We all ripped into some good educational perving at what ladies looked like without their clothes on. I adored Aunty Dot and Uncle Stan they were the loveliest couple you could ever wish to meet.
My mother’s mother and father lived with us in the big colonial house in a quiet street as did my father's brother Simon. James had not been able to say the word grandma as a little boy and he called her Mama. When Edward and I were born we carried on the tradition but over the years the word was shortened to Mum. Everyone else in the house except James and Edward called my mother Edith, and I guess at the time I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t as well.
Mum and Granddad were as different as chalk and cheese they were both very hard working. Granddad had owned his own slaughter yards when Edith was a little girl. He had bought all the land for one thousand pounds (two thousand dollars) and had sold it ten years later for the same amount when the abattoirs were introduced. The land was eventually subdivided some forty years later by a large real estate company who named the estate, The Wongabell Estate at Kenmore. Anyone who is familiar with that area will no doubt think that my grandfather was not much of a businessman. The area is now and has been for many years one of the most sought-after areas in Brisbane. Actually, he wasn’t really a bad businessman he had a thriving little butcher shop, in spite of the number of people who owed him for their meat supply.
Mum and Granddad were softies and could never see anyone go without, but this didn't amount to a hill of beans to the abattoirs. When the abattoirs became compulsory, Granddad, along with many other butchers during those days, went bankrupt. Granddad didn’t give up trying to make it big in the business world, he leased a shop in Adelaide Street, Brisbane but that failed so he leased another in George Street just around the corner from the city’s police station.
Because his surname was Ireland, he got the idea of decorating the shop with shamrocks to encourage all the Irish police to be his customers. Even in those days the bagmen were in force. The cops would hand their Gladstone bags over the counter and expect Granddad to fill it to overflowing and most of them forgot to pay.
His opposition in those days was a fellow by the name of Scarborough so Granddad erected a sign outside his shop,
DON'T GO TO SCARBOROUGH,
YOU'LL GET TAKEN BY A SHARK.
Granddad never seemed to me to be a humorous sort of person, except when he was drunk but then he wasn't trying to be funny. The shamrocks and the play on words of the other butcher's surname proved he did have a side to him that I never saw. I personally think the funniest thing about my grandfather was his name. Rupert John Thomas Paulston Hayford Hallwell Ireland. What made it even funnier is the fact that he was born on Saint Patrick's Day and the name Patrick never got a mention. To add more humour to it, everyone called him Jock.
I would have loved to have been at Mum and Granddad’s wedding just to hear the minister say, ‘Do you Rupert Frank Thomas Paulston Hayford Hallwell Ireland take Maisy Leggott as your lawful wedded wife?’
She and Granddad arrived in Australia in 1912 on their honeymoon. Granddad had become so ill he had to be hospitalised for nine months with some mysterious illness. Mum had to find work by scrubbing floors to pay for his medical care. They went back to England in 1919 only to realise Queensland was where they wanted to stay for the rest of their lives.
My memory of Granddad is he was always working. When he wasn't going to the abattoirs that had financially crippled him, he was either going to or coming from someone else's home where he had cut their grass and/or worked odd jobs to get extra money for Mum. He used to call my grandmother Mum as well.
It was nothing unusual to see him walking along the street with a scythe over his shoulder and a hanky with a knot in each corner sitting on his head to protect his balding head from the sun.
One afternoon Edward and I were walking over to a friend’s house and we saw Granddad coming down the hill towards us. We nearly killed ourselves with laughter at the sight of him. Instead of his hanky he had about six hats on his head. Edward ran to the other side of the street to avoid being seen with him. Edward had said to me, ‘God, what’s the silly old bastard got those on his head for? Before I got the chance to reply Edward had run across the road. When Granddad got closer to me, I greeted him
‘Granddad, why are you wearing so many hats?’
Granddad ‘I had left them all at different houses and I remembered to bring them all home today.’
I felt so sorry for him both for the fact that it was a hot day and him having to walk after doing a lot of hard work, but mostly because his own grandson refused to be seen with him. A number of years later when I was a teenager and living with him and Mum. I was hurrying to catch a bus and Granddad was walking back to the house after having a couple of beers at the Regatta pub. As he approached, I remembered the incident all those years earlier. I felt a pang of guilt at the time because I hadn’t taken the time to really get to know him. I stopped and chatted with him and I can still feel his hand as he rested it on my shoulder. He looked so tired and old and the thought flashed through my mind, I wonder how much time you have left.
I became aware of a man pulling up alongside of us
Stranger ‘Are you alright, love?’
Amelia ‘Yes why?’
Stranger ‘Is that old man annoying you?’
I saw the hurt look on my grandfather's face and I wanted to scream abuse at the fellow. Instead, in my best elocution voice I said
‘This gentleman is my grandfather.’
And by Christ I was so proud of that fact I was near bursting.
I cannot leave the stories of my grandfather's scientific experiments go unmentioned. He truly believed that he should have been a scientist and was always concocting something. It was a Sunday afternoon and we had all been on a rare excursion to the beach, all of us except Granddad. On our arrival home Granddad was sitting on the front steps, he said, ‘You can’t go in there yet, I've just sprayed the place to kill all the cockies.’ After about twenty minutes Dad became very angry and started to swear and demanded entry proclaiming that no one could keep him out of his home. Granddad reluctantly unlocked the door and we all entered the house only to be almost asphyxiated by a very pungent odour. When the coughing and spluttering settled down Edith gave out an unmerciful howl and for the first time in my life, I heard her swear, ‘What have you sprayed my pots and pans with, you silly bastard?’
Granddad explained that he had concocted a formula that he knew would get rid of the cockies. Edith went off her brain showing everyone how the concoction had eaten holes in every aluminium saucepan she possessed.
Granddad was quite partial to drinking stout, but he never kept it in the refrigerator. Whenever he was asked why he kept it in the cupboard he would invariably reply,
‘It might be in Mum’s way in the fridge.’ I’ve been told unchilled stout is a fairly potent beverage so it came as no surprise that Granddad had more than a passing interest in requiring a good hangover cure.
He sat at the kitchen table one evening experimenting with a number of ingredients, no one really took any notice of what he was putting in the glass. After about an hour had passed, he announced he had successfully made a good pick-me-up. I remember noticing that the glass was filled to the top with dark brown fluid, like Worcestershire sauce. He held it up as if to make a toast and drank the entire contents in one gulp. He placed
