Honour at the drive-in

 Honor Blackman — the forebear of all stunning and svelte onscreen butt-kicking females — died this week. She was 94.

For me, there's a strangely satisfying incongruity in the fact that the name Honor will forever be synonymous with Pussy Galore.

Was it?

An honour.

Or was it a fortuitous annoyance to her?

I mean, when asked to name a Bond girl, I immediately think of her or Honey Ryder — played by the equally ironically named Ursula Andress —famous for emerging from the sea in a state of un-dress.

Our Zephyr was like this one, only cream.

I remember the first time I saw Goldfinger, even though, at age 7, I probably wasn't supposed to see it at all. I was supposed to have fallen asleep in the back of our Ford Zephyr, curled up with my pillow on the back seat, under the red tartan travel rug. It was always a bit too prickly to be really snug, that blanket, but I did love making short stubby plaits of its fringed ends.

It was a Bond double feature at the Oakleigh Drive-in. We arrived just before dark. Mum and I stayed in the car watching changing advertisements on the giant screen while Dad took my brother through the labyrinth of bumps, cars and speaker cords to the brightly lit take-away store. It looked like something off My Three Sons or The Donna Reed Show.

They came back with milkshakes and chips — hot salty chips in a bucket, not wrapped in paper like

from the fish 'n chip shop.
Mum said I had to be careful not to spill anything.

The movie had no story or songs – not like Mary Poppins, anyway.  It was just a lot of men in screeching cars and loud gunshots...
Plus a skinny blonde lady who fought with men.

Dad told my brother to stop asking questions and just watch the movie.

So I kept quiet.

And I watched that beautiful skinny lady fight the bad guys.

I remember.

So, yeah, I wonder if Honor felt honoured and proud to be Pussy Galore.
I reckon she should have.
She was a bad-ass pioneer.
Not like Mary Poppins at all.

If my recollection has stirred any reminiscences for you, I'd love to hear them.

Five shot

I just read a news story about a guy in Russia who shot five people in the flat opposite his over an argument about undue noise. Extreme. Sure. But I have to confess I kind of know how he feels. In fact, I'm willing to stick my neck out and suggest that the vast majority of us who live in close proximity to strangers, and are now locked up in close proximity to said strangers, can find just the teensiest bit of sympathy for him tucked away in a secret corner of our beings. Can't we? Or is it just me?

To set the scene, the kids and I moved into a city townhouse just a few weeks before the world started shutting down. It's a comfortable little 4-level south-facing abode with a geisha-sized footprint. For over a century, the street was home to Croxton Park Tannery, but now it's home to hundreds of us in 130 townhouses and 53 apartments.

 

The original tannery building built in 1900.

Well, of course, I wasn't supposed to be moving in. Mine was intended only to be a short-term residency as amateur interior designer and untrained transition-support person on loan from London.

But Covid–19.

Anyhow, in the townhouse to our right are lovers of late-night doof-doof music and daytime sleeping. To our left can be found two excitable Samoyeds.

Two excitable but largely untrained Samoyeds.

Two excitable, largely untrained, loud Samoyeds whose nemesis is apparently the equally loud and untrained canine occupant of the townhouse opposite.

The only joy I get from their matutinal call-and-answer hysteria across the concrete canyon is that it must really piss-off the nocturnal doof-doofers next door.

One sunny day early last week — was it only last week? maybe it was last month or last millennium: time has no substance anymore — one sunny day recently, through our open living room door wafted the rather polished voice of an elderly female neighbour who likes to make her calls on her balcony. Maximum network coverage that way: all 181 other residences can be privy to her conversations.

The cactii are fake.

She was on the phone to her friend in Hong Kong confirming that she intended to go ahead with her planned visit. After all, it had cost her a fortune, she exclaimed, and she might as well be in an apartment with her friend there as here. An overseas holiday. To Hong Kong. Ummm. Really?

I didn't want to shoot her, but I did want to yell at her.

Mind you, we haven't heard from her in a while. Maybe she's enjoying her 14-day hotel stay courtesy of the state government.

I thought it would be a good idea to join the 185K (and growing) others around the globe who are posting views from their windows. Have you been looking at those?

Positive, mood-lifting images to connect me to other human beings, I thought.  

How lovely.

Well, just a few time-wasting visits had me feeling even more trapped and isolated than before. I'm not a Gram-er, so I've never seen so many glorious wide-open spaces, Monet-worthy sunsets and perfectly curated private gardens in one place before. It was downright depressing.

Do you think that one day social media will, like Pop, eat itself? So much self-congratulation and shameless self-promotion. So little compassion. So much photoshopping of life. Too little honesty.

