuse Toyota dealership so I thought I might mention another little story from many years ago that he might enjoy. The recollection just popped into my head proably because of the Toyota matter. It would have been in the '70s. I wrote a letter to some Jewish guy of central European origin. I think he was a real estate agent but I completely forget what the letter was about -- but it was a critical letter. Anyway, he simply tore up my letter into small pieces and sent the pieces back to me in an envelope. Rather a good reply, really. What I said must have really made him simmer, though, because next day he sent me a letter criticizing me. So what did I do? I tore up HIS letter into small pieces and sent it back to him! He should have quit while he was ahead. I heard no more from him. | ||
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The master keys of Toyota Echo cars have a design fault. They break after a few years. And since they have electronics in them, you have to go to a Toyota dealer to get them replaced. So when mine broke recently I took it in to the Woolloongabba dealer near me. Since the key was 5 years old, I also asked for the battery in it to be replaced. When I came to collect it, however, the new key was still not working. They said that they were out of batteries and had just put my old battery back in. So the battery was probably flat and that was why the key was still not working. Yet they asked me to pay for it! They asked me to pay for a key that was not working. I said that I would pay them only when they got it working. They then said I could not take the car until I paid. I asked to see the manager etc and while they were distracted, I got into the car and drove off anyway. If people try to push me around, I push back. Lo and behold! Half an hour later I got a phone call. They now had the needed new battery and asked me to come back and have it fitted. And that did fix the key. I then paid. But if I had not bucked, I would still be waiting for it. It turns out that there is a shop right over the road from them that sells the batteries concerned. They were just too lazy to do a 3 minute walk. I don't think their Tokyo headquarters would be impressed. | ||
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| Mostly these memoirs concern what has happened in my life in the current year. I am getting old now, however, so the past occasionally comes back to me too. I have no idea what prompted it, but one rather fun memory that has just come back to me concerns a telegram. Who remembers telegrams? Only old-timers like me, I guess. They had their uses. Teasing telegrams on the occasion of a wedding were common. Reading the telegrams was a ritual at most wedding receptions in those far-off days. I once sent a VERY romantic telegram to a wholly estimable lady in those long bygone days. And, as it was romantic, I sent it in the language of love -- Italian -- much to the puzzlement of the post-office worker who took it for transmission. I didn't look or sound at all like a "wog". I still remember the wording: "Ogn anno divengono piu chiaro le fiamme inestinguabele di amore per te". It's probably not very good Italian but anybody who can translate it might conclude that I have an otherwise unknown side to me. Only Italians say such things. If I were English, I would not be able to say it at all -- even in Italian. The recipient was a student of French so she could work out what it meant. French and Italian are both modern versions of Latin, though Italian is closer to the original. Amusing that the usual paradigm word for the first conjugation in Latin is "amo" ("I love"): Amo, amas, amat, amamus amatis, amant. I am rather pleased that I still remember that conjugation. Can I ever forget it? Probably not. I learnt it over 50 years ago. It's a few years now since I have heard from the lady concerned but I know where she is. She is a happily married lady these days. | ||
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A tiny, perfect, but very fragile bundle entered the world just before 2pm today. My stepdaughter Susan gave birth to Sahara Grace, who weighed in at just under 6lb., which is fine for a female baby. I have not yet heard why Sahara was chosen as the Christian name but no doubt I will in due course. She is a good baby and I was given the privilege of holding her for a little while today. Many years of love and care will one day make her into a beautiful young woman. Such is the miracle of life. There was something of a low-key family party going on when I arrived at the bedside and Ken and I got into one of our usual conversations. Ken was positive about our new Federal conservative leader (Tony Abbott) and was most pleased that Abbott had managed to block the proposed Warmist laws in our Senate. He was also well up on "Climategate". | ||
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| I have once again been listening to my DVDs of the Glyndebourne Giulio Cesare. As always, I particularly enjoy Cleopatra's triumphant aria towards the end of the opera. It is probably not one of the "great" soprano arias but it is certainly one of the longest. And with Handel composing it is superb as well as long. And the Glynebourne performance is sung by an Australian lady! The immediate and huge applause that comes at the end of the aria is amply justified. As I write this I am listening to the energetic and marvellous brass fanfare that introduces the end of the opera. Quite incredible! It brings tears to my foolish eyes. I have of course been to Glyndebourne myself but the DVDs are nearly as good as being there. | ||
