It's only since I got here 7 years ago that I have begun to understand, exactly, how very unique both my parents had been from the general species.
So this is probably a good time to introduce the fact that I usually called them Phyl & George. I shall go on referring to them now in that way - both because that's who they are, and because another thing I've learned since coming here is that we were English Middle Class.
So there are verbal minefields to pick my way through even in referring to my parents. If I call them "Mummy & Daddy" people will make the sign of the evil-eye against me and accuse me of being Middle Class. (Which I find a bit unfair, as they are the people who put me in that box. I had gone happily through my whole life until 2014 without knowing I belonged in any 'Class' at all.)
On the other hand, if I referred to my parents as "Mum & Dad" I'd have to keep pinching myself to remind myself who I was talking about. It's a title that just doesn't conjure up any recollections: simply because I'd never called them that in my life. I'd various good friends whose parents had urged me to call them "Mum & Dad" and those are the people who would spring to mind!
Thirdly, once the part of my life which involved Nanny & nurseries was over, and it was the three of us in yet another different country or house facing the same perplexities; I saw them both as individual, different, people. Well of course everyone's mother is different to their father. But I didn't have any pre-concieved ideas of what a mother or father could/should be; so I had no idea of the concepts of motherhood or fatherhood and what was expected of both.
But this third reason I leave out of conversations. Because "Nannies, and nurseries" are also two words which will send people backing away from one, hissing. I've come to recognise the slight unfocusing of the eyes during which such words register: the dismissive word 'Wanker' can almost be seen obliterating anything one may have said, or may well still say, from this point.
One of the most important things to know about both Phyl and George is that they were party people. Not in the vacuous way of social butterflies. They were a duo who brought parties with them everywhere they went - even on the night he died, George had hosted a dinner party.
Phyl's parties usually sprang up in the wake of an adventure. When I got the mumps and we got stuck in a ditch; with her paraplegic friend Grace and me trapped in the back; gawd-knows-where in the Blue Mountains...she made a party and even insisted our rescuers come down to Sydney to attend.
When the wheels fell off my car as I was driving into the shopping centre (Seriously! All four, two by two!) Phyl made a party out of it. And so on down through life's little trials.
George, on the other hand, could walk into a silent restaurant; a dour, country pub; or three sheets over to my Convent boarding school and turn it into a party (the nuns used to haul out the good sherry!); while he could ring around at 3 in the morning when we'd all come home from our various nights out, and suggest we don't go to bed but drive up to the top of the mountains to have a sunrise party.(Rum & Bovril in large containers imbibed on arrival to keep the chill away. In Papua New Guinea.).
But of all the parties of their long lives both agree that two stand out: - The Christening Party and The Cancer Party. I nominated the New Year's Day Party and they both agreed it was a contender. But didn't quite make it to the same epic standard as the Christening or Cancer Party.
The dichotomy of my parents as legends of the party-scene and their Victorian up-bringing has never ceased to amaze me. Not of course that they or their mothers were Victorian - but both were mainly brought up by their grandmothers. Two vastly formidable Victorian women - though in largely different ways - united by their strict views of Right & Wrong, Truth & Beauty, Charity, Duty, Honour - and all the other precepts the Victorians always spelled with capital letters.
Yet they were also of the 'Lost Generation' - the Bright Young Things who came of age between the two world wars: a world of Jazz and The Blues; Marie Stopes and Scott Fizgerald; the elastic sanitary belt and knickerbockers; deodorants & hair-removing mitts.
And it would seem that neither influences ever left them.
I was only going to do a paragraph of introduction and then launch into the story of The Christening Party; because that's where my part in their lives begins. But I also wanted to get across some idea of who Phyl & George were as people before I slotted them into their parental role. They were to be the main influencers on my life and I didn't want to portray them as social gadflies: they were so much more.
But I found I surprised myself in going this way round: I wrote some things I hadn't known I knew!So I shall sit and mull on it for a while - and will leave the Christening party until next time.
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