The Pendulum Swing

Nikitas, my grandson, was 20 months old when I spent last Christmas with him and his parents, Greek Katerina and my son, half-Greek, half-Australian Nik at their home on Crete. Katerina and Nik are repeating the pattern of the latter’s upbringing, only in reverse, so that Nikitas speaks Greek with his mother and English with his father. He already had several words in both languages when I went to visit, but looked at me as he has always done, with head cocked on one side: here is an ageing old chook who makes noises that are different from anyone else’s around here. To him I have a strange accent in both languages. Read more

The Eternal Questions

I have been reading about Pamela Bone, the prominent Australian writer and journalist who died recently. I did not know her, but I know some of her work, and admire it. The tributes that have, as they say, come pouring in, make me wish I had known the woman as well as the writer. She was of the same generation, although some years older, so that it seems likely that we would have had many things in common, although her life was clearly more dramatic and much braver than mine.

The minute we are born we begin to die, and we know it. Yet we never quite believe in the inexorable fact of our own individual deaths, and ask ourselves questions, even when death is not an immediate threat. How will the world get along without me? How will I get along without it? Why does the body, so much part of my self, often become such a traitor? Read more

Champion Mothers

A Special Feature for Mother’s Day by Australian Author, Gillian Bouras

Everything, for good or ill, and life being what it is, the admixture of both, begins with the mother. Not fair, but there you have it. And most of the unfairness lies in the fact that it’s all in the luck of the draw.

My best friend and I talk about many things, including our mothers, even though, or perhaps because, both are long dead. He remembers his as a bitter and disappointed woman, who was cold and rejecting towards him, her younger son. Read more