7 Jul 2022

My siblings: Christopher and Roxanne

I have put up a lot of memoirs about the ladies in my life so perhaps it is timeI said a little more about my birth family. My sister Jacqueline is deceased so I say below a little about the early days of my two siblings who are still alive and kicking. I have previously made a few notes about my experiences of them as adults. I reproduce those notes also below

My mother had my brother Christopher and my sister Roxanne rather late in life (unplanned pregnancies, I am almost sure) so I remember something of their infancies.

Chris was born in 1955 and Roxanne in 1958. So Chris is 12 years younger than me and Roxanne 15 years younger. Mum must have been 25 when she had me, 37 when she had Chris and 40 when she had Roxanne.

Chris had a problem of sugar intolerance as a baby which nearly killed him (it gave him diarrhoea) but an old nurse (A Mrs Whittington) who lived over the road in Campbell St. told my mother to feed him junket tablets for it. That worked and he has had no similar problems since to my knowledge.

My mother used sometimes to call Chris "my little cookie", which my father soon transmuted into "cookbook" and my father often addressed Chris as "cookbook". I also now occasionally embarrass Chris by calling him that.

I remember that all the other kids in the street used to come and play with Chris. He was the popular one in the family. I used to sit opposite him at the tea table and would tend to look at him with interest and affection while dining. He did not like that at all and every now and again he would complain, "Mum, John's looking at me!" I would then desist.

He was a great go-kart freak as a kid and when he got a bit older this translated into a love of motorbikes. As I like motorbikes too, it was something for us to talk about at times in later life.

Because they are so much younger than I am, I remember the childhoods of both Christopher and Roxanne quite well. My most amusing memory of Roxanne is of her at about age 3 waving her little arm at our father (Frank) and telling him off over something. He of course was just listening and smiling at her. I also remember that if she was ever going anywhere and Frank was in the way he would always step aside for her. He just doted on her of course.

Another memory along similar lines is of my mother trying to get the 3 or 4 year old Roxanne to do  various things -- to which Roxanne would reply loudly: "but I don't wanna". That generally seemed to be taken as a fairly decisive objection.

Roxanne was the good-looking one in the family. There is one photo of her in the sidebar and I have other photos of her as a little mite with blonde hair and blue eyes that look very lovely indeed: Very much like her daughter Katie.

I think that she and I share the same hyped-up type of nervous system -- which may explain why in her early adult life she commonly had three jobs at once. Apart from her love of work (no doubt inherited from our father) she was quite a hippie for a while in that she liked informality and hippie style dress. When all her children were grown up, my mother used to say that she had four totally different children: An intellectual (me), a bikie (Christopher), a hippie (Roxanne) and a Lesbian (my sister Jacqueline).

Christopher and his wife Kym now have two children of their own: Maddie (Madeline) and "Cricket" (James). Roxanne and her husband Stefan have three daughters, Katie and the twins. The twins are named Emmeline and Kelly. The first is no doubt named after Ms. Pankhurst and the latter after the maiden name of my mother's mother: Both names would then appear to reflect my mother's influence.







May 22, 2008

A rare family photo


The photo below is (left to right) of my niece Katie, my brother Christopher and my sister Roxanne. My sister Jacqueline was also in the original photo but she is terminally ill with the family illness (breast cancer) and not looking good at all so I think I am being respectful in cropping her out of the photo below. Katie is the daughter of Roxanne.



Taken a few weeks ago



September 5, 2017

A reunion

I sometimes nearly forget that I have a sister. She lives quietly in Rockhampton and it is many years since I have been to Rockhampton.

She is however a very vivacious woman so I was greatly pleased that when she was briefly in Brisbane this evening, I was able to shout her a dinner at the "Sunny Doll". Her equally lively husband was with her plus her daughter Katie. Katie is rather quiet. Maybe she could never get a word in edgewise when she was growing up with two very chatty parents.

