With the continuation of COVID and its restrictions on movement of people and lockdowns, 2021 has been a difficult year; a year of disrupted and/or cancelled regular, enjoyable activities with no travel to compensate for these losses. To fill in time, I decided to sort through all the family documentation that had been handed down to me over the years and was now laying hidden at the back of a cupboard in an overlarge lidded tub. On opening the tub, … Continue reading
What a year! In February I celebrated my 70 birthday; in early April, Les and I attended the wedding of our youngest daughter Kate to Michael; and by the end of 2021, we will be grandparents to two children. Kate and Michael’s daughter in July and Rachel and her partner Emma’s child in November. My excitement knows no bounds as my dreams will finally be realized when these two are born – I will be a grandmother. On these cold … Continue reading
My mother wanted to die at home. As a family we were able to fulfill this final wish. Before she died there were many opportunities to talk to her about her life. In her own words she described her journey as “a life well lived.” Her eulogy which I wrote and delivered (and Mum censored before her death) highlighted what Mum saw as the important aspects of this well lived life. Provided below are several excerpts from her eulogy which … Continue reading
The man who influenced Alan Philip Frankel If only I had known when I began researching and writing the continuing story of my grandfather, Alan Philip Frankel’s WW1 service that Blog 2 would be about his father rather than his (Alan’s) own journey from Egypt to the Salisbury Plains in England and then to France. While researching Papa’s war history and gathering information about events in Brisbane and Queensland at the time, it quickly became evident that his father, Philip … Continue reading
Gold Coast – January 2019 Recently my two older cousins and I were reminiscing about our paternal grandfather and the Sundays we spent at our grandparent’s house during the 1950s. We laughed about running through the house, remembering how we had to jump over the sills that lead onto the side veranda, making sudden noises and laughing and yelling as we went. These were activities that we cousins had been given strict instructions not to do. None of the adults … Continue reading
