Making peace with your past

 

Those dear ladies at the op-shop always have something interesting in store. This time I picked up a small book by H. Norman Wright, Making Peace with Your Past.

The blurb says, "Are you hampered by baggage from your past? Much of who you are, what you do, and how you feel is determined by your past. The memories of painful experiences and harmful early influences can come back to haunt you, causing negative behaviour patters that interfere with your life and relationships."

The first few pages are promising. Anyway, it cost me a dollar so if the Lord-Jesus-stuff gets a bit too heavy, I can always chuck it in the bin.

 

 

Mind you, if they ever start charging for emotional baggage, I'd never be able to afford another flight ☺

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Rest in Peace, Mr Reid

 

Robert Lauder REID 1910 - (22 Jan) 1996
Devoted Husband of Elsie. Father of Beth Ann and Margaret

 

I once knew an old curmudgeon in the Bay - a German migrant like me - who confided, halfway through a bottle of wine I had paid for, that, when his time came, he would burn everything instead of giving it away. "No one ever gave me anything", he complained.

"What about the immigration officer who approved your visa to come to this wonderful country?" I felt like asking, or "What about the bloke who gave you your first job while you were still trying to form a credible 'th' sound and to differentiate the 'v' from the 'w'?" But I didn't say any of this; instead, we just parted company and I haven't seen him since.

Unlike him, I am full of gratitude to people who gave me a helping hand on the rocky road of life, and there was none greater than Mr Robert Reid, manager of the Australia & New Zealand Bank, who gave me my first proper job just months after I'd stepped off the boat during which I had kept my head above water, first as a 'Trainee Manager' with Coles in Melbourne, and then as truckdriver for Adam Ingram & Son, a hardware store on Ipswich Street in Fyshwick, the industrial estate of Canberra.

I had answered a job advertisement in the 'Canberra Times' offering school-leavers (m.) a career in banking, with the (m.) standing for 'male' in those days before equal opportunities. Not that I knew that then, nor how to apply properly because I seem to remember that I replied on an aerogramme (remember 10 penny aerogrammes, those thin lightweight pieces of foldable and gummed paper for writing a letter for transit via airmail, in which the letter and envelope were one and the same?)

 

 

It must've set the tone for the interview because he was neither put off by my struggling English nor my references which were all in German (although his chauffeur Kevin Spielman who was Austrian may have had something to do with it, as he would have translated them for him).

Mr Reid not only gave me the job which allowed me to study towards a diploma with the Bankers' Institute but also a favourable reference ...

 

The Bank did not give references but merely 'Certificates of Service' but Mr Reid did

 

... which ultimately led to a career in chartered accounting. I have sometimes wondered if I might not still be driving a truck through Canberra had it not been for the kindness of this wonderful man.

A pilgrimage to his last resting place was the least I could do to give thanks to a man who gave me the biggest helping hand in my life.

 

 

May you rest in peace, Mr Reid! Your kindness has never been forgotten.

 

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Cosy "Melbourne"

 

Where do I go when I want to curl up with a book? To cosy "Melbourne", that's where! 'Cosy', this untranslatable word, derivation unknown, came to us from the Vikings via the Scots, coined by two peoples who knew all about appreciating a warm nook out of the weather.

 

 

Quasimodo found his nook in the belfry; I found the right place to lose myself in a book in cosy "Melbourne". There I can forget time, forget the room, then the chair I sit on or the bed I lie on, and finally my very self.

 

 

Books can take us to a better place; they help us to get through what Nietzsche called 'the horror of living'. Being curled up with a book can be a chrysalis experience from which we emerge a different creature.

 

 

"Melbourne" is far enough from the rest of house which is full of inter-ruptions, or simply not cosy enough. And, like the book itself which is of paper from trees, it is halfway to the forest, that great source of myth.

 

"Melbourne" is the green roof at the bottom of the photo

 

It's a beautiful morning and I'm off to "Melbourne". In case the phone rings, I've told Padma to tell the caller that I've gone to Melbourne.

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Childhood memories recur, like a door suddenly slammed by the wind in the distant wing of an old house

 

The only photo I have of my stepbrother Borkhardt

 

The door suddenly slammed this morning as we were getting ready to drive down to the Bay for our thrice-weekly aquatherapy, when my stepsister Karin messaged me: "Hallo Peter, heute ist Borkhardt verstorben. Es war sehr plötzlich. Damit hatte keiner gerechnet. Grüße Karin"

We were a totally dysfunctional family. I had a father and stepmother, and a mother and stepfather, and three sisters and a brother, and a stepsister and a stepbrother. This may sound like too much of a good thing, which it was, and which is why I left. First from father-and-stepmother to mother-and-stepfather, then from mother-and-stepfather back to father-and-stepmother. Then, with schooling done, FULLY AWAY!

Australia suited me because it was about the farthest I could get away, and I've only been back twice: once at the end of my compulsory two years in Australia in 1967, and again in 1984 for my father's funeral.

Still, receiving the message that my stepbrother Borkhardt had suddenly died at the age of 73 put me on notice that there is such a thing as family, and also that death comes equally to all of us, and makes all of us equal when it comes. John Donne said that, and how right he was.

 

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Calling all grumpy old men!

 

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbour from Hell". Sounds familar?

Well, here's your chance to watch the full-length movie on YouTube in its original, so you can even add a bit of Swedish to your vocabulary of SAAB, VOLVO, and smörgåsbord. And if that isn't enough, there's also the book - in English and in LARGE PRINT! - click here.

Grumpy no more? I thought so! Don't thank me; thank Ove!

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