THE EARTHRISE DIARY (Jan/Feb 2015, incl. part Dec 2014)
DON DIESPECKER
© Text, Don Diespecker (2014, 2015); guest writers retain
their ©.
Survived a robbery yesterday, held up at
gunpoint, but we are unharmed, praise God, and my car was not stolen either.
Julie Craig: Email,
January 6 2015.
I'm just happy that through the turmoil, e.g., wars
& upheavals & moves of our lives that Mum and Dad treasured the
slides & letters and I’m glad they printed out so well!
Louise
Diespecker Lee: Email, February 2 2015.
CHARIVARI
December 2014.
Scrambling, A Sort Of Monologue:
It’s been a long day and I’m skulking about at the end of it
the ancient caretaker tottering through the sunset gardens noting the darkening
foliage the sky all grey-black near the hastening twilight and the Polaroids
still on while nursing a health issue and dusk within minutes will be a solace.
Lots more cloud now. I lurch on further and to the house intending to view some
TV News only minutes away. I ease out of my work boots. I arrange the pillows.
I lie down gratefully. I click the remote hopefully. Sigh. This feels good:
it’s just the best place for me to be, luxuriantly, calmly, close to relaxed
and pleasingly far from any reality that’s notably taut or at all stressful;
healthy old age is great and old age with demanding side effects considerably
less than great. Soothed I sit up a little and unwisely glance through the
bedside window seeing the green foliage going black in shadows the river
slipping by grandly the blur of an image moving bulkily over the bridge or is
that two or maybe three moving images of hulking small cattle those recent
arrivals in the Deer Park paddock across the road the miniature cattle the
daring Dexters? Alas and ye gods it is indeed the undersize Dexter Cattle like
strange and pushy little ghosts in the half light searching and having made it
to the far side of the river and now apparently returning bellowing annoyingly
as in, Now that we’ve bridged our way to
the other side of the river what shall we do next? Bellow louder? Yes of
course bellow louder. Sigh. It’s the chutzpah Dexters that seemingly punch
above their weight. Don’t panic it’s not worth it. Remain calm. Where’s my
disappointing smart phone with that dodgy battery I was sold as being new and
is there enough juice in it to call the owners of the dynamic mini herd: had I
charged the damn thing sufficiently? Yes I had. I leave a message. Breathing
carefully so as not to disrupt the relaxed pace I’d been about to get used to I
rise delicately and slide back into the work boots once more the pulse shifting
a notch to rev me up just a little and with pressure in the old pump increasing
too of course. Downstairs again I totter breathing and re-breathing air most
recently breathed by myself and heaven knows who else presumably also the
cattle and when you think seriously about it there’s every reason to suppose
that the air that repeatedly we all breathe has been similarly used and re-used
for an awful long time by almost anyone you can think of: by friends, enemies,
family, lovers, notables of all shades by the hundreds or thousands like
assorted Borgia’s or Ptolemy, Hitler, Winston Churchill, Stalin and sundry
others springing to mind in light fading at warp speed, air for heroes air for
villains. Oh. Oh I say! Yes curse there’s one of the little beasties head down
snortingly and actually pawing at the
turf my turf my Big Lawn the sacrosanct green grass of home! It’s nothing less
than a standoff! Ten thousand devils and what bad timing and what nerve and
such annoyance all of it mine because once upon a time I’d perhaps had a yen to
be the cape guy in a bullfight having read Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon and here it’s already early evening and
matador man or should that be toreador far from ready and entirely without
cape. Could dash back and dig out the old doctoral gown recently rediscovered
in the closet the grey silken parts moth-holed in places the maroon gown not
quite the right shade of red though it might very well be of a colour that
would nicely soak up blood preferably not mine and me without a sword and
though my delightfully fashioned and somewhat medieval doctoral black bonnet
might suit me dashingly the young bull if that’s what it is and twilight
turning dark now and my uncertainty of the Dexter’s gender the four footer
might very well see me as enemy of the herd. What to do? I drag out the
recalcitrant phone and find the right number and call the owners and leave a
message and when next I look up the Dexter has neatly vanished perhaps to rejoin
the restless rest of the Dexter Mob. Though I look about warily and searchingly
there’s no further ranging on the Earthrise spread. I shake my head
wonderingly. Is the herd again together in the road and dodging traffic and is
this my lucky day or what? The faltering phone coughs up a text. The owners a
la the cavalry are on their way. I withdraw backwards advancing steadily to the
rear my steely gaze scanning the murk my brain’s visualization department
cutting in positively with scenes portraying myself now gliding not scrambling
slightly more cheerily whilst steadily making an unbloodied return to my
bed.
January 10 2015. Sort
Of Flying, A Kind Of Monologue:
I’m seeing a most
peculiar something while sitting at the belvedere at breakfast time: winged
insects I think falling or maybe even tumbling in sunlight over the river like well lighted specks of
amber-colored snowflakes perhaps
falling whilst also seemingly flying from
side to side and round about. And I’ve even been trying to photograph some of this
odd action. I haven't been smart enough to explain it though. And there’s
no-one else here to confirm this so it’s truly what I’ve been seeing and yes,
my vision for objects moving or not moving and at some distance is as good as
anyone’s and possibly because too, I’ve also had two cataract ops and I can see
insect silken strands probably initiated by spiders and see them at a distance
and I’m pretty sure many my age simply couldn’t see that see what I’ve been seeing: I don’t mean to seem demeaning or to
boast: it’s just that my eyes have
been seeing quite splendidly since May 1929 and before the New York Stock
Exchange Crash and before the Empire State Building was built and in the year
Erich Maria Remarque published All Quiet
on the Western Front and the same year Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize for
Literature remembering too that 1929 was the year Anne Frank and also Martin
Luther King were born. I have old eyes that also are well-seasoned eyes and I
assure you I can see the snow-like flying blobs falling from somewhere above.
None of this is hallucination benign or otherwise. These moving blobs are also decidedly alive! Whether or not the blobs are also again rising up I
cannot determine from here at this time.