 

Our garden

Still, I've moved on to the Bridging the Distance Facebook group set up by National Museum Australia with the purpose of collecting stories and images of daily life that document what they call 'a Defining Moment in both Australia's and the world's history'. And this morning there was a post that simply said: "Today I'm sad. I keep trying to focus on positives, but I'm confused and sad. I'm ok, but sad. I guess we all feel this way".
Yep.For sure.

My bedroom window is frosted.

So, in the spirit of attempting to keep things real in this surreal time, I've included pics from our windows, and I'd love you to post yours in the comments section accompanying this.

ps.

Hey, did you realise that camped in is an anagram of pandemic?

You're right.

I've been watching way too many episodes of 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown.

Stirring up ghosts

 

Chris Hemsworth as ‘Thor’ | © Disney/Marvel

Grass trodden by Thor!

I promised myself never to take the sight of Christopher Wren's distinctive Old Royal Naval College for granted, no matter how often I see it in my time at Greenwich. It's an easy promise to keep.  Every time it comes into view, from river bus, footpath or big red bus, I marvel anew at its symmetry of design, its grandeur and the centuries of cultural change it communicates. 

And I'm repeatedly awestruck that these elegant buildings were completed and opened some 76 years before Lieutenant Cook landed at Botany Bay.  We white Australians have such a short story.

Inside the Painted Hall

Some of the internal spaces are equally stunning. Thornhill’s Painted Hall is an exquisite storybook of characters from history and myth, and the chapel never fails to make me think of fine Wedgewood china.

But, let's face it, it's also pretty gosh-darn impossible not to be gobsmacked that, almost daily, I'm standing where the mighty Thor battled Malekith, evil leader of the Dark Elves —— right there between the domes in beautiful downtown Greenwich. Truly. Awesome.

Inside the chapel

But these impressive buildings were created not just to inspire awe and celebrate the glories of Britain. As the Royal Hospital for Seamen, they housed thousands of pensioned seafarers, plus the widows and children of such men. Some of the inhabitants were highly distinguished, some were scoundrels. Many were quite unremarkable.

But life is a narrative.

Everyone, no matter how seemingly ordinary, has a story.

The Pensioners

And so it was that a small group of enthusiastic amateur-historian volunteers became the Lives of Pensioners Research Project. Our objective: to transcribe some 250 wills of people who lived at the Hospital in the 18th and 19th centuries and, using them as a starting point, to flesh out their narratives — to put the people back in the buildings.

Just reading the handwriting, dealing with variant spellings and navigating the lack of punctuation in historical wills posed problems to we novices. So, a core group of seven met over Tuesday morning coffee to compare notes, check each other’s transcriptions and compile lists of names, places, words and dates that needed further investigation.

I lack the formidable knowledge of British history and naval traditions in general, and of Greenwich in particular, that the others have. I didn't know the typical names of the era and common place names were a mystery to me. I couldn't even have told you what county Greenwich was in. Boatswain, testatrix, the Chalk Groins — all strangers to me.

Bumpkin from the Antipodes.

Pop kulcha loving hick from the New World.

Definitely odd-one-out.

That is me.

Our summer picnic in the grounds with archive staff.

But this group of intelligent, witty women has become my lifeline.

Intelligent AND witty AND willing to tolerate me. 

Go figure.

Proves how great they are — right?

They are the only people I've met in my three years in London who have included me in anything.

I owe them more than they can possibly imagine.

But I digress.

Back to the wills

...and on this excursion day, we froze!

We Pensioner Researchers set out on a fun journey through genealogical data, naval records, court and parish documents, rate books, letters, diaries, newspapers and journals.

We explored the treasures of the National Archives at Kew, Caird Library of the National Maritime Museum, Wellcome Library, and Greenwich Heritage Centre. We even visited cemeteries and Chatham Historic Dockyard. It's definitely been what Pooh would call a grand adventure.

Many of the wills offer little to work with, but others give rise to fascinating questions or have quirky details to inform our investigations:

·      pensioner Edmund Grenan stipulates that he be buried at the very specific cost of £1 11s 6d. How much DID the average funeral cost?

·      porter John Woolley bequeaths each person who supports his pall a hatband and gloves. Gloves seem reasonable, but why a hatband?

·      Elizabeth Latham, a nurse 1707–1727, bequeaths valuable fabric and silverware to her granddaughter, but leaves just one shilling to her son, John. What did John do to piss her off?

We have been stirring up ghosts and helping them tell their stories.

It's fun.

I'm pretty sure Stan Lee would approve.