​Conversation with my partner:

“Am I right in saying that my sister isn’t as awful as I think she is?”

“Yes.”

My partner is a man of few words.

This was going to be the gist of my story. The pain and the anger of not having spoken to my sister since my mother died in 2008.

She behaved abominably;  I sent her an abominable letter. 

Coward that I am, I have opted to write about my grandmother and her sister instead. They too had a rocky relationship.

My grandmother was a force of nature. Confident to the point of arrogance, she was fearless and disinterested in social mores, but nonetheless had a strong sense of right and wrong.

She married, divorced and at 34 had an illegitimate child. To make it more interesting, the father was a well-known critic/poet, and a member of a well-known literary group, all homosexuals.

In contrast to her unconventional sibling, Ruth, her younger sister, married, and stayed happily married, the loving mother of two sons, and later, the loving and loved Oma of her grandchildren.

Grandmother’s family was not happy with the rise of Hitler, but, unlike my grandmother,  was also convinced that he would not last.

Grandmother thought otherwise. She visited her Jewish neighbours and urged them to migrate.

That done, she packed her bags and moved to Rome, where she lived for almost the rest of her life. Aged 91 she migrated to Australia. Unable to persuade her daughter to move back to Italy, she had no choice.

Unlike her final move to Australia, her move to Rome was a happy one. A German Italophile, she adored Italy and the Italians. She would have probably moved to Rome even without Hitler.

Family history, at least my mother’s version of it,  has it that grandmother’s brother- in- law, her sister’s husband,  was elected mayor of his town once Germany lost the war. He had been chosen because of his, presumably muted,  criticism of Hitler. When the Soviets came, he was executed as a representative of Nazism.

In Rome, the only member of my grandmother’s family  who visited regularly was her sister-in-law, Tante Elisabeth. She was the widow of my grandmother’s brother. I adored her.

Ruth stayed resolutely in Germany, grandmother in Italy. As far as I know, they did not communicate.

When grandmother talked about her childhood, her brother was rarely, if ever mentioned. Ruth slightly more, but never in a positive light. The unforgivable sin -  Ruth stealing her Easter eggs, and her parents failing to replace them.

A few years back Ruth’s great grand-daughter moved to Melbourne, having fallen in love with an Australian man. Her mother, Ruth’s grand - daughter came to visit. We met up and I asked her what Ruth was like: “ A very gentle, loving woman”

Very gentle and loving is not a description I would use for my grandmother. Principled and strong yes, gentle and loving, never.

Grandmother died a few months after Ruth. Grandmother was 99, Ruth 97. I am convinced that grandmother was determined to outlive her sister as yet another act of one upmanship.

 
Delfina
March 2025

​When I was seven, my mother gave me a book about Troy and its discovery. The hero of the book was Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and amateur archaeologist. Convinced that Homer’s Iliad was based on history and that Troy did indeed exist, he used his wealth to excavate Pinarbasi, a municipality in Turkey. There he found the remnants of a city which he claimed to be Troy. An iconic photograph of the find is the photo of his wife wearing “Trojan” jewels. Later archaeologist criticised him for his destructive excavating methods and proved that Pinarbasi could not be Troy.
  
Unlike the book I was gifted, this introduction does not do credit to Schliemann the man and his discovery, nor the influence it had on me. Courtesy of that book I announced that “when I grew up”, I would become an archaeologist. My mother took me at my word. The reality however is that I imagined archaeological digs as the treasure hunt that always delivered, a bit like scavenging through op. shops.

As we all know, archaeology actually involves backbreaking work, scrupulous documenting of fragmented finds and the reality that the Troys of this world are few and far between. It requires the sort of patience and meticulousness that I have never possessed and never will.

Despite this, by the age of eighteen, I had acquired a healthy collection of books on archaeology and archaeologists and when it came to enrol at University I initially applied for “Archaeology” at Sydney University. Life at home was too comfortable for that adventure, so instead I majored in Latin and Greek at Melbourne University, de rigueur I thought for any aspiring archaeologist.

