Work in progress
Previous | Contents | We’d managed to lock our keys in the car at the Cemetery. I decided the easiest way to deal with this was to let Avis worry, so we looked out the local office to explain. Two nice young guys were shutting up for lunch. How could you do that? they wanted to know. Eh,…
Previous | Contents | Next Next morning Dad and I woke weary, worn out before the day could lay a finger on us. Although Olympia had died, Dad still wanted to go and find the Russos’ old house at the foot of Trocchio, where he’d been billeted, and look up her husband Agostino. He’d told…
Well, it wasn’t the smallest car in Italy, which would be very small indeed, but it wasn’t large, and it was certainly bare of most creature comforts. It was also a little wider than it seemed from my (unaccustomed) side of the car, and twice I clipped another vehicle with the off-side mirror. The first…
Tell the kids also that Dad and I always had a combative relationship, but I’d never been closer to him than this. I can’t remember exactly when we stopped bickering with each other, but this trip was a rather graceless step on the way. Rather graceless on my part, I mean. I was, necessarily, in charge.…
Last Anzac Day my nephew Peter asked me if there was any way he could access his grandfather’s war stories to read to his kids. I had to disappoint him but said I was working at publishing them online. Well, it took the best part of a year but, finally, you can read them on…
Previous | Contents | Next Ten days later Cliff was back in Camp again. “My dear Dorothy,” he wrote. “Hello my dear, how are you now? To be frank with you, I’m as cheerful as a funeral. I miss you terribly, sweetheart. “Thank God that we can at least write to each other. “We had a…
Previous | Contents | Next But the Army was on the lookout for P&T staff for Divisional Signals, and he was soon transferred to HQ Platoon as a Signalman. Camp was invigorating and his letters were animated. Drill exercise, the rifle range, PT and signal training. Letter-writing and yarning with his mates. Singalongs and a concert.…
Previous | Contents | Next Like his stories of the Depression, the letters paint a picture of what already seems a distant time — of experiences we haven’t shared and values we’ve set aside. Or so it seems to me. Even distances aren’t the same. Fifty miles was a barrier, not an hour’s drive. §…
Previous | Contents | Next As a kid I don’t recall Mum ever losing her aura of motherly capability, even though I did eventually come to suspect that Dad wasn’t quite Superman — when he took off his glasses, for example, and his eyes seemed to shrink into his head. Mum I remember as a…