All of what I can see is at an altitude of maybe 8-10-m over the water:
the action seems to be non-existent beyond 10-m of altitude. Is that not
strange? Nature can always be
relied on to provide surprises for us to see and ponder and Earthrise surprises
are frequently presented: one need only be present,
eyes and ears open, nostrils flaring, the quiet bio-machinery of the brain as
alert and as ready to respond from the un-lighted and unseen (at least by this
seer) universe between the ears. And now by way of ending this visual memory
days after beginning it I add another two incidents of aerial gymnastics that
are free of artifice or exaggeration and for the record: I have seen in these
last days of January 2015 first a duo of white butterflies bobbing in the light
close to the belvedere and against the background of the river still high after
a near flood: the butterflies moved so fast and so energetically that they
compelled my viewing and having already seen prior to this spectacle no less
than three white butterflies together
bobbing, moving at tremendous speed whilst also traveling laterally through the
trees between here and the house in brilliant light. You might think that such
accomplished flying up and down and from side to side and around about while
also navigating across the garden could
only be accomplished without collisions of any kind by creatures having
wonderfully complex and efficient central nervous systems akin to the ones used
by us humans but of course these beautiful little insects simply do not have
such equipment and we who do with our great big bulging bicameral brains could not do any of those aerial
gymnastics because we’re just not that competent to do so yet we tend to see
ourselves as perhaps the smartest beings in the known universe. Isn’t that
odd? I so much enjoy these natural
wonders and mysteries. Please don’t
tell me if you’re able to explain these phenomena. Thank you.
January 13 2015. Seeing Connections:
Ants use the black PVC so-called
poly-pipe the one laid out presently that’s conduit for river water that I pump
up to my storage tank except that the ants probably aren’t thinking (if they’re
able to) water, they seem simply
focused on travel, on transporting themselves, on Getting There and to some specific location rather than wasting
time struggling aimlessly to get Somewhere
Else but I’m guessing now. It’s pretty clear to me that these ants are
purposeful: they’d probably suffer anxiety were they to sit around drinking the
ant equivalent of coffee: they’re always busy, always active. And not
forgetting that if you and I were ants wanting to travel from A more or less to
B we might be faced with what frequently would look like insuperable
difficulties and, being ants, would probably feel obliged to shrug that off and
to then press on regardless. Blades of grass would be hindrances; fallen leaves
and twigs would have to be surmounted as if huge logs, and tiny puddles
following rain would require our either walking on water or taking the long way
around: the tiny ants are smart enough to use human artifacts for convenience
and to save their precious time. Although ants surely don’t have the elaborate
biological equipment we humans possess they surely know a good opportunity when
they see one and a black plastic pipeline from the perspective of ants is a happily
convenient Super High Speed Highway. The ants know how to use such highways and
perhaps have in mind neural maps that enable their accurate journeying across
vast local grass forests (i.e., the Earthrise lawn). Perhaps they use the sun
as a reference point or possibly the pipeline on the grass as platform provides
enough viewing height for the ants to see the way ahead simply because the
pipeline (or the antline?) provides
clear or certainly clearer lines of sight. And I have yet to see one of the
ants fall off these smooth plastic highways. How can I move the pipeline when I
need to and what do I do if the highway is heaving with ant traffic? Perhaps
I’ll be able to move my pipeline
without mishap and injuries when the little insects are asleep? They surely
sleep occasionally? I’ll have to be quiet and very careful. For all I know the
ants might have watchmen or guards, big bull ant cops, Security. Then what will
I do?
January 29 2015:
This is an important day
for me: Dad’s memoir, “Bear Fat,” is at last published as an Amazon/Kindle
eBook and because I edited its several parts the book is included in “my” list
(the 20th of such books) at the end of this Diary and with my thanks to Kerry Smith who enabled this while
electronic communications (those on the other side of the Pacific rather than
on these shores) were wobbly and when also masterful electronic wrestling of
the cover title was needed to enable clear and unimpeded images of the family
seen in the (1903) cover photo. That old photo is itself remarkable (a
miniaturized version is included in the book’s metadata) because it shows the
images of a sizeable number of the 500 guests who posed or were poised for the
photographer in the Adstock House (UK) gardens on August 3 1903, in much the
same time that the Wright brothers were creating aeronautical history. The
author of the memoir, then not quite seven years old, scowls wildly in the
right hand corner of the photo. I imagine each of those many people pictured
would have had their own stories to tell, too. (See a larger reproduction of
this crowded scene in the previous Diary
{Nov/Dec 2014}: Rudolph Diespecker
(1858-1920) and Elizabeth Diespecker (1867-1928), my paternal grandparents, are
seated in deck chairs in the gardens of their new home, Adstock House,
Buckinghamshire, UK together with four of their sons in front of them (bottom
right corner of group), Denny (1892-1948), Louis (1895-1969), Durbyn
(1896-1977) and Jean (1898-1959); (Dick, the fifth son, 1907-1973).
I remind myself that
these have been the second edits for this eBook following edits I made in the
1990s when first transcribing Dad’s manuscripts. Musing on these past events I
also remind myself that both Durbyn Charles, my father, and my mother, Grace
Kerr Singer (1898-1974) were born in the old Transvaal of President Paul Kruger
when the Transvaal was also known as (English translation), “The South African
Republic” and also as “The Transvaal Republic.” In those times the Transvaal
was one of the two so-called “Boer Republics,” the other having been the Orange
Free State and that on October 11 1899 the Boer Republics declared war against
the British. My mother’s parents were both Scots; Grace’s father was a building
contractor (both my grandfathers were contractors who spent most of their lives
in South Africa). When the Second Boer began the Diespecker boys and their
mother embarked for the UK (initially to Glasgow and relatives) as did the
Singer children and their mother, Sarah, who similarly left South Africa and
traveled to Scotland for the duration: neither family were aware of the
other.
January 31 2015. It’s the last
day of January; already a twelfth of the year has rushed wetly by. Saturday
afternoon. The sun shines on the full river: there’s been an impressive rise
following thundery showers these past days. Dad’s memoir is available ‘live’ on
the Amazon/Kindle websites. Such a busy rainy month for me: this and that
difficulty, especially the necessary readings and re-readings of the Bear Fat text. Those writings began in
1950: I’d asked Dad would he please write some of our family history; there was
so much of it and it was always puzzling for me to figure out who was who. I
was 21 and poised for Europe, that rite of passage Big Trip; Durbyn was 54, he
and Grace settled at home in Durban, my sister, Deirdre, married and living
nearby with husband Alex and their daughter, Julie (and later with their son,
Christopher, born in 1951, by which time I was in Europe). Dad said he would
begin writing; I knew that he would: so much of his life had been transparent
and good to read about and he would explain who was who in that greater family
of many cousins.
The text isn’t as long
as one might imagine: DCD had lived in the UK and in British Columbia as well
as in South Africa and he was the only one of the five sons (four of them born
in South Africa) who also died in South Africa. I know that some of what was not written about in the memoir would
have filled several long books because over about ten years of my digging
through the family’s history I learned quite a lot about that history, some of
it discussed in other of my books.