My brother Christopher was also in attendance as was Jenny. Joe had to work back so arrived rather late but everyone was pleased to see him when he did arrive.

Roxanne was in good form and many things were discussed. I was updated on why and how Rox was "bumptious" during her schooldays and we decided that she got it from her very independent mother. Her mother was also a great talker. We decided that there should be more bumptiousness.

We also mentioned my Aunt Maude. Yes. I did have an actual Aunt Maude! How oldfashioned can you get? My mother was a very critical woman -- I probably get my irreverence from her -- and I recollect that there were only two people she normally spoke well of -- her niece Shirley and her sister Maudie. Stefan said that when he met Maude, she dismissed him as "blue collar". That would have been Maudie. She was a toughie.

In her youth Rox was something of a hippie. Yet now she is a contented wife and mother. How come? In her youth she found most of the males she met to be too shallow. But then along came Stefan, who was just right for her. He is intelligent, very verbal and with a very positive outlook. And they have been together a long time now and still seem to greatly appreciate one another. The pretty little shop assistant met the tall slim telecom technician. And that was it. Roxanne is a teacher these days.

Joe had a few chats with his cousin Katie and it was an amusing contrast to see them together. Katie is rather short and slight and Joe is 6' and well-built so he rather towered over her. Her father Stefan is about 6' tall so her height is a little surprising. Roxanne is also rather slight so Katie seems to have taken after her mother entirely.

At one stage I mentioned that I am a great fan of Mr Trump! Both Rox and Stefan could see that the constant barrage of negative comment about him from the media was biased and unbalanced

The food was good as usual and we had coffee there afterwards



December 19, 2017

A big reunion

One member of my birth family is already deceased but the three remaining were together for once on Tuesday night: Roxanne, Christopher and I. Rox and Stefan came down from Rocky for a couple of days and this time brought their twins down with them: Emmeline and Kelly. Christopher arrranged the Tuesday night dinner at the Story Bridge hotel. It's a beautifully renovated old hotel but their prices reflected that. They were eventually full-up even on a Tuesday night so many people are presumably used to hotel prices (steaks around $35). The food took about an hour to arrive after being ordered but that is common in hotels and what did eventually arrive was good.

People were a bit slow to arrive but we eventually had both of Christopher's children: James and Madeline. Madeline brought along her girlfriend, dressed in an American burlesque sort of way.

Kym came too and readily took the bait when I made a few old-fashioned conservative statements, such as referring to Ceylon as Ceylon. Kym is very "Progressive" and politically correct but she has a good sense of humour too -- which she undoubtedly needs to get on with her husband, my brother, whose attitudes are similar to mine. One thing I noticed was that she tossed her hair a lot when she was trying to needle me. She has a lot of hair so why not use it?

Anne came with me but Joe could not come due to a clashing engagement.

The twins were both nice-looking young ladies but one was short and one was tall. Emmeline was the short one and Kelly was tall. Roxanne is 5'4" so that explains Emmeline and Stefan is just over 6' so that explains Kelly. With her mother's pretty face and her father's long legs, Kelly was quite striking to look at. Tall women do tend to have an advantage in that way. She is also socially pleasant and has the light of intelligence in her eyes.

I should explain that. I find I can tell highly intelligent people just by their eyes. I am not sure I can explain it but it has something to do with them taking long gazes at things. They see more so take longer to look at people and things. They have a "seeing" (reflective, searching or enquiring) gaze. Kelly's father Stefan has it too.

Stefan is a great conversationalist so helped keep everyone near him interested. He could talk to me about house renovations and talk to Christopher about old motorbikes, for instance.

Roxanne talked a lot about her experiences in Saudi Arabia and their attitude towards women. She was in Saudi for a couple of years while Stefan was there making big money as a telecom technician. Roxanne is quite critical of negative attitudes to women so you can imagine what she thought of the Saudis. Her twins were born there so it is a small oddity that two very Nordic looking young women have birth certificates in Arabic. There are not very many blonde and blue-eyed Arabs.

