I can still remember the summer I was home in Adelaide for Christmas -- 1982-3, I think it was -- when he put the telly on to watch the Melbourne Test, the first day of which I knew my friend Helen would be attending, and I called out from the next room 'Look out for Helen!' and he called back 'Quarter past ten!'
He still drives; he drove for a living for much of his life and is still one of the best drivers I have ever been in a car with. And I got a text (yes, a text, and what's more he has worked out how to do capital letters) from him this afternoon saying 'Practising with my new ears. The car sounds like a truck.'
Yes, I know. I am very, very lucky.
Papa Cat (centre), Princes Bridge, Melbourne, 1944
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You are lucky, (as is he). An Aquarius and at 84 having a Uraniun return. Not everybody makes it, but the lucky ones do & it helps for a good and happy acceptance of what's (eva) next. Astrologer, Robert Hand in Planets in Transit:
This transit signifies changes that allow you to put your entire life in perspective and to relate it to eternity in some way.
. . . You can enjoy life for what it is and yet not be so attached to it that you fall prey to its illusions and snares.
Men at this age are really good value. Whimsical and sweet. (kinda makes a change really).
In everyone, men and women I've seen (and at one stage in my life there were quite a few octogenerians), the ego seems to have subsided a little making them incredibly pleasant people. Noticing how cool they are is both refreshing and salutory.
Middle-aged children be aware, your parents are now so totally cool they can make you look a little overwrought about things that do not matter.
Thank you for sharing Papa Cat with us.
At midday today I was catching up with a friend not long back from Timor when, up the crowded laneway from where we were seated, we spotted him: a passing octogenarian who inserted himself between a guy with a serious-looking camera and a done-up-to-the-nines model, dancing. And dancing, and dancing. He kept swivelling those hips and moving those feet; I was laughing so long and so hard that tears came to my eyes. The photographer just waited, looking bored (idiot), and others passed him by without a glance; he wasn't laughing or self-conscious, just dancing. When he'd finished, he just went on his way. My (and my friend's) hero.
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