I was hopeless, and should have been failed, but somehow always scraped through. I sometimes cynically wondered whether it was the shortage of students that saw me plough through. Combined second and third year, honours and pass filled a tiny room. That said, it was a fabulous department, though today I could not read either language to save my life.

Emerging as a graduate with a BA in the classics, teaching seemed the only option, and that option limited to schools like Xavier College and Methodist Ladies College, where I did my teaching rounds.

I was persuaded to finish my Dip. Ed. despite being aware that prostitution was a better option than fronting a classroom. I was no teacher. Clutching my Dip. Ed., I applied for a job at the Presbyterian Bookroom running the children’s section.

I knew nothing about children’s books of course, and I hate to think the mess I left behind. At some stage, I was also given a catalogue of religious books, Schocken Books, and in one glorious afternoon blew the budget of the theology section. They were very forgiving. My year at the Presbyterian Bookroom is one that I remember with great fondness.

I resigned from the Bookroom  because my father, horrified at the thought that I would spend my life as a shop assistant, offered to pay for me to do a Dip. Lib. He would also support me for the year. My parents were by then well and truly divorced. My father had remarried and living in Canada. I suspect that the angst was father’s and the solution his wife’s. For this I am eternally  grateful as my Dip. Lib gave me a dream life: getting paid to work with books. Nor could I have done my two bookshops without my background in librarianship.

However, I have no idea how my father felt when I gave up librarianship to become  a bookseller.

So here we have it. Had it not been for the book on Schliemann, I would never have chosen to study the classics at university. Who knows what subjects I would have selected instead and where they would have led. 

 
Delfina Manor
February ‘25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann

Project Gutenberg link to E-Book - 'Troy and Its Remains: A narrative of researches and discoveries made on the site of Ilium, and in the Trojan Plain.  By Dr Henry Schliemann.  Translated with the Author's Sanction'.​accessed 16 Feb 2025

Mrs. A. and I did not like each other. She was a colleague and friend of my mother. I considered her as yet another of life’s insufferable bossy boots: a woman convinced of her own righteousness, and one of the few people that could bully my mother into submission.

Mrs. A. thought me a spoilt brat.

There was truth in both descriptions.

When the slaughter of the snails happened, we were living in a terrace house in North Carlton. I was fourteen.  As with most terrace houses there was a tiny front patch and a long, narrow strip at the back. Our next-door neighbours were gardeners, and their back yard was a cornucopia of fruit and vegetables, not to mention chooks for eggs, chooks that were probably eventually destined for the kitchen. Our back yard was inhabited by a few very tough shrubs planted by previous tenants, with a long washing line running its length. It was ideal for my mother, who had neither the time nor the inclination to garden.
​
It was also a haven for snails. That is, until Mrs. A. spotted them and demanded their annihilation. With the certainty of a cold war warrior directing her troops, Mrs. A. ordered me to collect the snails. Once collected she lit the copper and emptied the bucket’s contents into the fire.

Not only was I horrified, but felt an inordinate guilt that I was complicit in this brutality. I abused my mother for allowing it to happen. She agreed.

This happened at about the same time as I had read an ode to snails in a book by Gerald Durrell. He could not understand how gardeners could obliterate this glorious example of evolution to protect plants lacking personality.

I doubt that gardeners would agree.

I did.

Haunted by the snail massacre, I announced to my mother that I would no longer eat meat. The issue that no animal willingly chose death had bothered me for a while. My mother called me a nuisance, but respected my decision and could understand why I had made it.

I confess that it took over ten years before I actually stopped eating meat altogether. Until then it was an on/off affair, something along the lines of “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet”.

The trigger was Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation first published in 1976. Until Singer’s book I used to apologise when invited to dinner: “I know I’m being a nuisance, sorry” . That stopped after reading Singer’s book. I didn’t lecture, but neither did I offer a grovelly apology.

The way we farm animals as though they were insentient machines was not something I could support.