Christopher was in good form, buying drinks for a lot of people. Business must be good at the moment. Anne enjoyed meeting the twins and talking to a lot of the family.



October 1, 2018

The Smiths of Rockhampton

Our mother gave my splendid sister quite a pretty Christian name but about 30 years ago she married a very fine man who was a Mr Smith. And they are still together, wonder of wonders. And Smith is a very useful surname. When you give your name as Smith and people give you strange looks you can produce ID that completely authenticates you.  But you are still almost as anonymous as if you had used a real false name ("real false name"?) Who in his right mind would even try to track down a particular Mrs Smith out of all the millions of Smiths worldwide?  You might be traceable if you lived in Ulan Baator but that is about all.  And with all due respect to Ulan Baator, not many Smiths would want to live there.

So to preserve their valuable anonymity I am going to refer only to "Mr & Mrs Smith" in my ramblings below.

I kitted up for my brief stay by packing my genuine Cabrelli wheeled bag.  Cabrelli are mostly distributors of ladies' fancy handbags but they do luggage too. I was given mine but I rather like it.  I don't like the hard angles of traditional suitcases

Anne and I arrived on the Tilt Train at Rockhampton station at about 6:45pm Friday 28th and were met by Mr & Mrs Smith.  They had booked us in to a very flash motel so Anne and I just dropped our bags off there and we all went to dinner at a nearby Malaysian restaurant.  It was rather flash as such restaurants go but the menu had us all a bit bamboozled. I have been in Malaysian restaurants before so I immediately suspected that the cook might be rather "creative", which is often not good.  Anyway we ordered and found that the food was indeed "creative". But we got it down. I paid the "creative" bill.

But the company was good so the food was not an issue.  I have seen the Smiths rarely over the years so getting to know them better seemed long overdue.  We discovered fairly soon that our political views are not lightyears apart.  The Smiths even had a good word to say about Mr Trump!  You see why I am preserving their anonymity!  We are actually something of a conservative family. Myself, my son and my brother rarely disagree on much in our extensive discussions. The twin studies tell us that Left/Right orientation is highly hereditary so that should not have been a surprise.

What the Smiths approve of in Mr Trump is mainly his opposition to political correctness.  As Mr Smith said to me, "If I think a think why can't I say it?"  And they also saw Trump's shaking up of the existing political system as being a very good thing.

Mr Smith is a technician by trade so is good with his hands.  He enjoys putting mechanical things right.  So even though he is now officially retired he still does stuff like that for its own satisfaction -- though he also is well paid for it.  There are zillions of people knowledgeable in the arts but practical men are in short supply.

An interesting thing that I share with the Smiths is that we have both done rather a lot of real estate renovations and made good money doing so.

And their most recent project has been to build a really swish place for themselves to live in.  The result is immaculate.  It would even get approval in Amsterdam.  From the outside it just looks like a simple and humble suburban home but once you get inside you find lots of rooms with every conceivable facility. And it has great views from the top story.

When they bought it, it was basically sound but a big mess -- a big enough mess to deter most buyers.  So they got it for a very reasonable price. Then over a period of many months they got it right, doing a lot of the work themselves  -- but getting in the experts where appropriate.  They are justly proud of their result.

Mrs Smith has done many jobs over the years, including a spell at a meatworks where our father also worked.  She liked the orderliness of how the place was run. You didn't know that an abbatoir could be orderly, did you?  It hadn't occurred to me. Nowadays she is a senior teacher at a Primary school.  She does not teach a regular class but fills in doing all sorts of jobs that keep the place running.