I raise my glass. I
make a toast to Durbyn, to my mother, Grace and to my sister, Deidre, all of
them now having departed (each in South Africa). I hold the chilled glass close
to see the beaded bubbles rising. I squint through the glass one-eyed seeing
the Valley’s blurred green forests as cold misted bands of color, the
Bellinger’s white water rapids in front of my house, the downstream view
rippling blue and waving through the frosted glass. I reflect on all the
conversations we now could never have. From the windows I watch the brown fruit
pigeons in the bleeding heart leaf trees next to the house. The sun is shining
this late summer afternoon; Barber’s violin concerto plays on the radio; the
river runs by.
February 3 2015. Wet Walking: Tuesday morning is dark
and rainy. I like dark mornings, they’re good practice for starting everything
in the dark. Getting up and out of bed is easy. I know by touch where my stuff
is and get dressed easily: and no falling over or staggering. Dressed, booted,
downstairs I go with great care. The curtains are dull white in the murk and I
open them all. Just one tablet these days that eases my otherwise taut plumbing
taken an hour before breakfast; shaving whilst watching early light growing and
glowing upstream, shaving without any mirror; time to hear five minutes of the
ABC RN News, those running the Government in an inexplicably weird reality,
collective elephants in all their rooms and who would be a Canberra politician,
not for all the tea in China; a nice prayer for this place in this troubled
time in this troubled world and away I go through the wet grass and the wet
gardens a fine drizzle falling; the 2-m high dahlias doing their best having
been unattended for more than a year and now finally tied, supported and now
magically flowering. I put up my Parisian umbrella the little one telescopic
because it’s light, easy to carry and it keeps most of me dry. Were I to call
this piece something it would be Gardens in the Rain a title I like and puts me
in mind of Debussy of course and France Long Ago. Walking down crunching the
metal road to the bridge and across no traffic just me and the French umbrella
the drizzle heavier quickly and turning light rain so I’m walking in low cloud
such that were I above up at Dorrigo say I’d be looking down here into the
valley seeing only a sea of settled cloud yet there’s sun shining somewhere and
as I crunch along in the Wet the horses in the big Happenstance paddock look up
and stare longer than usual I suppose seeing the dripping umbrella all the
horses dripping too and the same nags otherwise used to seeing me funny how
things French now toy with my memory thinking of Paris that last time with
cousins Jill and Gene going to the museums the galleries the expositions
especially the Pompidou with that bursting roomful of Gauguin pictures I know
so well all bright and glowing with life but the place lamentably closed for
renovations and here and now I’m wondering does Gauguin go with Debussy not
that it matters in this murk anyway the horses near up to their withers oddly
like brown misted barrels rolling through tips of paddock grasses on this
drippy morning watch out for the occasional car coming downstream or should I
say down the road heading right at me or maybe they’re used to seeing me most
mornings just stepping aside to the verge that Council mowed only yesterday but
not much not comprehensively in front of my place too many hazards there like
that unsuccessful roadside concreted drain of a ditch sort of a light that
failed if you think of it in an abstract way oh those abstract painters no not
any I’m fond of I’ve always preferred painters that make sense like Renoir like
Monet and I recall now going out to Giverny in the summer the house and the
gardens and hold on it’s still summer right
here in the everlasting present though it doesn’t look it now there’s only
gloom and the cloud-shrouded shape of the high ground misted so I wonder who
might make a fist of painting that right here right now maybe he of the golden haystacks and the water lilies
Paris so filled with paintings what a feast this wet day reminding me of
sunlight far away in the everlasting beauty of my favorite city finding in my
mind now Monet, Manet on a good lawn, Gauguin, Bonnard and Sisley and Signac
and Seurat, Pissarro too and as well Utrillo their pictures their paintings and
not forgetting for a moment Toulouse-Lautrec and Cezanne and Vuillard oh hello
I don’t entirely remember getting all the way down to Richardson’s or even
returning without noticing but strongly suspect I did anyway whether noting my
passage or not noting a bloke can get carried away on mornings like this: days
of thin rain oh yes that’s right the horses seen again seen twice rolling the
river’s direction all dripping all brown as wet barrels.
FAMILY HISTORY
See A BRIEF LOCATER
also APPENDIX A (Transcription of 1990s Notes by the late Joan
Evard-Ray (1916-1995): Our Great-Great-Grandfather Carly, her family and the
Atherden family) (In THE
EARTHRISE DIARY NOV/DEC 2014).
APPENDIX B: (Transcription
of Joan’s Notes on Our Great-Great-Grandfather William Bradley).
William Bradley was the son of William and Sarah (Durbyn?),
born March 14 1796, baptized at St Matthew, Bethnal Green, April 10 1796;
married at St Bartholomew, the Great West Smithfield, London, December 12 1819,
died at Milnthorpe, Westmorland, November 14 1878. He was the Mayor of St
Alban’s, Hertfordshire in 1868 and was a JP. He married Ann Thompson born
October 17 1797, baptized at St James, Bristol (Somerset).
William had a brother, John who according to a family story
made and lost a fortune in the tin mines in Cornwall and had a sister Sarah
Mary who married: (Arnold?).
You will see on his marriage certificate his father William
and either his mother or sister, both Sarah, signed. I saw the registers of St
Matthew’s Bethnal Green but the only other Bradley was a John, I can’t remember
if it was for a marriage or a child’s birth, perhaps old Williams brother,
hence his son John, too.
Ann Thompson’s baptism at St James Bristol couldn’t be
traced; it may perhaps have been at an outlying parish. Their children were:
1. Maria
Phillips b 4 September 1820 m a Robinson of Doncaster, nearly all of her sons
were doctors or dentists. She was the nigger in the woodpile as far as great
grandfather Edmund was concerned! There was a “cousin Frost” referred to so
often by Harriett, though I don’t know where she came in, who left Edmund some
money but Maria apparently objected and it was put into Chancery and he saw
none of it.
2. William
b 10 December 1822 died 25 July (?) through an accident, buried at Norwood
Cemetery.
3. John
George b 28 December 1823 d 5 April 1844, buried at Norwood.
4. Eliza
Eleanor b 10 March 1825, d 2 January 1902, baptised St Leonard’s Shoreditch,
buried Burton, Westmoreland, married William Stagg.
5. George
Augustus b 30 September 1826, drowned October 1833.