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| Paul's recent questions about my early life have brought a few things to the front of my mind so I thought I might scribble some of them down. Let me start by saying that I am no good at most things. I am hopeless at all sports -- even chess! And I cannot even open a can of something without cutting myself around 50% of the time. And, any time I pick up tools to do something in the carpentry line or the like, I always hurt myself. But, as is common, I do have one thing that I am good at: Academic tasks in my case. The first intimation of that was in my Innisfail Primary school, where I was known as the "walking dictionary". I ALWAYS got 10 out of 10 on spelling tests and always knew the meaning of any new word that came up in our reading. Then in junior High School in Cairns I was known as the "Walking encyclopedia" -- because I always knew the answers to any questions that teachers threw at us. One example of that was when we were reading something about ships (probably by Conrad) and "thudding" engines were mentioned. The teacher, Murray Fastiere, asked us what that was about. The rest of the class kept their heads down and their eyes on their books but I popped my hand up. I said: "Probably triple expansion engines". I was a smart bastard already by then. Fastiere hastily said: "Yes, yes, reciprocating engines". He was a man of culture so I imagine that he knew nothing of the triple expansion cycle in marine steam engines. I liked him. He wore a yellow sleeveless jumper and green pants when no-one else at that time did. I have been a devotee of sleeveless jumpers ever since. He spoke with what I thought was an Australian accent but it could have been a Home Counties accent -- as an educated Australian accent and a Home Counties accent are quite close. But from the surname he probably had a French father and he did often mention to us that he was a pupil of Marcel Dupre. NOBODY in Cairns knew what that meant! But he was in fact a good organist so Dupre obviously did him some good. He introduced me to Bach, and I can never forget that. I hope some day some relative of his reads this (via Google) and asks me about him before I die. But I also got on well with my Ukrainian teacher of German, Leonard Gavrishchuk. His favourite saying was: "You must be precise" -- accompanied by an upraised thumb! I was probably something of a star pupil of his. So when the Junior German exam came around and I forgot to turn up, he sent a kid around on a pushbike to remind me. So I promptly got on my own pushbike -- dressed only in khaki shorts and an old singlet -- and arrived 1.30 hours late for a 3 hour exam. But I still finished with half an hour to spare! I knew the answers. I just had to write them down. And I eventually got an "A" in the exam concerned, of course. But I did not go straight on to my senior studies. I worked for a few years. But in the end I decided that I needed to do my Senior (Matric) exam so I did it in one year in Brisbane as an evening student -- teaching myself for 4 out of 5 subjects. Evening students were supposed to take 3 years so I again did an academic task in a third of the time. One of the 5 subjects (Italian) I took up only 4 months before the exam depite not having done it for Junior. So I did 4 years work in 4 months as well as having a full-time job. In the circumstances, I think I can be excused for getting only a "B" in the exam. I clearly had a lot of self-confidence even to undertake such a task but it was clearly warranted confidence. I already knew well how easy academic tasks were for me. I also remember owning and regularly wearing a green suit -- complete with a rather furry green felt hat -- in that year. After that I did my B.A. (hons) at UQ in the minimum 4 years even though the first two years I did as an evening student. Then I went on to do my Masters at U Syd -- where evening students were required to take 3 years. Guess what? I enrolled as a day student (even though I had a full-time job) and did it in ONE year -- that magical third of the time again. I remember that I used to turn up to seminars in a natty brown suit with 3 covered buttons -- which rather stunned everyone. I don't think I wore my green felt hat with it at that time, though! My input to the seminars was always well-informed and frequent, however, so I was treated with respect, garb regardless. Doing an M.A. in one year did not really stretch me, however, so I enrolled in Introductory Economics at Uni NSW as well. I passed but I forget the grade. And when my Ph.D. at Macquarie came around I could really have beat the band if allowed. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in 6 weeks towards the end of my first year there -- but I had to wait the minimum 2 years to apply for the degree. And I eventually got around 10 published academic journal out of that dissertation, so that was unusually strong proof of quality in it. A Harvard doctorate takes around 10 years on average but I doubt that many of them generate as many journal articles I often wonder why Harvard Ph.D.s take so long. Maybe it is to ensure quality and thus protect the Harvard reputation. It might also be some sort of flow-on from the destroyed standards of American High Schools. Harvard have never acknowledged it officially to my knowledge but around a quarter of their freshers have to undergo remedial mathematics and English classes before they go on to their university studies proper. And Harvard get the pick of the crop from America's High schools! An American High School diploma these days is roughly equivalent to a Primary School pass of yesteryear. And academic journal articles were where I did best of all. In my heyday, I was getting them published at around one a fortnight. The academic average is around one a year. And I was up against the handicap that most of my articles drew conclusions that ran contrary to the accepted wisdom. So they had to be of a very high standard to surmount that barrier! So if I am not a born academic, no-one is. Maybe we are all good at something. | ||
