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.
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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.
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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

Sheila arrived within days of Wendy succumbing to cancer. The news of a vacancy had spread quickly. This was the 60s, a terrace house in North Carlton where my mother had an open door policy towards the homeless. They were always fed and provided there was room, allowed to stay. There were three rules – an initial health check, and a strict ban on sex and babies. Otherwise it was a life of trust, regular feeds, a warm bed and unconditional love.

Sheila was not affectionate. Right from the beginning, she ignored us, as well as Peter and Mary, the other two residents, and kept mostly to herself. Until Paul came.

There was none of the initial uncertainty with Paul, none of the hanging round the house accepting the odd feed, moving away quickly and then returning, before eventually overcoming that ingrained shyness to move in permanently. Paul simply made his way through the open door and demanded food. He was old, tough and derelict, but above all, a survivor. Sheila, despite the huge age difference, was instantly smitten.  And age wasn’t the only difference. Sheila was beautiful, with thick black hair, her movements elegant and sinuous.  Paul was stocky, nondescript and old, but with a tough guy masculinity about him.

She followed him everywhere, snuggled up to him when he slept, which was long and often; shared her food with him and protected him from Peter’s bullying. And whenever Paul decided to walk around the neighbourhood, Sheila accompanied him, convinced that he would either be run over, kidnapped or lost.

Paul was neither flattered nor irritated by this attention. He’d had a hard life, and had finally achieved his dream, which included safety from the authorities, always on the lookout for vagrants.  Love was an optional extra, ours and hers.

One day I came home to be greeted at the gate by an hysterical Sheila.  She rushed up to me, bumped against my legs and ran under the house, to then come running back out again. In and out, in and out, all the time howling. There was a sense of urgency about her and it was clear she wanted my help.  I changed and followed her under the house.

Paul was dead.  He’d found a safe place to die. We’d  had him for six years. Sheila was inconsolable.  For four days she kept vigil where Paul had died, refusing all food or any attempt to coax her out.  Frequently there were gut wrenching cries. When she finally emerged it was to attack Peter, as though he were responsible for Paul’s death.
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From North Carlton, to Brunswick, to Shepparton, to Caniambo and finally to St. James, Sheila moved with me.  I was 14 when she was dumped in our back yard as a kitten,  36 when she died. Over the 22 years we shared our life, my heart was frequently broken, but never with the intensity and despair  that Sheila felt when Paul died.