It’s been an interesting journey. The snails were the catalyst, a turning point; Animal Liberation sealed it. It has probably been the most influential book I have read, and possibly one of the most influential books written. When I first became vegetarian, eating out was no fun as there were no vegetarian options. The restaurant would normally direct me to the fish dishes. When we ate out, my partner would joke: “What are you having? Salad and chips?”

Chinese and Lebanese became favourite options.

What a change in fifty years. We’ve had the explosion of ethnic restaurants and of groups with dietary restrictions; almost all food venues now include not just a vegetarian option but a vegan one as more and more people reject meat. Even Benalla’s Coles now offers a dedicated vegan fridge, with “vegan” proudly stamped on the packaging of processed food. This shift has happened for a variety of reasons: health, religious, animal welfare and more.  

So, here’s to snails, gastropods with an amazing physical structure and a private life to match.  As Van Gogh said “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere”


Delfina Manor
October 2024

* Written for the 'As Time Goes By' memoir writing topic 'Turning Point' in October 2024.

​Jesus Weeps

(Australia wastes 78 million tons of food per year)

Misquoting Shakespeare, one could argue that when we are born, we cry that we have come upon this stage of boundaries: societal, parental, environmental, on and on and on, including those we install ourselves. Some boundaries are temporary, others insurmountable. The topic reminded me of a woman who with a single sentence set up one such boundary. She was a Roman nun; I was a six, my first year in primary school.

Once a week a nun or a priest would come to take us for our religious instruction class. All that I was taught has been eminently forgotten. The only exception is this young nun telling us “Jesus weeps when you throw away good food”. 

As an adult I can understand what prompted this obviously passionately held belief. The war, the German occupation of Rome and the food shortages, which ended only when the Americans entered Rome. My mother, a fabulous storyteller, used to regale me with stories of this unhinged period : descriptions of life in Berlin during the depression; her experiences as a teenager watching the rise of Nazism; life in Rome under fascism and later under German occupation, and once Germany was defeated, under an American one.

One story was of my grandmother buying bread on the black market. The seller was a German soldier. They were nearly caught, were it not for the quick wit of the soldier who enfolded my sixty-year-old grandmother in a passionate embrace. Prostitute? Lover? Whatever the commanding officer thought, if anything, it worked.

This message of not wasting food was reinforced by my  normally overindulgent mother. One of her few strict rules was that you ate whatever was presented on your plate or go hungry. The going hungry however, was not an option if we were invited guests. In that situation you ate what was offered and suffered silently.

Two memories are attached to this stricture. When we arrived in Australia, my mother’s boss provided us with our first Australian meal: a Chinese take-away from a Heidelberg restaurant. This was weird cooking that I had never encountered in my nine years of eating. Politely, and not forgetting to say thank you, I heroically ate this unnatural, unpleasant concoction.

The second memory was  entertaining a friend and her two sons for dinner. I can’t remember the dish involved, but it would not have been exotic. Her youngest looked at the dish and said “I don’t like that mum” To which mum replied “you don’t have to eat it darling”.

I was incensed. This is not how you bring up children. Not only is it rude, as my mother rightly taught me, but more importantly “Jesus weeps”.

I was six when I was given this “mantra”. Nearly seventy years later, I cannot throw food away and am still dismayed when I see it happen.
​
It’s a boundary, but a boundary I respect and for which I am grateful.



Delfina (Sept.2024)

I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the ‘60s, white bread, white skin, “speak English will ya. You’re in Australia now”.  The sixties was the era of suburban deserts and city centres that died on week-ends and daily after 5.30.  The sixties were the years I spent at school – primary and secondary.  I loathed, hated and detested school and can only describe my school years as a twelve-year sentence, made bearable by a small scattering of inspiring teachers, and the ability to finally chose my subjects in form five and six.

I remember how excited I was on my first day at school. I was born in Rome. Our primary school uniform was either a white, dark blue or black smock with an accompanying floppy bow. The larger the bow, the higher the status. On my first day, I threw all my nibs away. As they were all split along the middle, I assumed they were all broken. It was a portent. The enthusiasm of day one had dissipated by the end of the day.