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| Last Friday I went, as I usually do, to the annual performance of Handel's "Messiah" put on by the Bach society here in Brisbane at the magnificent Cathedral church of St John the Divine. If ever a building suited the music .... St John's is a sandstone cathedral in the Gothic style, said to be modelled loosely on Salisbury cathedral in England. It is rather marvellous to be in a such a vast stone cavern but an Italian would look around and wonder when the real work was due to begin. In the Northern European style, the walls are mostly bare and there is very little ornamentation or colour of any kind. It is an Anglican cathedral so the sermons are never much but the music is often good and they do a good ecclesiastical procession. Anyway, the music was great as usual and I am still singing snatches of the "Messiah" to myself. Anne accompanied me, much to her satisfaction. She is a "going out" lady and she can never get me to go out enough so she appreciates the rare occasions when I do so. Then last Monday Jenny put on a small "Bon voyage" dinner for Paul and Sue. They are off on a two-month overseas holiday, mostly in America, I gathered. They will be in NYC for Christmas so I told them to go to the Episcopalian Cathedral on Christmas morning. Neither of them are religious but nor are the Episcopalians -- but they should enjoy the show. Jenny gave us Korean egg-rolled pork for dinner -- a family favourite -- complete with Kim Chee and Japanese ginger. Yum! No matter how much egg-rolled pork Jenny makes, there is never any left over! We talked a bit about the various diet myths and Paul quizzed me a bit about my early life. So it was something of an evening of reminiscences. Joe updated me on how his Ph.D. studies in mathematics are going, which I like to hear. He seems to be forging ahead and quite engrossed in his reading. I think he is just as much a born academic as I am. But the highlight of the evening was to inspect Joe's newly grown beard. He has been shaving it off ever since it started to grow so we had no prior idea of what it would be like. And it is red! He is a genuine "bluebeard". I was quite delighted. There is red hair on Jenny's side as well as on mine so we were rather hoping that he would be a redhead before he was born but that was not to be. Being a blond is pretty aspirational anyway. Women spend a lot of money going blonde. So although I wanted a "bluey" as a son, a 6' tall "bluebeard" is just as good, if not better. My father had red hair and was always known as "bluey". | ||
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Although there are some marvellous arias for sopranos, I usually find contraltos much more pleasant to listen to. My favourite contralto aria is "Quae moerebat et dolebat" from the Pergolesi "Stabat Mater" (See here for a beautiful rendition of it as a duet -- in the setting of a beautiful Italian church). But last night Anne and I were listening to "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi" sung by Australian soprano Yvonne Kenny and I was rather mesmerized by her performance. Such a strong pure voice. I couldn't find a video online of her singing it but to give you an idea of the song, there is a video here of a very attractive Norwegian soprano singing it. | ||
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As everybody who knows both of us knows, my stepson Paul and I get on exceptionally well and always have done so. He is constantly falling out with his father -- and even his mother is disapproving of him from time to time -- but he and I just keep on getting on. Even into his 20s he would ask my advice on various things and would sometimes even take it! Pretty much every father's dream, I think. Why? You can analyse feelings until the cows come home and not really get anywhere but I thought it might be worthwhile to note down a few stray thoughts anyway. An obvious thing is that Paul and I are both very assertive. Very few people try to push us around but if they do we push back. And yet that is only a broad similarity. I am in general not much of a talker and Paul is very voluble so we are assertive in somewhat different ways. There were certainly some occasions, though, in Paul's childhood, when he saw me being assertive in some way and he recalls those occasions with great delight to this day. It helped legitimate his own instinct to be assertive. Since both his parents are unassertive, he needed a model that was more appropriate to how he himself felt. I think another helpful factor is that I am not very judgmental in general. So where others would condemn Paul in some way, I just accept it. He is very much an individual so does tend to do some things that are outside the normal envelope from time to time but I do that too so I see his point of view and don't criticize him. And I think that is one reason why I am just about the only person Paul listens to. It has been amusing over the years that people who want to persuade Paul of something have often asked me to speak to Paul about the matter. They realize that I am the only one who might influence him. Sometimes I do raise such matters with him and sometimes I just say that Paul has his own way and there is nothing wrong with it. One thing that is definitely involved is the fact that Paul's religion/hobby is money. He has always been a lover of money and will do lots to get it. And he saw from early on that I was rather good at getting money so I earned his respect in terms of what was/is his highest value. So when we discussed things, my view was always treated with respect. And we did discuss lots of things when he was a kid. And he seems to have found those discussions helpful. What I told him was congenial to his own instincts. And I mentioned previously that it has now become clear that Paul and I are both great sentimentalists with an appreciation of the past. But that has emerged only in recent years. Paul and I got on very well before that was evident. So in the end I can only say that