Nadine Williams

A flurry of happenings make life a joy

Some days simply need to be endured, such as today which is my late husband’s birthday – the third since he died two years ago last month.

Yes there is sadness on such an anniversary, but it is also important to acknowledge that simple things have become pleasurable again.

Yesterday, for instance, my friend Sheryl and I took our three dogs for a walk in Belair national park and here I found many mushrooms thrusting themselves up amongst the green winter grasses.

My mind was filled with such pleasant memories of how Olivier would take me mushrooming to his favourite spots, that I feel the sadness of grief is behind me. He is with me in every activity, but he dwells in my thoughts as a warm presence rather than a well of despair of the past two years.

When people say “Time heals’’, 2014 has brought a flurry of happenings to make life enjoyable once more.

An exceptional Australia Day, for instance, where Sydney friend Jane and former Adelaidean, Sue Mapp and I watched the celebrations at Sydney Harbour from the corner window of the Contemporary Arts Museum.  There is not a better spot in Sydney to watch the ferry race, or the flotilla of yachts, or the parachutists floating down into the water, or the sky-writer above. A marvellous hot summer day celebrating our marvellous, democratic country with women friends brought such joy.

However, nothing brings as much joy as the grand-children. Joyful after the birth of grandchild, number 5, grandson Zachary, I flew to Brisbane to attend Grandparents’ Day at Redeemer College, where my three older grandchildren attend school.  This was such a special experience as the school children presented songs, musical performances and skits to reflect their lives – and also their thoughts on their grandparents. I had lunch with my oldest grandchild,  12-year-old Samuel and my other two, Angus, 10, and Josephine, 7, escorted me around the campus in the afternoon.  They made me feel very special, showing me their work and introducing me to their friends.  I was elated for the whole five days I spent with them.  My daughter, Serena, has a busy life, too, and I was happily deposited in coffee shops to read and write while she went to the gym or conducted her own deadlines. Son-in-law Jon was away in South Africa – so my daughter and I managed to snatch some mother/daughter time each day.

Returning home to Adelaide when your adult children live interstate is never easy when you are a widow. However, I step into my garden and listen to the birds who seem to rejoice in song at my homecoming.  Finally, after a few days of “adjustment’’ (loneliness) I embrace anew, my independent life with my dog, Oscar.

 

Hicks gives goss on Hollywood stars

Oscar-winning Welsh actor, Anthony Hopkins can be “really stroppy’’, Clive Owen brings “a laugh onto the movie set’’, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is “so unpretentious’’, says renowned Australian film maker and screenwriter, Scott Hicks.

These titillating snippets were among tales of Hollywood stars from Hicks in an entertaining Q & A with Dr Nick Prescott at a fundraiser for the Women’s and Children’s Hospital held at the Belair Country Club yesterday (Monday June 23).

However, before the packed audience, Hicks was quick to qualify his quips:

“Anthony Hopkins is a lovely man, and extravagantly talented, but he does have a dark side,’’ he said.

And he heaped layers of praise on Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose skills as a dancer were a bonus on the movie set.

“She is such a hard worker; so unpretentious in her manner and carries no airs and graces,’’ Hicks said.

“She is a real trooper on set, that “roll up your sleeves and get on with it’’, personality.’’

The Oscar-winning film, Shine, had taken Hicks 10 years to bring to the screen, but he believed passionately both in the story of David Helfcott and that unknown theatre actor at the time, Geoffrey Rush was the ideal actor to play him.

But the American studios were not impressed.

“Nobody was interested in making this film; they thought David was a crazy pianist, but he is an extraordinary personality,’’ he said.

Imitating the scenario with an American accent, Hicks recounted the Americans’ reaction.

“Geoffrey Rush was a huge obstacle, because in America they said: “Who is he?’’

“I replied “he is very busy theatre actor,’’ but he has never made a movie.’’

“Then they said “Forty three years old: What kind of failure hasn’t had a film before 43?’’

Hicks believed his “basic element’’ to take actors seriously and tune into them was one of the keys to his successful film-making.

“I have seen a lot of other directors get very bound up with the technology and become removed from the actors,’’ he said.