6. Harriett
Kelsel b 26 December 1827, d 17 January 1859, buried Norwood Cemetery, married
Joe Foster of Doncaster. Joe Foster pops up several times. After Harriett’s
death he married her younger sister, Emily, as it was illegal at that time to
marry your deceased wife’s sister they were married in Switzerland. Also, in
the 1851 Census records he is listed in Edmund’s household as a warehouseman
aged 20.
7. Edmund
Durbyn b 24 March 1829, Wilmer Gardens, baptised St Leaonard’s, Shoreditch, d
29 November 1897, buried West Street Cemetery, Durban.
8. Natal, had married Elizabeth Marry Atherden
Carly at St Giles, Camberwell, 10 October 1850.
9. Henry
b 6 March 1831 baptised at St Mary’s Newington, buried Wanganui, New Zealand. I
don’t know whom he married: he had two children, Meredith and Emily (who
married an Alec McNeill, his father was a Sir John McNeill, an equerry to Queen
Victoria; his daughter, Ena McNeill, married the Duke of Argyle and became the
stepmother of Victoria’s daughter, Louise. They don’t concern us of course.
10. Emily
Ann b 16 September 1836, baptised 9 April 1837 at St Mary’s Newington; married
Joe Foster, referred to above.
11. Frederick Augustus b 27 November 1841,
baptised at St Mary’s Newington, died in Durban March 1917, had married Phoebe
Olney. He was an engineer on the Natal Government Railways in Pietermaritzburg.
He had also been in the United States, their only surviving son, Herbert,
stayed on there and married and had a son, Frederick; they were in Trenton, New
Jersey. Frederick and Phoebe also had a small son, Augustus who died having had
haemophilia from Phoebe’s side of the family and a great grandson in
Johannesburg who also had haemophilia and had died when he was six or seven. I
saw the original of William’s will at Somerset House: he left personal effects
valued at under 4,000 pounds and a codicil leaving Frederick (above) an extra
1,000 pounds, presumably to equal the 1,000 pounds he gave to Edmund and Henry
when he kicked them out, having said he would not leave them anything in his
will! He also had shares in the Suez Canal Company!
I am surprised to see I haven’t Edmund’s birth certificate;
however, I saw the entry of his baptism in St Leonard’s, Shoreditch on
microfilm at the Guildhall Library where his father was registered as
Gentleman. Last time I was in England in 1986 I spent my time between Guildhall
Library in London and Canterbury Cathedral Library where I found all of the
Atherdens!
APPENDIX C
(Transcription of Joan’s NOTES on Our Great Grandfather Bradley’s Family):
Edmund Durbyn Bradley b William Gardens 24 March 1829
baptised at St Leonard’s Shoreditch, London, (died 29 November 1897, buried
Wesleyan Cemetery, West Street, Durban, Natal had married Elizabeth Mary
Atherden Carly, b 19 March 1829 at 7 Bolingbroke Row, Walworth, London, d 3
March 1882, buried Wesleyan Cemetery, Grahamstown, Cape Colony). Their children
were:
1. William,
b 78 Wood Street, City of London 22 November 1851d 28 December 1885, buried
Wesleyan Cemetery, King Williams Town Cape Colony. He was a true Cockney (Wood
Street is right opposite St Mary le Bow so he was definitely born within the
sound of Bow Bells. Wood Street was flattened in the Blitz (just a church tower
was left standing in the middle of Wood Street (I’ve forgotten which church).
2. Sarah
Eleanor b at 9 Parsonage Road, Newington Butts, Surrey 16 April 1854, her
grandparents Bradley’s home, died at Grahamstown, 21 September 1862 of
diphtheria, buried at the Wesleyan Cemetery, Grahamstown.
3. Mary
Alice b De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, Surrey 9 March 1856, d Grahamstown, 14
August 1862, diphtheria, buried Wesleyan Cemetery, Durban.
4. Harriett
Foster b De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, Surrey 13 September 1859, d Durban,
14 December 1932, buried Wesleyan Cemetery, West Street, Durban.
5. Edmund
Dane b on board RMS DANE at sea 9
degrees 5 mins North& 18 degrees 54 mins West 22 June 1862 d of typhus
fever (typhoid fever?) 17 March 1873, buried Wesleyan Cemetery, Grahamstown.
6. Ann
Elizabeth b Grahamstown 11 May 1867, married 1 December 1890 Rudolph Solon
Diespecker (stated as Louis Rudolph
Diespecker on marriage certificate) b July 5 1858, died Wynberg, (Cape Town) 25
May 1920). Elizabeth died Victoria, BC, Canada, February 29 1928.
7. Frank
Atherden b Grahamstown 12 February 1870. (Harriett would never talk about him
but I found out from an old letter that he was committed to Town Hill Mental
Hospital, Pietermaritzburg and had apparently lived out his life there. He
could have been only about 26 years old as it was in his father’s lifetime. Now
perhaps it would have been something that could have been dealt with without
sending him to ‘Maritzburg).
Appendix D
(Transcription of Joan’s NOTES on her Grandmother McGregor’s family):
Harriett Foster Bradley married 28 February 1883 at
Commemoration Chapel, Grahamstown to Alexander McKirdy McGregor b Rothesay,
Island of Bute, Scotland 32 October 1852 d 9 December 1889, buried Wesleyan
Cemetery, West Street, Durban. Harriett died 14 December 1932 buried Wesleyan
Cemetery, Durban. Their children:
1. Edmund
William McGregor b King Williams Town 13 December 1883 d 11 January 1940,
buried (as above), married 14 April 1910 to Frances Elizabeth Imeson. Their
children, William Alexander Thomas b 11 April 1911 d 19 July 1972 (two sons and
I daughter Phyllis Doreen b 27 January 1916 d29 October 1987 (7 sons and I
daughter: Ray Doris b 8 December 1920, 2 sons).
2. Alexander
Durbyn Bradley McGregor b London 21 November 1885 d 20 January 1952, married
Mildred Elen Nimmo b 14 October 1916; their children were Trelss b 19 January
1918 d 22 March 1943; Atherden (Den) Nimmo b 3 October 1919, I son and 1
daughter; Milton b 11 July 1928 d August 1928; Llpyd b 8 May 1929 d 2013 (two
daughters, Trelss and ?); Alexander Hay b 11 March 1934 (?)
3. Jane
Eleanor Atherden McGregor b Thomas Street, King Williams Town 20 July 1887 d 7
December 1888, King Williams Town
4. Harriett Foster McGregor (Buntie) b King
Williams Town 20 May 1889 d 11 August 1970 at Durban (Married 21 June 1911 to
René Schneider (name changed to Evard Ray, René’s two grandmother’s names, b 1
June 1883 died Lourenço Marques, Mozambique 16 April 1916). Their children: Alphonse
Durbyn Alexander (Alex) Evard-Ray b Durban 27 April 1912 (d?) and Joan
Madelaine Evard-Ray b Durban 18 March 1916 (d Kloof, Natal, 1995).