She is very critical of the Department of Education.  She says that they are always issuing new instructions about things that should be taught -- thus taking time away from the regular curriculum.  But the innovations tend to drift away after a while and the school gets back to doing the same things they always did. The bureaucrats can propose and instruct but it is the workers "at the coalface" who determine what is actually done. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

The Smiths are very health conscious and avoid eating any food  that might be a bit suspect. They are big on vegetarian food but are not fanatical about it. My indulgent lifestyle rather horrified them so I did mention to them that my last blood test showed me to have the internal organs of an 18-year-old.  Even my blood sugar was dead centre. So my indulgent lifestyle hasn't hurt me yet.  And seeing that Mrs Smith and I share 50% of our genes, what is OK for me is probably OK for her too. So I wonder whether that will move them towards a more relaxed diet in some way.

But they have me totally beaten in their fitness.  They still walk miles on a daily basis and do things like cycling up hills!

On Saturday morning the Smiths took Anne and me on a tour of the region, seeing mountains and seascapes and localities etc. I was particularly impressed by the many old buildings from the Victorian and Edwardian eras that still stood in Rockhampton. Instead of tearing their beautiful old buildings down like a lot of fools elsewhere have done, the Rockhampton people have renovated most of their old buildings to look as good as new.  That was a most pleasant surprise to an old sentimentalist like me

The thing I was most interested in seeing in the region was the immensely controversial Iwasaki resort at Yeppoon  -- now known as the Capricorn resort. It is mostly dormant at the moment awaiting a refit but nothing has ever moved fast there.  The extensive buildings are still all there but the grounds are not up to an immaculate standard at the moment.  In one of the few parts of the resort that is still operating is the Japanese restaurant -- so the Smiths were kind enough to stop there even though Mrs Smith is very suspicious of Japanese food. I of course am a great fan of Japanese food.

I shouted lunch there and Mrs Smith decided on ordering the Japanese curry.  I encouraged that by noting that Japanese curry is always delicious without being "hot".  In the end she did seem to enjoy it. Anne and I had the pork Tonkatsu, which was as good as it comes.  The restaurant was pretty packed when we arrived so many of the locals must share my opinion of the food there.

After lunch we went to have a look at Yeppoon, which I had heard of as a beach to which people from inland go for their holidays.  So I expected a small village. I found however that it was a substantial town with lots of shops and facilities.

As it happened, Emu beach was nearby where Anne used at one time in the now distant past to go for holiday breaks. A friend of hers once owned a holiday house there.  So she was interested to revisit the house and take some photos of it, which she did

All in all, the Smiths went to a lot of trouble to make our stay comfortable and interesting, which was much appreciated.

The Smiths also insisted on paying for our two nights at the motel. It was a large and imposing apartment motel which was very spacious and comfortable and with good views of the huge Fitzroy river.



It was however odd in having neither a minibar nor room service.  Life is full of surprises.

On Saturday night neither Anne nor I felt like a big dinner after our Japanese lunch so we just had Angus burgers at a nearby steak house.  And they were remarkably good.

We managed to get up at 6am the following Sunday morning to get a taxi back to the railway station. And the taxi driver was a chatty Australian, which was rather a blast from the past  You mostly get Indians with limited English as drivers in Brisbane

I did not like the trip on the Tilt Train. Too slow and cramped.  but I have expanded at length on that elsewhere.



July 29, 2021

A dinner visit from Roxanne

An extremely welcome visit this evening from my sister Roxanne and her husband Stefan. They had tried to get down from Rockhampton for my birthday but were put off by all the lockdown regulations.

They are both pretty voluble so the conversation flowed. He works as a part-time mechanic and she is a primary school teacher. She says the kids don't learn nearly as much these days as they once did. They live in gorgeous multi-level house with ocean views located just outside Rockhampton.

Rox and I have lived very different lives. She found her soul-mate in Stefan long ago and they have been pretty sufficient to one-another ever since. They are both very energetic and have never stopped working. So they are pretty well off. They have 3 gorgeous daughters now grown up. Rox and I get on pretty well but because of our different lives we rarely see one another.

A the time of the visit I was not feeling very well so I had to get back to my bed shortly after the dinner. Jenny made an excellent curry for us