On my second day, and for the rest of the week, I had to be carried kicking and screaming to school. A neighbour nicknamed me the siren.

The  big change happened when I was in grade three and my family, consisting of my mother, my sister and myself, migrated to Australia. This was 1960. For my cosmopolitan mother,  Heidelberg 1960 came as a bit of a shock. It did not take her long however, to discover Carlton, and within a year we had moved there.

In the 60s, Carlton aka Little Italy was an aberration. By the 1970s multiculturalism had become the norm, supported by virtually all sides of politics. This acceptance that migrants could not be expected to abandon their roots began in the sixties.

Similarly, even though the sixties saw the escalation of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war, it also saw an ever-growing opposition to it, encapsulated in the moratoria. Never will I forget the energy and the idealism of that first moratorium;  the huge number of participants, the endless line of marchers starting at the top of Collins Street peacefully heading down to the Botanic Gardens. To add to the optimism were the office workers shouting encouragement from their open windows. Twinned with the revolt against the Vietnam war, was the increasing protests against conscription. How fair was it that 20- year-olds could be sent to possibly die in war when they had no vote?

The sixties, again from the perspective of a progressive leftie, saw the rise and rise of Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party. He promised the end of the war,  the end of conscription, free education for all, and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy. I had skin in this. In 1971, my boyfriend, a talented artist and cook; a person of utmost integrity, was forced to return to Hong Kong when he failed his final exam as an industrial chemist. For me, the end of the White Australia policy could not come soon enough.

I miss the energy of the sixties; the promise of a kinder, more tolerant Australia. In the twenty first century, where are idealistic and talented politicians in the Liblab party? Where are the Fred Chaneys  and the Moss Casses? Or the Tom Mitchells, whom I hosted at a book signing when I had a new bookshop. He deprecatingly introduced himself as Elyne Mitchell’s husband. It was a wonderful afternoon. In 2024 would he stand, like Helen Haines, as an Independent?

We are a nation of migrants. We were forced to migrate because of poverty caused by an unequal society, often underpinned by corruption, by racism, and often by all three combined. Education, once the great equaliser, has now become the entrencher of privilege, University fees either crippling or unaffordable; there is more government money devoted to private schools rather than to public ones; house ownership and fair wages have become a thing of the past. At the same time, we have incompetent CEOs earning obscene wages while systematically destroying functional companies.

In 2024 the world looks bleak: climate change; insecure employment; dangerous leaders and  the use of racism as a political card, not just in Australia, but globally. My political certainties of the sixties - Labor good, Coalition bad – no longer apply.

Hope is what I have largely, if not totally, lost.
 
Delfina Manor
August 2024
 
A subtitle for ‘Paean to the Sixties’? ‘A joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, to the sixties’ (Meriam-Webster Dictionary)

1969 - my gap year between Matriculation and Uni., the year I tagged along with my mother on her sabbatical – a year living in Rome.

1969 – the year I fell seriously in love, until it was time to return to Australia. Home beckoned, his offer of cohabitation did not.

1969 – I was nine years old when we migrated to Australia, eighteen when we returned in 1969. Only nine years, but somehow at that age it translated into a lifetime.

1969 – I reconnected with my childhood sweetheart. His politics were as right wing as they come; mine far left. It was not a successful reunion.

1969 - I didn’t make contact with Donatella, my childhood bestie, something which I much later regretted.

1969 – The Pincio.  Every afternoon, rain, hail or shine, Maria would take me and my sister there for our constitutional. The Pincio was as busy as always: mothers with children, bike riders, adults relaxing, but it had shrunk. So too had the busy road where I was once nearly run over.  It was, in fact, just a narrow lane.

1969 – An awkward afternoon tea with Maria, despite her being such an important presence in my childhood.

1969 – Meeting my father for the first time. I looked exactly like him. He had moved to Canada when my parents divorced, we to Australia. We met at the Florence railway station. I approached him with the memorable line: “Excuse me, are you my father?”  He became quite emotional. We spent a week together exploring Florence. I met him again later in the year in London.  Florence was also the name of his wife, who kept very much in the background. This was after all a father and child reunion. I thought her gorgeous, still do. He described me as my mother’s daughter, which I was. Until his death we continued to write to each other.