“I am not hidden behind a big bank of cameras. I am sitting by the main camera watching the actor, even their body language, so they can get feedback on what they have done.

“They get lost in their own world and someone says “cut” and it becomes as if they didn’t exist.

“But with Geoffrey Rush, you say “cut’’ and instantly he is simply Geoffrey.’’

Hicks believed his own experience at acting at Flinders University gave him empathy and respect for actors.

“I found out very soon that I was not an actor, but there were 10 seconds when I got the feel of what it would be like to be in front of the camera,’’ he said.

“I was playing Rupert Murdoch and for my sins I had to sing a song, too.

“It was the one only performance and there was a moment where I actually totally believed what I was doing and it came out as if I was made for it. It quickly evaporated, but in that 10 seconds I understood that is how an actor feels.’’

He said it was “such a precious gift’’ to expose yourself in emotion by being an actor.

Making films was a curious medium. “Film-makers forget that they do have to surprise and delight the audiences..give them that light at the end of the tunnel.

“You want your mind agitated and your emotions activated. People want to take away something that lifts their lives.’’

There were local stories too about young actor Harrison Gilbertson whom he has cast in his latest project – Fallen , a Gothic supernatural romance, the first of a series of four young adult movies based on novels by Lauren Kate. After filming five months in Budapest, he is back in Adelaide doing the first edit before it moves into post production in Montreal, Canada.

The audience followed his stellar career from early failures as a fledgling actor at Flinders University through an early lucky break doing a documentary with China’s Army just prior to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and into feature films such as The Boys are Back and Snow Falling on Cedars.

Meanwhile, the one actor he wished he could work with was Dame Judy Dench.

 

Security skipped in scramble to leave Paris

My dear French friend, Dominique Bievre, who lives in Valance, France recently visited Paris and then got caught in the crippling SNCF rail transport strike.  As soon as he arrived home, he sent this gem of an email, which sums up French society in a manner which only a native-born French person could.

“I manage to get home OK in a train in which you couldn’t fit another sole! I wonder where were gone strict security rules of SNCF…… We are definitely living in a world of bullshit.

I tried to anticipate the problem and went yesterday night to Gare Montparnasse (not too far from my hotel) in order to change my ticket for another train, I queued for one hour and got the ticket for a seat next morning. This morning arriving at Gare de Lyon I was unable to find my train that was not running…shit…. So I waited for the next one and hop on without any reservation, half of the train was in the same situation and despite our frustration being seated on the stairs we had good laughs and I reached Valence at 14H30.

For the record SNCF unions went on strike when SNCF and VFDF (the rail tracks) were separated a few years ago, they are on strike today because they do not want to be re-united…bloody French, never happy with whatever.”

 

 

World-famous women must inspire teens

News about three outstanding women of the world today deserve attention as female role models – Hilary Clinton, Dr Catherine Hamlin and world renowned primate expert and conservationist, Dame Jane Goodall.  One thing which inspires me is that they are all ageing women, and are still planning and working for the good of others.

The odds are that Hilary Clinton, wife of former UN president, Bill Clinton,  is preparing to run for president of the United States according to news outlets around the world.  What an amazing woman, who has overcome the indiscretions of her wayward husband, Bill, to remain married and to say publicly that she is “over Monica Lewinski”.   She has refused to be defined by her husband and has set her course to follow him into the White House.  Of course, any bitterness over her husband’s proposed impeachment vear the Lesinwki affair would have hampered her own plans for her own future.  She has been a successful Senator and, although she lost her first attempt at being elected president of the United States, she was a powerful, effective US Secretary of State. This was a role she conducted impeccably.  Now, it seems, she is positioning herself to have another crack at the top job in the world.

I wish her well and hope she succeeds.  She has an incredible record and one hopes the voters of the United States can see her strength and back her for the most powerful prestigious role today.

Why have I chosen Hilary, who hasn’t yet announced her final decision?  Because in The Advertiser this week, there was a small news item entitled “Women miss Life Targets”.  It reads that researchers report almost two thirds of women studied had a detailed life plan they wanted to follow in their teens – with targets such as achieving a driver’s licence before the age of 20, and getting engaged at the age of 26.

