Farewell Hughie

Dear Kell,

There’s something melancholy about this clear sunny yet blustery cold Monday. Tempting it is to attribute this to the end of Catholic Youth Day week (week day?) but I prefer to see it in light of the passing of Uncle Hughie whose funeral and wake I attended in company with Hugh and Alice this Saturday. A temporal event at the South Chapel, Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park (code for Crematorium) splendidly located at scenic Bunnerong with glimpses of Botany Bay in bright warm eleven AM sunshine. Eulogies by Hugh and Betty’s Niece, whose name this fool forgets, were touching as was the wrong version of “Memories”. The whole event was newish to this fortunate fool who at sixty two can still count the funerals attended on one hand. I found it novel that the funeral directors did just that, aided by the chapel/theatre proscenium curtains which after closing to conceal the coffin staged a little drama of their own sucking in toward the coffin before gradually returning to default. I would not have been at all surprised had they re-opened like the magicians cape to reveal all had vanished leaving just a wisp of vapour.

The wake was at the Randwick Golf Club, cleverly located owing to a lack of free space in Randwick proper, on the pacific coast at Malabar; across Little Bay from the rifle range. I say clever not just because this delightfully aspected site is prime for anyone’s club but also because had it been anywhere in Randwick on this once in a lifetime day of pilgrimage to the Racecourse it would have been almost impossible to get to; or from. The Popes ‘Red’ proved a much greater attraction than any ‘Golden’ Slipper though the bookies seem not to appreciate it. A good showing of Frasers, Betty’s family, who turned out to be good sorts as those who produced a Betty were bound to be, filled out our delightful room where the curtains had eventually to be drawn to entice guests away from the view and to engage in food drink and bonhomie. Many seemed to be the offspring of Betty’s, brother now deceased, and their spouses and offspring but don’t ask me for any better explanation. You know how I am with relations if not presented with a plan er family tree. It’s hard enough to keep up with those bearing the same blood. Enough to say I met no one I would not welcome as my own family.

Betty will miss him but I’m sure Hughie does not miss this mortality and the medical indignities of growing old. Dorothy who, faced with four plus hours of public transport within her own city, missed the funeral has arranged a luncheon with Betty, Hugh and I for tomorrow after which we may try to get her into “Tatler” or “Shh” in Darlinghurst (code for Kings Cross) for some $25 drinks to cheer her.

The Pope has indeed left these shores along with many of his pilgrims and the Herald today has attempted it seems to sum up readers responses after a torrid couple of weeks of the letters page. Now here, for those among you who don’t read them or this, I shall attempt a summary. They commence with the converts who hated the idea but were won over by the vibrancy of youth. Others lament the seeming lack of expressed concern for the poor and the sexually abused. Security was criticized not for it’s failings but rather its costly overblowness. The Stations of the Cross were criticised by theatrical reviewers for being poor, amateur, overwrought and overdone. A country reader from Georgica recons the Pope, sight unseen, is a ringer for John Cargher the late ABC singer host, and should he need a job…. A Randwick lad rejoiced at finding pilgrims in the pub scamming the event for a free accommodation holiday. But my favourite came from Graeme Finn of St Peters and I shall quote it verbatim: So, the Pope clicked the heels of his ruby slippers three times and said “there’s no place like home”, then left the wonderful land of Oz, allowing the Emerald City to return to normal.