1969 – Siena, with the daughter of a friend of my mother. She was tall, sophisticated and stunningly good looking.  She made me feel like a crass colonial. With her and a couple of her friends I went to the Palio, a horse race dating back to the 17th century. We had no tickets, and as it is Siena’s claim to fame, the event was booked out. Our companion got all of us in, charming her way through every ticket collector.

1969 – Betty from New York on her gap year. We met when I answered her ad looking for a travelling companion. We travelled together heading South towards Naples. We got on very well and stayed in touch for the next few years. Another regret was that eventually I was the one who stopped replying to her letters.
 
1969 –  A massive demonstration against Richard Nixon then visiting Rome. My mother and I were accidentally caught up in it and arrested. I was horrified by the violence of the police. In the holding cell a very young man looked at my mother and somewhat stunned asked: “Signora, you are also protesting?” We weren’t charged.

1969 – Sperlonga in the 50s’ was a small fishing village between Rome and Naples where we used to go on holidays. Apart from the odd German, there were no tourists on the beach, only fisherman. In 1969 the town had become another tourist destination, the beach packed with bikini clad sunbathers. The grotto, used by fishermen to store their boats, was found to contain Roman sculptures belonging to Tiberius, Roman emperor.

1969 – Terracina, a larger town near Sperlonga. My grandmother had bought a flat in a mediaeval building in the hope of enticing my mother back to Italy. It overlooked the town’s main church. I would sit by the window and watch the weddings, the funerals, the baptism. It told me a lot about the town and meaning of life. Living opposite grandmother’s flat was a middle-aged couple. The woman was obese and could not manage the narrow, spiral stairs. She would lower a basket down the window which the traders would fill with her order. In 1969 while we were in Rome her husband died.

1969 – There were monuments, museums, stories, and histories present wherever I went. It taught me to respect the past. In Australia we are ignorant of our histories. We don’t value our poets nor our past, be it that of European settlers or that of our First Nation. We are a stunningly beautiful country lacking poetry, though to be fair, this is slowly changing.
1969 – Key events courtesy of google:  1) Neil Armstrong walking on the moon 2) More than 350,000 music revellers attend Woodstock in New York in August 1969 3) Sesame Street debuted on television in 1969 4) Paul Newman and Robert Redford starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

1969 – My gap year pales into insignificance compared to these key events. For me however, it was one of the most formative experiences in my life. I went to Italy an overweight, immature eighteen-year-old, and in 1970 returned…. a thin, immature nineteen-year-old, slightly wiser, with unforgettable memories, plus a respect for history and storytellers, both of which have lasted a lifetime. 

Delfina Manor
​July 2024

My first job could seamlessly flow into an episode of Mr. Bean. I had just finished my first year at Uni., when the Italian Department rang to ask me whether I was interested in a holiday job as secretary to the Italian Chamber of Commerce. I pointed out that I couldn’t type, knew no shorthand, my only qualification being that I made a mean cup of coffee.

“They don’t want secretarial skills; they want someone fluent in Italian”

The Italian Chamber of Commerce sounded grand, and I boasted to my nearest and dearest and those neither near nor dear that I had just scored a job working there. My illusions were soon shattered. The Italian Chamber of Commerce operated from a dingy room in a dingy building somewhere at the top of Little Collins Street. There were two of us working there: me as secretary, and Signor Rossi, Secretary of The Italian Chamber of Commerce, this being his official job title. Signor Rossi is not his real name. After so many years I have forgotten his name, his face, and only remember that he had a permanently stressed look.

Signor Rossi wanted to return to Italy, his family did not. I suspect that part of this longing was because he did not speak a word of English, which made this job somewhat complicated and finding another one impossible. He was charming, unassuming and we made a formidable duo. He did all the typing, I translated the letters, answered the phone and fobbed off pesky people with awkward questions. Once someone rang up wanting to know where he could find a spare part for his Italian motor bike. Signor Rossi looked up ‘motor bike mechanics’ in the yellow pages and randomly picked a name. This was 1971, pre computers. Within half an hour the man rang back, he was very cross:

“The number was a garage in Frankston, didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. You just made it up, didn’t you?”