Their vision for themselves involved meeting “the one” by the age of 24, having children by 27 and reaching the tope of their career ladder by 34.

Only a quarter described their life as “spot on” according to their own goals.

Unfortunately, one in two claimed to have missed major milestones and almost 25 per cent said events had taken them off course, far from their original plan.

…

Dame Jane Goodall, was in Adelaide last week on her 80^th birthday tour of Australia. She visited Cornerstone College in Mt Barker after urging students to join her global Roots and Shoots youth movement.

The program, founded in Tanzania in 1991 has succeeded in involving thousands of youth groups in 136 countries to become involved in community and environment projects.

Dr Goodall shows no sign of slowinig down despite turning 80 in April and over the weekend she received an honoroary doctorate from UniSA recogniing her contribution to science, primatology and conservation.

Lastly, and importantly, Dr Catherine Hamlin, has achieved one of the highest world honours, being name as a nominee in this year’s Nobel Prize.

More than 50 years ago, in 1958 Dr Catherine Hamlin and her husband Richard, answered an advertisement in The Lancet medical journal for an obstetrician and gynaecologist to establish a midwifery school at the Princess Tsehay Hospital in Addis Ababa.

They arrived in 1959 on a three-year contract with the Ethiopian government but only about 10 midwives had been trained before the government closed the school. The Hamlins had never seen an obstetric fistula before — they were an “academic rarity”^[2] having been virtually eradicated in the United States. (The first fistula hospital closed its doors in New York City in 1925.)^[2]

Seeing many cases arrive at the school, the couple decided to create a dedicated hospital. Fifteen years later, they founded Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.^[3]

Her skills as a surgeon has restored the sexual lives – and social respectibility in tribal society – of many pubescent African girls, most under age, who have suffered vaginal fistulas after giving birth to children before their bodies are able to birth without causing extensive damage.

Hamlin lives in her cottage on the grounds of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital as she has done for over thirty-five years. She remains very active in the work of the hospital and operates every Thursday morning. Richard Hamlin is actively involved in the activities of the hospital and sits on its Board of Trustees.^[4]

 

 

Some Days Are Diamonds for Sisters

My sister Anne has a crammed life, but today we shared some incredibly uplifting sisterly events.

On the eve of Mothers Day, we bought chrysanthemums from a road stall and visited our mother,
Florrie’s grave at the Enfield Memorial Park.  This is the first time in many years that we have joined our hands to reflect together on how privileged we have been to have such a great mum. It is 17 years since she died and we reminisced on how we still miss her. But she has missed so much in our family life, especially the births of 10 great grand-children. The 10^th little fellow, Anne’s second grand-son was born a week ago and our prime purpose of today is to visit the baby at home with his mother, Sonya (my niece, of course).

But first, we sisters stop at the Elizabeth Shopping Centre for lunch. (If it is good enough for Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge to visit the hub of Elizabeth’s suburban life, then we felt at home settling down at the Louisiana Tavern for fillet steak and chips with Bearnaise sauce and salad.

Then Sonya texted her mother asking for help bathing baby and her cry for grandmotherly help with her first child had us rushing back to the car without coffee to a suburb further north.

Three daughters and one daughter-in-law of our big family have given birth to five babies in 21 months and each child is so delightfully new and precious, as is the latest newborn, a boy named Luca.  A 3kg little fellow, his gushing grandma Anne immediately changed a stinky pooey nappy while mother Sonya prepared his baby bath on the kitchen table.

“It’s a very stylish bath,’’ I commented running my hand along the sculpted side and eyeing off the little plug in the bottom.

“I gave Sonya the bath for Christmas,’’ said Anne proudly.

It was such a happy scenario as we watched entranced as Anne splashed little Luca, who clearly enjoyed the sensation.  Then, it was time for him to be dried, carefully in every delicate fold of his skin,  and dressed and soothed off to sleep in the bouncer.

