One Saturday morning, back in 1962, I went up
to tell my Nan and Grandad I was emigrating to Australia. Grandad listened to my
story about better opportunities elsewhere, etcetera, and then said, "I can't understand why you want to go there, they're all
confidence tricksters in Australia!"
Grandad was a terrible racist by today's standards. If people
weren't English they were dismissed as Huns, Yanks, Ities, Wogs, Gyppos,
Niggers, Chinks, Frogs, Yids or some other such insult. It wasn't that he hated
them or anything, it was just the way he'd been brought up. To be English was
the greatest thing that anyone could wish for and anything else was inferior.
He
tolerated "Scotchmen" and "the Welsh", but had no time for
the Irish, who were dirty Catholics. People from the North of England were
begrudgingly admitted to be just acceptable - unless they came from Liverpool
and they were Tykes or Scousers. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, the only real English of any worth,
were Londoners - and preferably Cockney Londoners. So his remark about
Australians was not exactly unexpected.
Anyway, when he knew I was serious, he relented, and said,
"Did you know you've got relatives there?" I didn't, so in his
inimitable way, he changed the conversation's direction, and he told me one of
his yarns.
Apparently, when he was a very young boy, he and his brother
Jimmy played hooky from school one day because it was cold and wet. They decided
to stay home and play indoors. Well, their mother had always told them to never
open the front door to strange people. So when in mid morning a smart stranger
in a top hat knocked at the door they didn't open it; firstly because they
thought it might be the school inspector, but also because mum would go crook on
them. Eventually the man got tired of knocking and went away. But he came back
again after a short time. They still didn't open the front door and again he
went away. This happened all day and my Grandfather and his brother by late
afternoon were petrified. When their mother eventually arrived back home late
afternoon, even though they knew they'd get into trouble for playing hooky, they
told her about the strange man.
After a while the man returned again and their mother let him
in. Apparently he was my grandfather's uncle who had come over from Australia to
visit them and he had had trouble finding them. When eventually he did locate
them it was his last day in England and he was booked to return the next day.
I never thought to ask my grandfather whether it was a
relationship on his mother's or his father's side. But I did ask him where in
Australia he came from and he said Melbourne. He also said his uncle had a
daughter who became a doctor, so I presume there must have been some continuing
communication. I must confess I should have asked more questions so that it
would have been easier to track down this side of the family; but, in the manner
that young people have, I remember rather brusquely saying, "Well I'm going to Sydney and Melbourne's a long way from
there." So that was that!
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