CREATIVE WRITING
LOST PATIENT 117
KERRY SMITH
It’s just plain bad luck or good luck, depending on your point of view.
There are many of us who have aortic aneurysms and most don’t know about
it until the aneurysms burst or rupture which is usually fatal. I was
just lucky that my dentist was upgrading her records about ten years ago and
when she heard I was suspected of a heart murmur as a child she refused to
clean my teeth until I had that checked out. It turned out not to be a
heart murmur but a bicuspid aortic valve (two flaps instead of three) that was
giving a ‘different’ sound. One percent of the population suffers from
this glitch and many have to have the valve replaced when they get older
because it wears out or causes leakage. My valve is fine but the
physicians discovered that the ascending part of the aorta was enlarging (an
aneurysm). Regular checkups over the past several years have revealed that it
was getting bigger until early this year it had grown to 53-mm diameter, the
point at which the medicos think something should be done. I have had an
ascending aortic aneurysm cut out and replaced by a cylinder of Dacron.
They lost Patient 117 today: he had vanished
from his room and no picture to show to the new nurse that has been searching
for him for most of the afternoon. He must have slipped out. Absconded. Signed
off. Released him-self. Either way
he's gone.
Can't blame him really. Hospital’s not
a place to hang around. It's not a homely sort of environment. So many changes
of staff that you no sooner get to know their names and there's a new team
being handed over. You form a brief relationship then they're gone; bring on
the new as they plug you into the machine for your "vitals".
They change shift at 7.30-am and again
at 7.30-pm. The handover takes place in front of the patient which is nice
because you get to be reminded what is wrong with you and what they are doing
about it. Occasionally they write it up on a piece of plastic screwed to the
wall but they forget to update that so each day is a bit like Groundhog Day as
you wake up to the same information.
There's a book of course, a folder for
each inmate. A name, number and date of birth that matches the plastic-coated
bracelet strapped to each shaven arm.
There're the names of the medications, what's been done, when it's been
done and who it’s been done by and any tests that have been carried out. Quite
a comprehensive document if it's kept up to date. But there’s no
photo. So they lost the guy in room 117
because they don't know what he looks like.
It's dinnertime. Five o'clock in the
afternoon with the sun streaming through the window so maybe he’ll turn up for
a feed. If he's like me it’s a mystery meal as he's already forgotten what he
ordered over 24-hours ago. It’s turkey with gravy and veggies tonight. The
smallest turkey I have ever seen. Spatchcock-size really but tasty. Some
veggies, a dab of potato mash a splash of salt-free gravy and the meds
again.
Two Panadols now and a Beta-blocker
for supper, just before bed. Ravi the Fijian Nurse has been around at the end
of his 12-hours shift: the only bit of continuity I have had in my stay so we
are old mates now and tonight he sits and tells me about his Dad's battle with
diabetes and heart disease. It's a pancreatic problem evidently and as I listen
I feel his concern for the genetic time bomb in his family that will impose it on
him, too.
As we talk an alarm goes off, one I
have never heard before. Strident and high pitched. The nurse across the hall
is bathing her patient and the patient presses the wrong button. The whole unit
is on immediate alert. Ravi's phone lights up and he has to explain it’s a
false alarm. The nurse opposite is embarrassed but at least we know the alarm
works! Ravi remarks that everyone will be calling up to see what the matter
was. He is a lovely young fellow and has been great to me. Very popular with
the staff and has infinite patience with his trainee sidekick Jose from UTS.
Dinner over. Meds handed out. Vitals
checked and it's just gone 7-pm. Almost time now for the handover to the night
shift ... a story in itself! And time again for the ABC TV News.
The Land of the Living
(Email sent to family
and friends, December 5 2014)
KERRY SMITH
I am sitting in Ward1
looking out the window trying to finish this email before I fall asleep. I have
started this on Day 3 for me. They judge your progress by days after the
operation so I shouldn't expect too much. Day 1 was Tuesday.
Day1 was lost to me as
I was not too aware of things around me but I do remember Susan and Cameron and
Suzanne and Phill coming in which was lovely. I was well drugged and hence spent
most of the time drifting in and out of consciousness. I hear lots of beeps and
people shuffling around the ICU-unit. There are lots of tubes and wires leading
from myself to a multitude of machines with displays that flicker in the night.
I had no pain at all (though my comfort was restricted by all the tubes and
wires) and otherwise things were OK.
Day 2 was another
matter. It started off well with a drowsiness that I could just not overcome
but by nightfall the noise of the ICU was such that I simply could not get to
sleep. Staff had gathered around the central office right outside my room and
it was hot too and one of the nurses took my fan for one of the other patients
and that made my room much hotter. I was getting stressed and uncomfortable.
By 9.30 pm the noise
was horrendous. The ICU was full after Monday's operations and there were staff
everywhere. I was getting hotter by the minute and then my heart decided that
it would go into free fall. My blood pressure went sky high, my pulse was racing
and my oxygen levels fell. My pulse was going up and down at will and one
minute was thumping away in my head and the next, non-existent. It felt like my
heart was shaking my body by the neck. After several tries at different drugs
they got it under control without having to put me on a pacemaker so by about 2-am
things had settled down again.
Day 3 saw me out of ICU
with the stomach drains removed and some of the other stuff taken out which was
much more comfortable. They transferred me to Ward1, Room 106 that was much
quieter. They were still giving me some powerful drugs for pain that caused me
much grief. I can't imagine why people take these things for fun. Every time I
closed my eyes I was off on another trip. Visions like movies that morphed from
the original picture into crazy stuff; faces that changed from the original
(often known) into random faces that melted like candle wax into other scenes.
By nighttime I was wondering which was reality (but that was stopped by the surgeon
who had me back on normal painkillers after that). Even then it took a day for
the visions to subside; imagine driving like that!
Day 4 got much better
as the drugs wore off. The old constipation from the drugs was not improving
though and it's only after some heavy un-block that I am almost back to
"normal" today. Is this too much information? Sorry. Some like
the details but others should skip the parts they can't stomach (to coin a
phrase).