A month ago, I fell in love with my own grandson, Zachary, who, at five weeks old has gained much weight to be 5 kgs.  Over Easter I was privileged to stay with son Tyson and daughter-in-law Vanessa and during that time, the Mothercraft nurse visited the new mother in her home.   Memories flooded back of my own parenting as a first-time mother in my mid 20s. It is such a long time ago, but I remember the initial awe at the sight of my first-born, daughter Serena.    However had I delivered such an exquisite child?     My two other children triggered the same delight and self-satisfaction – at giving birth after a short four hour labour to Felicia and nine years later that hazy first look at my last child, son Tyson, after recovering from anaesthetic and a caesarean.

To relive it all through grand-children (I have five now) and grand-nieces and grand-nephews  is a precious passage of time and sure compensation for the ageing process.  Each moment is a joy to sit and watch and admire the next generation of young mothers slip easily into their vital role.

Amidst this reflection, the British-born mothercraft nurse  was happy with Zachary’s progress.   He presented as a picture of health and contentment and when he piddled high into the air when his nappy was removed, this was hailed by the nurse as a sign of a healthy newborn.

“A strong stream is a sign of a healthy babe,’’ said the nurse, who had a distinct English accent.

However, today Sonya was tired and soon we were visiting our 92-year-old auntie Lilian at the other end of the life spectrum.  Auntie Lillian lives in a residential care facility in Elizabeth and was delighted with our unexpected visit.   She was reading a book for the visually impaired, but put it down to grasp each of us with both hands.  It was a powerful action, linking us in a triangle of familial women.  Auntie has glaucoma, like our father Frank, but this doesn’t stop her watching the Port/Fremantle footy match on television in the common room.

When a staff member handed me a survey to be filled out with Auntie her responses proved that she was a contented resident.

“It’s my home,’’ she said.

“I bring myself here, although I need my walker,’’ she added of her pose in a large lounge chair in the common room.

“I decide what I want to do and sometimes I go to exercises, but not often.’’

“And I do my own hair.’’

What she was saying was that he still ran her own life to the best of her ability in a nursing home.

However, what warmed my soul  as we drove to do grocery shopping together, was we had held hands at mum’s grave, we had caressed baby and frail aged Auntie Lilian gripped both of us simultaneously with her still strong hands.  These were all beautiful gestures of belonging and of being women of the same lineage.

This wonderful feeling will linger hopefully tomorrow, on Mothers Day,  May 11, when my own children are all interstate.   Tomorrow will also commemorate the death of my husband Olivier two years ago.  These days sadness has been usurped by such joys of living as my sister and I shared today.

 

 

Hollande’s private life pales his presidency

There’s always something happening with ‘sex’ and the French!

And presently, French president, Francois Hollande is the star act. He continues to court emotional and political disaster because of his sex life – or should I say lack of it of late.

In France, the Prime Minister, Manuel Valls has the power to install whomever he wishes in his Ministry and they do not need to be parliamentarians of his own ilk, or even voted into parliament.

However, it is ironic that in the huge shakeup of the French Government, who should benefit from the fray, but none other than powerful French politician, Segolene Royal, who for almost a quarter of a century was the defacto wife of French president, Francois Hollande – and the mother of his four children!

Now she has been installed as the new “Ministère de l’Ecologie” in the government of her former common law husband Francois.

So, whilst her arch rivale Valery Trierweiler, stole Hollande from Segolene’s bed chamber at the very time she was standing for president of France, the worm has turned. Trierweiler has been ushered out of the Elysses Palace by the president in a very public breakup, and, it seems Segolene is now back in favour, politically at least.

For many years, Hollande and Royal were the socialist power couple of France and it was surely a cruel trick of fate that Segolene should lose the French election to Sarkozy and that her estranged partner, Francois Hollande should win the coveted presidency five years later.

Meanwhile, the hot love affair between Hollande and French actress/comedienne Julie Gayet has also soured with news from France that the high profile actress has not been able to cope with the pressure of being the president’s pet and has been worried about the affair’s impact on her career. So, she called it all off.

Ah, but this is not the end, it seems. According to Closer magazine, the same French mag which sprang Hollande’s night time trysts with Gayet, now announces that Hollande has begun seeing Trierweiler again dining with her in a restaurant for all to see.

One can only hope that he is more decisive over his policies than he seems to be in his private life.