A Moment in Time

It is surprising how simple the causes of great pleasures can be. One such occasion for me was when I was listening to a classical music programme -- the Margaret Throsby show -- on ABC radio on the morning of 17.4.97. I normally hate that programme because the music is chosen by an interviewee and there is usually a lot of inane chat interrupting the music.

On this occasion, however, my car radio was tuned to the ABC classical music station when I got into it so I just kept the station on, not really listening. Soon however, she put on Chopin's military Polonaise, which has always been a favourite of mine despite the fact that I am not a big fan of the piano. So I stopped and listened to that. Then she put on Paul Robeson singing "Old Man River" and I defy anyone not to be moved by that.

Then she started talking to her interviewee, who turned out to be Dr. Peter Doherty, 1996 Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine, an Australian and a graduate of my old alma mater -- The University of Queensland: Quite a change from the nonentities she usually interviews.

One of the things she asked him was did he enjoy being a Nobel Prize winner. He replied that he found it a great opportunity to promote the spirit of rational enquiry. That reply practically reduced me to tears. I hear so much from average people of all the so-called "alternative" and "spiritual" nonsense that they believe, that to hear a person speaking up for rationality and serious enquiry was such an enormous pleasure that it almost reduced me to tears.

So when she next put on Cherubino's song from Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", the tears really started to flow down my cheeks at the beauty of it. Then finally she put on the first movement of Elgar's first symphony. I have always been much moved by Elgar's more wistful music (e.g. "Nimrod" from the "Enigma variations" and "Where Corals lie" from the "Sea Pictures") but I did not at that stage know the first symphony.

Peter Doherty said in introducing the work that classical music was the only sort that moved him deeply and that this Elgar work always "froze" him with its beauty. It didn't quite "freeze" me but it was the wistful sort of Elgar that I greatly like so the beauty certainly did get to me in my own way: The tears of joy flowed again.

I have always however been remarkably responsive to classical music. I sometimes think that my deepest and strongest emotions are reserved for music rather than for human relationships. Jill once said something like that about me too.

MERRY XMAS 1996

I got married (for the 4th time) late last year to a tall, slim, nice-looking redhead who is the same height as I am. Her name is Kathryn. I proposed only a month after we met and we broke up three weeks after the wedding! Not long after we got back from the honeymoon we fell out and neither of us was prepared to back down so she moved back to her own house at Ipswich. We have remained friends, however. It all sounds a bit like Hollywood, doesn't it? The genuine whirlwind romance. It was however great while it lasted and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Joey is now 9 and has just finished 4th grade at St Joachims. Next year we will be sending him to Greenslopes State school as Jenny and I both feel that such a small school as St Joachims no longer gives him enough scope.

My 53rd Birthday

My 53rd birthday celebrations were from my point of view certainly my best birthday celebrations ever up until that time. For a start, Jill gave a dinner party in honour of the day. The day fell on a Monday that year so we had the dinner party on the prior Sunday. We invited just John Henningham and his wife Helen. Henningham and I always have lots of laughs and lots to talk about so it would have been superfluous to invite others as well. Another factor was that Jill also knew Henningham independently of his being a friend of mine.

So the dinner was a very pleasant and relaxed affair. Jill of course set an immaculate table with lots of silver, crystal and white napery -- very traditional but also very stylish. She also served up food that was not only perfectly cooked but also perfectly presented.

Given Henningham's recent conversion to the Church of Rome and  my theological interests  the main topics of conversation were ecclesiastical and theological.

On the Monday itself I took Jill to The Clansmen restaurant. It has various Scottish features, a vaguely Scottish cuisine and is situated in a beautiful old colonial building at Annerley. It is a bit dear so I go there only on special occasions but when I do go I usually wear the kilt in honour of my shreds of Scottish ancestry (I have one ancestor with an Irish name [Joseph Kelly] who was born in Scotland and another ancestor with a Scottish name [Jane Burnside] who came from Ireland!).

On this occasion I wore full Highland formal dress: My red MacRae tartan kilt, white pleated dress shirt, black bow tie, black silk waistcoat, Prince Charlie jacket etc. Jill really loved it! I think "splendid" was her word for my attire on that occasion. Jill, of course dressed beautifully for the occasion too. She wore a shapely black classic suit she had bought from Harrods in London many years before and teamed it with a rather elaborate cream blouse that was also from Harrods. She has kept the same figure for many years and always buys classic styles so she can do that sort of thing. And since it was midwinter she put on her MINK jacket over it all to step outside the door. With her golden hair up in her usual chignon, with her fine white skin and her usual perfect grooming and poise she really looked as elegant a lady as any man has ever taken out.

I was equally aware that there was a brilliant brain behind the steady gaze of her pretty pale blue eyes I felt a very fortunate man indeed at that dinner.

As a final touch to the festivities, Jenny also gave me a birthday dinner on the Wednesday. She had most of the kids over (Paul was away) for the occasion so that was lovely too. Ken also came along and was good company as usual. Jenny interested us both by revealing that she had at long last worked out what she liked most in men: arrogance. That certainly accounted for me and Ken felt that he had been pretty arrogant in his youth too.

Anyway, it was certainly the first time that my birthday celebrations had stretched over so many days! I thought that being an old guy did have its compensations!

My Wynnum house

After my first Brisbane renovation job was finished, I decided that I had done well in creating extra value by renovating so found another house on which to repeat the process. That was at 43 Waterloo Esp in Wynnum.

When I first saw it, it had a white-ant problem, had holes in the floor and had lost many of its original internal walls. Apparently the owners at that time had considered demolishing it.