I responded in a suitably obsequious fashion, explaining that obviously our records needed updating, and unfortunately at this point in time, we could not help.

Then there was a time when a button fell off my blouse. No problem, Signor Rossi would sew it back on. I went to the kitchen, took off my blouse and handed it to him while remaining chastely hidden behind the door; same routine for its prompt return.

Can one add more perfection to the already perfect job? In this case yes. Directly opposite our building was Penn’s Bookshop, an icon of the antiquarian book trade. In those days, antiquarian booksellers sold a large range of books at affordable prices. Each Thursday, when I got paid in cash (Remember those days?), I would wonder across and blow my wages. Bliss, until one day Mr. Penn took me aside and gave me a stern, fatherly lecture about saving and how it might be a good idea if I stopped coming and banked my wages instead. Spoilsport I say.

Another spoilsport was the President of the Italian Chamber of Commerce. He was large and unpleasant and made it clear that he thought I was an unnecessary extravagance.

All good things must come to an end, in this case not because of Mr. Penn’s admonition and Mr. President’s unpleasantness, but because Uni was due to start again.

Signor Rossi and I stayed in touch for only few months after I left, so I will never know if he returned to Italy or not. Whatever happened, I hope everything worked out for him. He was a good man whose induction to my life as a wage slave could not have been more benign.


Delfina Manor,
​June 2024
​

When alive, Ottie didn’t believe in an afterlife, so it came to her as a complete surprise to find herself in Heaven welcomed by Sylvia, her closest friend. It was as though there had never been that ten year break, and they chatted long and amicably.  As both were philosophy graduates, they discussed Hell, Sylvia uncertain whether it existed, but saying that a famous explorer claimed to have gone there and to have seen a Daesh suicide bomber, eager for his 70 virgins, materialize in a retirement home for elderly nuns. “If true, it suggests Nemesis has a sense of humour” finished Sylvia. “Or she’s signed the Human Rights Convention” laughed Ottie.

Soon, missing her library and her cigarettes, Ottie decided to visit the living, specifically her daughter, where she would find both.

At first she was discrete, but this changed when she caught Anna selling some of her books.  “How could she do that to me? Never in my wildest dreams did I think she would betray me like this. She knows how I hate lending books, never mind selling them. And she’s given up smoking.”   But no-one offered any sympathy, least of all Sylvia.

In desperation, Ottie haunted Anna. Whenever she listed or was about to list one of her books on the internet, Ottie would take it and hide it. This wasn’t hard given the quantity of books, some piled on the floor, some stacked on tables and others shelved in double rows.

In the beginning Anna would joke about the disappearing books:  “I can just see her, fag in hand, an angry ghost hovering over her books.  I’m waiting for the earth to open up and swallow me”  

“If only” muttered Ottie.

Then things began to go sour. As more and more books vanished, as bigger and bigger gaps appeared on the shelves, Anna became convinced that she was on the edge of senility, that she had forgotten where she had put them or even worse, that she had made the titles up. As her stress increased, Anna began slinging abuse at Ottie, blaming her mother for the lost books. This upset Anna even further as she knew that ghosts didn’t exist.

It was Sylvia who finally intervened.   “Stop being so stupid. We’re dead and our books are now somebody else’s. For an old book to help shape a new library is the ultimate reincarnation and you of all people should know that. Show me where they are, and we’ll pile them under the spare bed. Poor Anna will spend a lifetime wondering who put them there, but so be it.”  Ottie did as she was told.

Tormenting Anna, Ottie called it teasing, had become as much part of the game as reclaiming her books. It was her other life. She would continue, but much more surreptitiously, not as often and not as maliciously.  And as she really did love her daughter, she might sometimes even put books her way and who knows, maybe even a packet of cigarettes.

A true story