I can still remember the summer I was home in Adelaide for Christmas -- 1982-3, I think it was -- when he put the telly on to watch the Melbourne Test, the first day of which I knew my friend Helen would be attending, and I called out from the next room 'Look out for Helen!' and he called back 'Quarter past ten!'
He still drives; he drove for a living for much of his life and is still one of the best drivers I have ever been in a car with. And I got a text (yes, a text, and what's more he has worked out how to do capital letters) from him this afternoon saying 'Practising with my new ears. The car sounds like a truck.'
Yes, I know. I am very, very lucky.
Papa Cat (centre), Princes Bridge, Melbourne, 1944
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2 comments:
Thank you for sharing Papa Cat with us.
At midday today I was catching up with a friend not long back from Timor when, up the crowded laneway from where we were seated, we spotted him: a passing octogenarian who inserted himself between a guy with a serious-looking camera and a done-up-to-the-nines model, dancing. And dancing, and dancing. He kept swivelling those hips and moving those feet; I was laughing so long and so hard that tears came to my eyes. The photographer just waited, looking bored (idiot), and others passed him by without a glance; he wasn't laughing or self-conscious, just dancing. When he'd finished, he just went on his way. My (and my friend's) hero.
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