Family celebrates a diamond wedding anniversary
WE had a wonderful simcha in our family over the Queen’s Birthday long weekend with my parents celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary — they have been married for 60 years. You notice I did not say “happily married” because, as with most marriages, theirs has seen its ups and downs, but today they are devoted to each other.
We were very lucky as the actual date fell on the Sunday so my sister very graciously offered her home and we had a family afternoon tea. My parents were surrounded by their children, grandchildren and one great-grandchild who made a surprise visit from Sydney. The other two great-grandsons and their parents living in England sent their greetings on a DVD.
Other family members to attend included my mother’s sister and my father’s sister, both of whom had been in the bridal party as matrons of honour 60 years earlier. During the week following the celebrations my parents received letters from the Queen, the Governor General, the Prime Minister and their local member of the federal parliament — they were thrilled with these letters.
Another “simcha” happened last weekend when I attended a footy match as the guest of my friend’s son-in-law. This included dinner before the match, fantastic seats to watch the game and more food during half time. Of course, there was an open bar but I was more impressed with the chocolate biscuits offered to me at half time. These were an adult version of chocolate crackles and consisted of mostly of delicious dark chocolate and a few rice bubbles to hold it together. Yum!
There were two unfortunate aspects of this “simcha”, one was that we were guests of the opposing team and secondly, our team was done like a dog’s dinner! Never mind, Leonie and I enjoyed the experience. It was an improvement on the game we had seen over the long weekend when my younger son had purchased the tickets for us in Sydney. They would have been great seats had the weather been fine but as it was, we had no cover and the heavens opened up, which is unusual in Melbourne these days, and it poured!
We were wet, cold and miserable and our team was losing by 10 goals! So we left at the three-quarter-time break. My son, who bought the tickets, will never live this debacle down and he copped merciless teasing all afternoon. I am still happily catching the train at least three days a week and I feel a lot fitter. I have been mulling over the conditions on the trains and I have come up with a list of advantages for catching the train as opposed to driving the car.
First, I can catch up on reading my professional magazines and journals, as well as my trashy novels. Second, I get a free evening paper every afternoon to read on my way home which, unfortunately, I have usually finished by the time the train leaves the City Loop. Third, I have started to recognise some of my fellow travellers there is Mr Snuffles who stands by the door every morning reading a book and sniffling loudly.
Then there is Ms Breakfast who gets on after me, sits next to me and pulls out her breakfast and eats it all the way to the city. One morning it was muesli and compote in a bowl which she ate with a spoon and the next day it was a toasted sandwich. In a case of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, I bought myself an MP3 player and now I listen to my music on the journey! I wonder if my neighbours can hear it.
By the way, after my last blog I received a phone call from the ABC saying they were thinking of making a program called Grumpy Old Women in Australia and they wanted me to audition. Only joking! It’s a pity some people don’t recognise irony when they see it.