I saw that it was still mostly sound, however, and bought it. I then got Joe G. to put in new timber walls where the old had been, subdivided the bathroom into two bathrooms, modernized the kitchen and various other things. I also put in iron-lace (really aluminium copies) verandah railings.

It too was a very desirable house when I had finished with it (4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, airy new kitchen with attractive old coloured-glass casement windows).



I did at one stage want to move into it myself as its waterfront position would be hard to beat but it was so close to the neighbours on one side that you could hear their normal everyday conversations through the walls. Not for me!

Wynnum has always been my favourite Brisbane suburb so having one of the best houses on the Wynnum waterfront and not being able to move into it certainly was rather frustrating.

The house had the additional attraction at the time of an absolute forest of huge trees lining the long back yard. Anyway, I eventually sold the place for a lot more than I spent on it.

Recollections of the young Joseph

Kids all do and say cute things and the young Joey was no exception. I think we were still at Queen Bess St when Joey managed to indicate (he had only just started talking) that he wanted to go out somewhere. He said he wanted to go to "Herhouse". We were a bit puzzled by this until we realized that Joey had asked a couple of days previously where Nanna had gone and Jenny had said, "She has gone home to her house". Joey not unreasonably took it that the place where Nanna lived was called "Herhouse".

Joey showed a sense of humour from an early age. Once when we were still at Queen Bess st., I had just arrived home from one of my trips to Sydney -- when Joey was around one year old. Nanna was minding him and sitting on the living-room floor with him. For some reason she hit the floor with a rolled-up newspaper and Joey thought that that was hilarious. So she repeated the action several times and it continued to be funny. I can still remember his little baby chuckle. Mind you, when she did the same thing next day he didn't seem to find it funny at all. I was very pleased to have been around on the one day when it was funny, however.

The young Joey always loved going out. When he was only about one and we were living at Gordonvale he would start whingeing during the morning but would shut up like a book the minute we picked him up and stepped out the door to go out. He expected a substantial car trip every morning!

Once when he must have been not much older than one, we were walking through a shop in Cairns and saw a keyring with a small plastic replica of a McDonald's hamburger on it. Joe saw this, pointed to it and said "gamish". That was of course his version of "sandwich". He did not by then have the word "burger" in his vocabulary so he used the nearest word he had -- thereby showing that he was already categorizing his world well (i.e. he recognized that a hamburger was a type of sandwich) and that he recognized the replica for what it was.

He also took an interest in geometrical shapes at an early age and would often refer to anything circular (such as a coin) as a "Dirkle". And we also heard a lot about "triangulguls".

Many of the fond memories I have of Joey the toddler originate from the time that we were at 9 Faversham St., Buranda. One of his earliest foibles was to be greatly concerned whether or not people had replaced the lid on something. Before he was two he had even learnt the word to express his concerns. If someone had (for instance) taken the cap off the tomato sauce (ketchup) bottle and not replaced it, Joey would point to the offending bottle and say loudly "LIDDON". He was quite a Tartar about it and policed all lids in this way with some zeal. This was so much so that when someone left the lid off a bottle during a party at George Parkinson's place and a fly got into it, we all said (jocularly) that it was Joey's fault for not supervising the matter properly.

Joey's pointing was not confined to lids. When we lived at Faversham St., I had (without really thinking about it) a certain ritual preparatory to going out. I would first put on my shirt, then put on my hat and then pick up my keys from the top of the bookcase in the corridor. Joey loved rituals of any sort and he detected that one even before he could walk. As soon as I started to put on my shirt, he would point his little chubby baby finger at my hat. As soon as I put my hat on he would point to my keys. He would then look pleased as I completed the ritual.

A little later Joey also detected a routine that Jenny had. Apparently when she tucked him up in bed at night she would often say: "Now you'll be nice and warm". So, after a while, when she was tucking him into his cot he would get in first and say: "Nice 'n warm" with a very satisfied glint in his eye.

I recollect my mother telling me that I did something similar when I was a toddler. When I would wake up in my cot in the middle of the night I would immediately call out "Whatsamatter, whatsamatter" as "What's the matter?" was what my mother would always say when she attended to me crying.

Something the young Joey particularly liked was doors and gates. In particular he liked to close them and would go around doing so. When we came home he always wanted to be the one to "close the glate" and would scream if someone else did it before he could. Once at Faversham St when he was still under two he worked out how to OPEN the "glate" however. We used to bolt it but not padlock it to keep him in so he had to undo what was for him a fairly big and heavy padbolt to get out. So he opened it while Jenny and I were upstairs and went for a wander down the street clad principally in his nappy. This was of course inherently very dangerous so we were most alarmed when we realized that he was missing and that the gate was open. I had however taken the precaution some weeks earlier of seeing where he would go if the gate was open and had observed that he headed downhill towards Taylor street. I therefore sent Jenny off in that direction while I checked uphill. She found him in Taylor street in someone else's yard trying to close THEIR "glate"!

On 17th. February 1989, while we were living at Faversham St., I took a record of his complete vocabulary at that time. It was as follows:

"Bye bye"
"Dough!" (meaning No!)
"All gone!" (most frequent expression)
"Gog" (dog)
"cat"
"Bum!" (facetious)
"One" (only when descending steps)
"Tiddly Om!" (said for fun)
"A" (in conjunction with alphabet board)
"Violin" (roughly - when looking at alphabet board).

When we were at Faversham St, when Joey was about 18 months, he was accustomed to calling his teated milk bottle his "moongi" (pronounced as in "boong" and presumably a corruption of "milk"). He would usually hold it high in the air while drinking out of it so that he could watch everything else that was going on at the same time. So once, when I was emptying a 2 litre plastic milk bottle by drinking out of it what little remained in it, I saw him watching me and said, "John's moongi!". He saw the joke and laughed.