Day 5 finds me in much
better health. I am walking five or six times a day and have just done two
flights of stairs with the delightful physiotherapist with the wonderful Irish
accent. Susan and Denise have visited and I have eaten a normal lunch, the
first normal meal. Things are looking up. My appetite is much smaller now and hopefully
it will remain so. According to the nurse this morning I have lost about 4-5kg
although how she would know is not clear as they didn't weigh me when I came in
but I will take any weight loss I can get!
I can't tell you how
much all your wonderful texts, calls and emails have meant to me. It's a bit
humbling and very comforting to receive your love and well wishes. I don't want
to go through this again but if I did have to then I would like a team like you
behind me. Thank you all for your support.
I have become known for
my long-winded emails so I should end now. This has taken several goes to get
it finished as I get sooooo tired but I feel better now that it's finished.
It's certainly better being on the bright side of life.
Much love from Kerry.
Kerry Smith is a retired teacher who lives in one of the best parts of
the world and loves to travel with partner Susan in their off-road caravan to
parts remote and beautiful.
HOLDUP!
JULIE CRAIG
My friend Lawrence and
I were driving back to his brother's home in Douglasdale (Johannesburg). Law
asked if I could stop off at the local supermarket, one that - incidentally - I
no longer shop at. After we came out we drove off to his brother Neill's home
about 2-km away. We were talking and I was not vigilant. Usually I check to see
nobody is following me. I do this because I used to do trauma counselling for
victims of crimes; I'd worked from various local police stations. I should have
known better than to slip up because I've been well trained.
When we arrived at his
brother's home, in a cul-de-sac, Law got out and opened the back door to take
out his shopping. The next moment there was shouting; I couldn't understand
what was happening until I saw the gun in the man's hand. He was waving the gun
and shouting at Lawrence. There was a second man at my window and he was
shouting, "Give me your money! Give me your bag! Where is your BAG?" Meanwhile
Law was also shouting, "DON’T SHOOT! Jesus is watching! We've just come
from church!"
I told the man my bag
was in the back of the car. I also gave him a valuable-looking zircon ring (R20
from a Chinese shopping mall!). I wasn't frightened. A sense of calm overtook
me and I was silent. I knew I had to give the man what he was demanding. If I
didn't, I could be shot. The man with the gun took Law's watch.
The neighbors had heard
and seen what was happening outside their home: "We've called the Armed
Response people – they’re on their way, just down the road!"
The man at my car
window then grabbed my car key and threw it under the car. Both robbers
panicked. They ran off to their car, parked outside the cul-de-sac. I was
shaken, but got out and searched for the car key.
The people who had sounded
the alarm came out of their property and offered help. The car key was bent; I
supposed the robber had quickly done that with his foot because the metal is
very hard. "The car key is bent; I can't get it into the ignition!"
The man took the key, went inside, and with ease he straightened it.
Shock was setting in as
well as overwhelming gratitude. We were both alive and my car hadn't been
stolen. The men hadn't even taken Law's wallet and he had a fair amount of cash
in it. All I’d lost was R20 and a ring: a total loss of R40. We had every
reason to be thankful we were alive.
The amazing thing was
that I was told on New Year's Day that God's Angels were protecting me and this
I knew but had thought no more of the remark. The woman had given each of us a
bag in which she’d placed odd objects. The bag that I’d chosen had an angel made
of glass sanded by the sea as well as feathers (symbolic of angel wings) and
butterfly shapes (symbolic of the fact that angels were continually protecting
me). It was only on Sunday January 4, three days after she had given us these
things that I realized how prophetically she had spoken. The angels of God were
there with us and with those people who sounded the alarm, too.
Julie Craig lives in Johannesburg, the biggest city in Gauteng, known commonly
as the "gangster province where armed robberies and hijackings are
commonplace."
MAKING GOD LAUGH
SHARON SNIR
I’m a city
gal. Born, bred, schooled and even married (at least once) in Sydney. I can negotiate peak hour traffic, park
my car in a shoebox, drink my café latte on the run and carry fifteen bags of
shopping in one fell swoop.
One year ago
exactly we sold our suburban North Shore home, gave away most of our
possessions and decided to live in Israel for 6-months. It is said that if you want to make God laugh tell him
your plans and God must now be holding his belly after hearing my plans.
On
returning home we thought we were going to housesit for a few short months and
then move into our new home bought off the plan eighteen months earlier. Can
you hear Him giggle? The construction company and the Council decided to
have a standoff, ten paces and the first one shoots the other one dead. The Council
won. The construction company went into an obstinate sulk and stopped work. And
we are left without a permanent place in which to live, couch surfing in the
homes of family and friends.
One warm
spring Sunday whilst enjoying a picnic in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney we
noticed a little blue cottage with a For Sale sign. Boldly knocking on the door
and apologizing for the interruption but asking whether we could have a
look, we bought the house three days later.
This 112-years
old cottage with its large level garden and wide array of fruit trees has
turned my life around in ways I could never have imagined. To begin with
I have given up manicured nails for the sheer joy of digging out and removing
an old privet tree and planting in its place a Tahitian Lime. I walk outside
still wearing my T-shirt from the night before and revel in the dew-soaked
grass drenching my feet and covering them in specks of soil and threads of dry
grass. Kneeling down I begin to weed around a row of azaleas and marvel at the
number of snails that are hiding inside the foliage and decide today that I’ll
find a good way to get rid of them. Me. Who never even thought of gardening but
focused on raising five children and on studying and practicing my chosen
career. I lose myself in an old lemon tree that’s
bulging with young green lemons. I notice tiny yellow buds forming toward the
tips of the branches and many lemons just falling on the ground, another thing
to look into and learn what this means. And before the sun becomes too hot
maybe it’s a good time to plant the three new rose bushes bought at a Wentworth
Falls nursery simply because the fragrance made me buckle at the knees as I was
walking past looking for blueberries to plant beneath the old pine tree where
nothing other than azaleas, camellias and blueberries grow in the pine-acidic
soil.
Time slips
by but I remain engrossed in digging wide holes and filling them with
water before gently removing the English Rose from its black plastic pot and
making sure that it’s planted facing in the right direction. The heat of the day returns me to
another reality and I realize I have not yet washed or even drunk a glass of
water. My back aches and I am filled
with a joy and satisfaction I have rarely known through physical work. One look
back at the morning’s work before I step back in time and to a tiny blue
cottage that found me long before I knew I was ready for it.
Oh! And
these days God and I seem to enjoy a good laugh, together!
Sharon
Snir is a teacher, author and psychotherapist.
Further Factual Words:
Lt. LC Diespecker, MC and the
Sopwith Camel
Artillery
observation also required a crew of two. It was a complex business.
