28 Jul 2021

My first marriage

It seems to me something of an anomaly that I have not put up here any memoir of my first wife. She and I remained in touch for many years so there is no reason for it.  And many of my recollections of her are rather fun

D. and I met at a Baroque Music Club meeting at Denis Ryan's place and one thing soon led to another. We lived together for a while before we got married. We first lived in a rented downstairs flat in Birriga Rd., Bellevue Hill.

D and I eventually decided to tie the knot . It was a registry office wedding on 9.2.1973.

Around the time we married, we bought together and subsequently lived in a small home unit at 1/27 Castlefield St, Bondi. We had a tabby cat there called "Purrfur".

I remember D. once asking me why it was that children always smile at me. "Do they?", was my response. I was unaware of it. I eventually figured out why, however. It was because I was smiling at them! I have always liked children.

D. also pointed out to me something else I did not know about myself -- that I changed my accent and way of speaking according to whom I am talking to. Among my University friends, I speak in an Educated Australian way but when talking to more working-class people such as petrol pump attendants (remember them?) I speak in a more Broad Australian way.

My tendencies of that kind are probably even more extensive than D. noted. In 1977 when I was living in England, the English were always saying to me what a "soft" accent I had. I spoke so much like them that they could hardly tell that I was an Australian, in other words.

D. was 18 months younger than me, so was another wartime baby. She was another of the many redheads in my life and was when I met her a science teacher at  a private girl's school in Sydney). She was about 5'7", had blue eyes, and was really lively.

She was fairly heavy and busty when I met her but she hated having any fat on at all and had quite a love-hate relationship with food. She did however eventually win the battle of the bulge and from about age 30 onwards she has been fairly skinny. She used to eat when she was upset so when she put on weight she used to claim that it was my fault for upsetting her!

Before I met her she used to ride motorbikes. So she had a tomboy element in her. I had a 200cc Yamaha two-stroke motor-bike (plus my Mazda 1300) when I met her and we later bought a light trail bike which we both rode.

Her mother was Scottish-born and D had some attachment to things Scots -- something we shared because of the Scottish traditions in my mother's family.

D. and I were in a way too alike in that we were both very dominant so the marriage broke up after a year.  I kept seeing her off and on after the breakup, however, as she is great fun to be with.

When I later married JP, she and I used to eat out all the time and D. was the one who most frequently joined us at these dinners. Pretty pally for an ex-wife! It shows that D. and JP got on very well but it also shows what fun company D. and I were for one-another. Not that we ever really saw eye to eye. She always thought I was a bit outrageous, in fact. She was however flexible enough to find that interesting and amusing.

Around that time D. had a boyfriend whom she "hid" from JP and me for about a year. She was afraid that I might look down on him. In fact I thought he was a good bloke when I eventually met him -- much to the relief of D. Funny relationships I sometimes have!

D. later took a Masters degree in psychology and became a government employee working with drug addicts. She is now very happily married to an American who finds her dominant ways just what Americans expect in women. He is a very nice bloke. 

She lives in Brisbane these days. In her later years she still had conventionally Leftist opinions -- such as a belief in global warming