there are important personality similarities between us and we get on for that reason. But just what those similarities are is probably best left for others to say. A small caveat: Paul is in general a very positive thinker (And I think I am too) so, although he and his father used to fight like cat and dog when Paul was younger, Paul has in recent years developed a more positive view of his father. He sees things in Ken that he disagrees with or disapproves of but he sees a good side too and appreciates some of the things that Ken has done I probably should mention that my own son, Joe, and I also seem to get on perfectly well and I have been able to help him on various occasions too. Joe has been Mr Independence ever since he could crawl, however, so he seeks my advice and assistance only when he has really hit a rock. But I am perfectly happy that he does that. What would upset me is if he had hit a rock and NOT sought my assistance. And, being very independent myself, I am certainly not going to complain about having an independent son. And I think that the fact that both Joe and I are born academics means that I can help him in a quite old-fashioned way. In times past it was common for fathers to pass on a trade to their sons and various bits of specialized knowledge would be passed on as part of that. As it happens, Joe seems to do all the basics needed for success at university quite off his own bat but I probably reinforce his ideas in some ways about that and add a few ideas here and there. I certainly know what he is talking about when we discuss academic matters and you need a fellow academic for that. There is a comments facility on this blog so anybody else with thoughts on the subject can add them. I did of course consult both Joe and Paul before posting this but my comments are my own. | ||
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Or so it seemed, anyway. Last night I put on a champagne, pizza and memories do for the 6 "kids" (all of whom are now in their 20s or 30s) plus those who helped bring them up plus current partners. So a small family do ended up with 17 people present around a long set of tables -- rather Italian in fact. But we have always had a lot of family occasions like that. The kids probably don't know it but in some ways they had a typical Italian upbringing -- though none of us are in fact Italian. I had 10 pizzas delivered from the local Pizza Hut so all I had to do was make sure that I had plenty of my favourite Seaview champagne in the fridge. Jeff came over the day before to mow the lawn, set up the party flares etc. And the ladies brought desserts along, including some yummy trifle. The theme of the evening was for everybody to tell stories about the funny bits they remembered from the 6 respective childhoods -- with Paul and myself taking the lead. I hope the partners present found it at least interesting and maybe enlightening. Those who were present at the time in which the stories were set certainly enjoyed it all. I was sitting opposite Lady Von for most of the evening and I could see that she enjoyed it from beginning to end. I think Timmy really enjoyed it too -- seeing he was in a lot of the stories concerned. I had lots of jokes and silly games with the kids when they were little but my "Two cents for blood" game was probably the funniest and Tim was usually the central character in that game, though he took it very seriously at the time. Ken came well prepared with a small collection of things that the kids had written when they were young -- including a love-letter from Davey to Vonnie that praised her to the skies. I had thought that Ken was too unsentimental to keep such things but I obviously misjudged him. Ken really liked the idea of a family-tales night and several other people said to me what a good idea it was too. We had the do in my recently returfed backyard with 6 party flares for illumination. Fortunately, the rain held off. Paul and his Susan seemed to be taking a lot of video shots so some of the stories should now be preserved indefinitely. I think one of the reasons why Paul and I get on so well is that we are both great sentimentalists. We appreciate the past. That also of course makes us both conservative politically. I forgot some of the stories I should have told and others probably did too so I am thinking about having another such night some time in the new year in which everybody will be encouraged to make notes in advance of things that they remember. There might even be some "favourite" stories that people like hearing again. | ||
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| All conservatives agree that the world is a complex place that is very resistant to summarization. But sometimes it is also complex enough to be amusing. A couple of weeks ago I arranged for my son Joe and me to have dinner together so I could point out to him a few things he should know about England -- on the safe assumption that he will go there someday. I left him to choose the restaurant but he is (like me) very pro-Asian so he drove us out to Sunnybank Hills, which is almost entirely inhabited by people with straight and very black hair, good skin, patient attitudes and narrow eyes. It was almost like being in Asia. We were definitely the odd ones out. Joe wanted to get us into a very good Japanese restaurant that he knows but there was a long queue of the said black-haired people waiting to get in to it so we went to a nearby Korean restaurant instead - where the food was of course first class. So the mildly amusing thing is that we discussed England over Korean food amid East Asians! No roast beef or spotted dick in sight! I did of course mention to Joe the importance of real ale and the inadvisability of shell-suits! I may even have mentioned the significance of Watford to him. | ||
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NOTE: My main blog is DISSECTING LEFTISM