The wireless equipment was too bulky and heavy for planes to carry both a
transmitter and a receiver, so the aircraft flew with a transmitter only. A plane would service a particular artillery battery,
and before takeoff the battery's target was confirmed. Once in the air
the observer had to identify his battery and the target. He would then
transmit a message ordering it to fire. He could usually differentiate
shells that belonged to his battery by measuring the time from when they had
fired till the explosion in the vicinity of the target (Wikipedia).
I’m one of those people
who like nothing better than to write stories mostly fictional or fictive
stories that I’m sometimes able to fashion into novels (I also enjoy
non-fiction writing: essays about my life here at Earthrise and some family
history and military history, for example). I particularly like to imagine
fictional possibilities suggested by factual documents like letters or old
photographs) or triggered by random thoughts passing, scarcely glimpsed ideas
attached to retrospection or reflection or even by ideas arising suddenly as
by-products of the evening news or documentaries or movies on TV: by anything
visual because TV is always a catalyst. It’s the writing that arises from my mind and my having some ability to write and to write creatively, and imaginatively that’s hugely meaningful;
it’s what I most enjoy doing, often doing that quickly thus ‘capturing’ the
notion before it eludes me. (Before I switch off this excellent Turing machine
today, I remind myself, I’ll open a new file that I want to become a second sequel to Happiness, my blood pressure and excitement permitting).
In the previous Diary
(November/December 2014) I had also written a few words about the writing
process and discussed what we might now think of almost as a couple of
frontline ‘dispatches’ (letters to the Victoria
Colonist, a Victoria, BC newspaper which published them May 18 and July 17
1917) and written by my late uncle, Louis C Diespecker (1895-1969). Louis was
at that time a bombardier in the 1st Canadian Artillery Brigade in France. In
1916 2nd Lt. Louis Diespecker won the Military Cross for
“conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty.”
Additionally I quoted
from a book by Nina Straus (“The Astrological
Author” (ND) and appended in The
Literary Almanac; The Best of the Printed Word; 1900 to the Present. New York: MJF Books, 1997). In terms of the
extract that I’d quoted, Louis might have been described as ‘a Pisces author’
because he was born March 10 1895: ‘Pisces
authors are the notorious dreamers of the literary world. Interested in
companions, renunciation, the beginnings and endings of the human time cycle,
they absorb the collective unconscious and display sensitivity to human
suffering. “I believe” is the Piscean watchword, leading to visionary fatalism
or to the transformation of the commonplace.’
Late last year (2014)
there began an exchange of emails between several of us cousins. A researcher
in the UK was seeking information on alumni of the Royal Latin School
(Buckingham) who had served in the Great War (1914-1918), including Louis Cyril
Diespecker. The researcher was John Mellors. John contacted Alex, the son of the late Richard Diespecker
(Richard was the son of Louis Cyril Diespecker and the brother of Louise
Diespecker Lee). Louis Cyril and his
brothers had been pupils at the RLS between 1903 and 1908 and there was mention
of a “L. Diespecker” who had been awarded the Military Cross. Might there be
descendents who could help? Alex had contacted his aunt, Louise. Information
began flowing. Also, Louise had selected some of the icons and memorabilia left
her by her parents: old photos on glass plates were processed as black and
white photos that could be transmitted via email. As described above, one of
those 1903 pictures shows some of the 500 people present in the Adstock House
gardens on August 3 1903 including our grandparents and four of their five
sons, Denny, Louis, Durbyn and Jean (the fifth son, Dick, was born in 1907).
Our adventurous family
used once to be more close-knit and now is far apart in Canada, the USA,
Africa, the UK and Australia. In 1903 the Wright Brothers had only just drawn
the world’s attention to Flight: ‘Orville
(1871-1948) and Wilbur (1867-1912) were the US brothers who pioneered powered
flight. Inspired by Lilienthal’s gliding they perfected their piloted glider,
1902. In 1903 they built a powered machine and became the first to make a
successful powered flight, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina’ (The Wordsworth Dictionary of Biography). Air travel 112-years later is now the
most convenient way for us to meet, to commute, to visit; our emails with photo
attachments of people and documents seemingly with their auras and excitements
whiz even more speedily around the world.
With all of that in
mind I remembered that until a few weeks ago I used sometimes to wonder how my
Uncle Louis, when serving in the Artillery in France, had become a flyer in (I
had thought) the RFC, the Royal Flying Corps. We have all been exchanging
family and official information with pleasure. Much of this new family
information has been impressively found and then shared by John Mellors. There
was reference to and information originating in the RAF Museum in the UK. I
decided to send a query to the Museum. What might the procedure have been (for
an Artillery Officer in 1918 to learn to fly and to become an RAF Officer?
Peter Elliott, Head
of Archives Royal
Air Force Museum, replied:
Thank you for your
enquiry. Many RFC pilots initially flew as Observers before going on to train
as pilots. Your man's service in the Royal Field Artillery suggests that he
could well have flown on artillery cooperation duties. This is confirmed by his
RAF service record showing that he was an observer before being posted to No.1
School of Aeronautics in May 1918, then to No.198 (Night) Training Squadron in
July. A note on the file reads, "to wear wings from 19/10/18".
In the early stages of
the war prospective pilots had to obtain a RAeC certificate - at their own
expense - before training as military pilots. By about 1916 there were military
schools training ab initio pilots and
it was not essential to obtain a RAeC certificate, but many pilots did.
Yours sincerely, Peter
Elliott, Head
of Archives,
Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, London, NW9 5LL.
I was
very pleased to receive this information and also startled: I ought to have
realized that Louis as an Artillery Officer would likely also have flown over battlefields as an observer. In 1948 and
1949 I was a part-time member of the Active Citizen Force in South Africa and
had trained in the South African Artillery. One of my duties had been to assist
in such observation and data collection. In those post-war times our
observations of target areas and the fall of shot were made when appropriate
from high ground and from a distance. At that time in the 1940s it had not occurred
to me that during the Great War (1914-1918) such observations had been made
from British and Allied aircraft in France:
“[Daily] reconnaissance and observation flights were an absolute
necessity for the British gun batteries. As in reconnaissance flights,
artillery observation required the planes to fly steady, predictable
routes. In addition to anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters, observation
aircraft suffered a third danger, and this was from the artillery shells
themselves. They typically flew at an altitude similar to the apex of the
artillery shell's flight, and they flew along a line between the guns and their
targets.
“It
was not unusual for the pilot or observer to actually see the shell as it
stopped at the top of its climb before plummeting downward. It was not
unknown for the planes to be hit by those shells” (Wikipedia).
