The Life of Riley

OLIVE’S EIGHTEENTH POST.

Mike: There has been great excitment overnight. Olive called quite late to say that I had to be at her place the next day, mid Sunday morning.

When a 107 year old blogger orders your attendance, there is of course no saying no.

When this same blogger, reputedly the oldest in the world, says there’s a meeting not be missed and it’s blog related, well you just jump to it, don’t you?

Good evening everyone. Olive here. Yes, It’s true I was quite excited last night, and I am still excited.

Mike: Ollie had had a call from Ross, the son of her daughter, Bonnie.

I knew quite a lot about Bonnie, I’d tried very hard to get her to appear in Olive’s movie, All about Olive, but to no avail. Bonnie is the youngest of Olive’s three kids.

Here’s Bonnie the day of her marriage, obviously pretty happy. Ollie’s dressed to the nines and has pinching shoes, one guesses.

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Fast forward fifty years and, here’s one of Bonnie’s sons, Ross, fruit of that marriage to Bill, a Naval Officer.
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Ross and his family were coming to visit Ollie from down Wollongong way, south of Sydney.

I already knew about Lynne, Ross’s wife, because she has sent us comments on the blog, signed Lynne from Bulli. Here’s Lynne

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It was quite a rare event, and I had to meet them, Ollie told me.

Had to, because for Olive, contacts with Bonnie’s children are very precious.

This is due to the fact that Bonnie herself, who lives quite close, refuses to see her mother.

Here’s Bonnie with Ollie in happier times. The second world war had begun. Bonnie had just joined the Navy, proud as punch.

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Perhaps Ollie was hoping that with Ross and family coming, she would find out more about Bonnie’s hostility, and even find a way to turn it around and get a friendlier Bonnie back again.

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So, I made it to Olive’s place by 11 am. and found the dear old battler alone, wondering as to how the blog might help bring various family members together again.

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We had some moments to talk and it turned out that there was something else at stake as well.

There was another grandson of hers, Daryl, Ross’s brother, who’d gone missing these last few years. He needed to be found, either through Ross’s visit, or through the blog

Daryl has had his own problems it seems. Maybe these were keeping him away.
Family drama piled on family drama.

While we waited, we talked about all the above, and about bullying.

Our weekend newpaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, carried a front page story about two girls who had killed themselves outside of Melbourne , suicided because of bullying, the paper claimed. (credit, SMH)

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It was heart wrenching to see their sweet faces, side by side, best friends, and know they’d died together so young, and so tragically.

We’d both seen the story, Ollie on TV, and been shocked.(credit, SMH)

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Olive knew why I was mentioning this upsetting event.

When about 12, about the age you see here………
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…………Olive had been thoroughly bullied and had fought back in her own way, a story she loves to tell and which I think is relevant right now.

Olive

Love to tell???

Mike

You do so!….. Anyway, I hear them coming!

Mike. Indeed, Ross Davey, Lynne and two of their kids, Steven and Katie, had arrived.

I’d seen this before, relatives trooping into Ollie’s small room and clustering around her as if warming themselves on a fire.

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And soon, indeed, all the Daveys were laughing at recent doings, mixed with funny things in the past.

We never did get a clear reason for Bonnie’s anger. It might be due to something medical, that was one conclusion. Some condition which is making her remember childhood hurts and forget good times which were many, apparently.

Ross remembers being over at Nan’s, as they called her, on countless occasions and never any hint of hostility between his Mum and Ollie.

He fondly remembers “Nan” taking him and his siblings fishing in a small canal right under the flight path of Sydney airport at Mascot.. That was when Ollie worked in the Pub and lived in nearby Arncliffe.

They were so close to touchdown that when planes came in, they had to lie flat as pancakes not to have skid marks up their backsides. It was a trickly spot but the fishing was good, all agreed.

He also remembers being allowed to see Nan pull beers in that Arncliffe Pub, weekends of fun and games. So, why Bonnie’s hostility now? Blowed if he knows.

The other mystery is Daryl. Nobody has seen Ross’s younger brother, Daryl for quite a while. Ollie’s worried. She has a soft spot for Daryl. He last visited on her 100th birthday. Since then, he’s disappeared.

Ross phoned me back later with an address for his brother in Crescent Head, but Information when I check, can provide no number.

Crescent Head is 5 hours north. Shall Ollie and I do the gumshoe (detective) thing and drive up there looking for him? We just might.

It’s near where her son Barnie lives and Ollie’s dying to see Barnie again. (Barnie Google with the goo goo Googly eyes) So, we could kill two feathered friends with one bloody brick, as the saying goes.

We’ve been lucky before in the lost person’s department. As the time of making All About Olive, I found out that Barnie had a secret.

He’d had a brief first marriage just after the Second World War to Alice, and then married again to Jennie, the love of his life, this earlier union, never mentioned.

First, I found a photo of the handsome ex service man with his new bride, Alice.

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Then, I discovered they’d had a daughter, Barbara……..

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……….and that this pretty little creature never saw her Dad again after the age of four.

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Not, that is, till I phoned a number in Murray Bridge, South Australia. Out of the blue, I was able to tell the Barbara who answered where her Dad was, a Dad she knew about but with whom she’d lost all touch.

I was there when the reunion took place……..
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………..though Barbara was too late for Barnie to fully appreciate it.

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Her Dad was already somewhat in another world.
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I once wrote a fable and about a planet called Tiskia. On this planet, people were born old and then, as the years passed, they got younger and younger till they reached the end, babyhood.
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It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to be able to run at least the photos backwards.

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The nicest thing coming out of this discovery was being able to link up a grandfather and a grandson, a pair who looked so much the same, and yet never knew each other.

The fella below, Jed, is Barbara’s son. He’s 24. I find the resemblance remarkable. It was fun bringing them knowledge of each other, he and Barnie.

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Mike

We were going to speak about bullying in greater depth, weren’t we Ollie?

Olive

Yeah, we were and we did.

Mike

About how you left your tormentor, Katie Raven, for dead. How you could’ve happily killed her….

Olive

I could have, too!

Mike

…..and what that suggests in terms of how we humans, even the best of us, like you my dear, react to injustice……

….but maybe we should leave that till another time.

Olive

We must leave it for another time. There’s too much in this blob already, Mike

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