A British
biplane used for observation over battlefields in France in 1917 or 1918 would
have had two cockpits, plus wireless, camera equipment and likely have been
slow in flight. I can just about imagine a WW1 biplane with its pilot and
observer flying over the battlefield while being fired on. What could be more
dangerous? I don’t know what type
of plane Louis flew in (as observer).
In 1918 Louis
was trained to fly the Sopwith Camel biplane, the most prestigious (single
cockpit) fighter aircraft that
reputedly was also difficult to fly (as well as difficult, at first, to learn to
fly). This remarkable airplane was being manufactured for operational flying on
the Western Front but during the summer of 1917 supplies of the aircraft were
switched to British home defence to counter daylight raids by German Gotha bombers. “When the Germans switched to night attacks,
the Camel proved capable of being safely flown at night, and the home defence
aircraft were modified with navigation lights to serve as night fighters” (Wikipedia).
Further, “For the first time on an operational
British-designed fighter, two Vickers machine guns were mounted
directly in front of the cockpit firing forward through the propeller disc with
synchronization
gear” (Wikipedia).
See detailed
Sopwith Camel information via Google/Wikipedia. See also Active Citizen Force (South Africa).
MY EBOOKS
(1) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel
to my two print novels (not available as eBooks) published in one volume as The Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço Marques. Finding Drina is written in three parts and in three different
styles that also are intended homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway
and Lawrence Durrell); thus this little book is also meta-fiction (novella, about
30-k words).
(2) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian
long story set at Earthrise (about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a
young literary ghost from the 1920s (his girlfriend meets her, too) before a
second old literary ghost, unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.
(3) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian
dystopian long story partly set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k
words). A sniper meets an Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a
celebrity journalist; three of them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a
bloody assassination.
(4) The Selati Line is an early 20th
century Transvaal train story, road story, flying story, a caper story and also
a love story sequel to The Agreement
and Lourenço Marques, lightly
written and containing some magical realism. A scene-stealing child prodigy keeps the characters in order
(novel, about 150-k words).
(5) The Summer River is a dystopian novel
(about 70-k words) set at Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the
Australian Prime Minister and the celebrity journalist witness the murder of a
guerrilla who had also been an Australian university student; they discuss how
best to write an appropriate book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k
words).
(6) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine
and offer likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and
verse novel in which his mother is portrayed as the principal protagonist and I
suggest why the book Elizabeth
(published by Dick Diespecker in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir
or history (non-fiction, about 24-k words).
(7) The Overview is a short Australian
novel set at Earthrise (about 32.5-k words) and is also a sequel to The Summer River.
(8) Scribbles from Earthrise, is an
anthology of selected essays and caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k
words). Topics are: family and friends, history of the Earthrise house, the
river, the forest, stream of consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.
(9) Here and There is a selection of Home
and Away essays (about 39-k words). (‘Away’ includes Cowichan (Vancouver
Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year), The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan
(meeting Sai Baba in India). ‘Home’ essays are set at Earthrise and include as
topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some light-hearted caprices.
(10) The Agreement is a novel set in
Mozambique and Natal during December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an
espionage yarn written around the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement
(1899). Louis Dorman and his brother, Jules, feature together with Drina de
Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for the Portuguese Government. British
Intelligence Officers, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police socialize at
the Estrela Café (about 62-k words).
(11) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in September
1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music: Elvira
Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina and
her companion return with an unexpected new member of the family; Louis faints.
Joshua becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to
film a fiesta and hundreds of tourists visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays
piano for music lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate
(novel: about 75-k words).
(12) The Midge Toccata, a caprice about
talking insects (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories). This book has a
splendid new cover designed by my cousin, Katie Diespecker (fiction, caprice,
about 26-k words).
(13) Happiness is a short novel set at
Earthrise. The ‘narrator’ is again the very elderly ex-ATA flier who
unexpectedly meets and rescues a bridge engineer requiring urgent
hospitalisation: she gets him safely to hospital in his own plane. She also
‘imagines’ an extension to her own story, one about a small family living
partly in the forest and on the riverbank: the theme is happiness. Principal
protagonist is a 13-years old schoolgirl, apparently a prodigy: she befriends a
wounded Army officer and encourages his plans. Her parents are a university
teacher and a retired concert pianist. The family pets can’t resist being
scene-stealers in this happy family (novel, about 65-k words).
(14) The Special Intelligence Officer is part
family history as well as a military history and describes the roles of my late
grandfather in the Guerrilla War (1901-1902) in Cape Colony. The Guerrilla War
was the last phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The title of the
book is taken from Cape newspapers of the time: Capt Rudolph Diespecker was a
District Commandant; his responsibilities included intelligence gathering that
led to the capture, trial and execution of a Boer Commandant who was wrongly
framed as a ‘Cape rebel,’ when he was legally a POW (Gideon Scheepers was never
a Cape rebel, having been born in the Transvaal (the South African Republic,)
one of the two Boer Republics (non-fiction, about 33-k words).
(15) The Letters From Earthrise, an
anthology of my columns and other essays and articles written for the Australian Gestalt Journal between 1997
and 2005 (fiction and some non-fiction, about 70-k words).
(16) The Darkwood
is a dystopian novel set at Earthrise in the not too distant future (about 80-k
words). Earthrise is again central to other themes.
(17) Bellinger; Along
The River is an anthology of personal essays relative to my home and the
property, Earthrise, and the river at my doorstep (aspects and descriptions of
the river, including flooding) (nonfiction, about 28-k words)
(18) Reflecting:
an anthology of personal essays about the gardens, butterflies, a caprice, and
other motivating factors at my home, Earthrise: mostly non-fiction (20,300
words)
(19) Idling: is a
collection of personal essays about seeing; a military history essay; a
speculation about lawns; a working visit to Griffith University; periods of
enforced idleness as “Don’s Days Out” in Coffs Harbour (mostly non-fiction;
about 35,600 words).
(20) Bear Fat A
Memoir by Durbyn C Diespecker (1896-1977) with
Notes and a Biography Edited by Don Diespecker. This partial memoir (that I’d invited in 1950) was written by my father between
1950 and 1969 and describes aspects of his life in South Africa, the UK and
British Columbia, Canada (non-fiction; 47,900 words).
Thank you to my
guest writers, Kerry Smith, Julie Craig and Sharon Snir; and thank you to my
cousin, Louise Lee, for permission to use materials from her Family Collection.
Best wishes to all Diary Readers from Don.
Don Diespecker (don883@bigpond.com)
