Nadine Williams

Mandy marries lesbian love

Former Adelaide business leader, Mandy Keillor has been as straight as her black bob hair style all her life. Now at 47 years of age, she admits to having turned lesbian in her late 30s after being wooed  by a gay woman who was her pilates instructor.   “Natalia is a lesbian and left a female partner to be with me,’’ recounts Mandy.

Mandy, on the other hand, had always been with men, including a marriage when she was very young to the father of her two sons.

“I am a person who is open to love and that is what I told my children when we started a relationship…that it was about love,’’ says Mandy who was the president of executive women’s group, Women Chiefs of Enterprise.

“What is really amazing about my own union is when we started being together I didn’t think of the repercussions,’’ she adds. “ It felt so good and it felt so natural. The love came first.’’

Mandy was very much a home grown success story in Adelaide having been educated at Gepps Cross Girls’ High School and lobbying against entrenched gendered roles in society, particularly the building industry.  Turning lesbian,  however, has had its difficult issues particularly when she came out to her sons.

“They have obviously been through a lot in their life with me. I was a mother at 20, sole parent at 25, and I was the first female builder in South Australia.

“They just wanted me to be normal,’’ she recalls. “The last thing they wanted me to tell them is that I was about to be in a relationship with another woman.”

Her oldest son lashed out in harsh words…”His words were “everyone’s always thought you were a dyke builder and now you are going to be a dyke builder!@’.’’

“I told him, “ First of all, I am not a dyke. It’s not a very nice word. I have fallen in love with a woman and that is another person and it is about two people falling in love. They had this stereotypical idea of what it going to be like to be with a woman.

“They didn’t understand until  they met her, when they could see that she was really an amazing human being and not at all stereotypical; quite different from  what was in their head.’’

We are sitting in Urban Bistro, the trendy  eatery opposite the Victoria Park racecourse, sipping a local wine and nibbling on marinated olives and the questions about how this metamorphosis happened tumble out.

Q: What triggered your coming out?

“Natalia was in love with me for 18 months before she told me. She will tell you she fell in love with me and tried not to feel that way because she loved her  partner at the time and she admitted to her “Well, I am going to tell Mandy how I feel’.’’

“She invited me for a coffee and told me her feelings. I told her she was crazy.’’

It was the surprising beginning of an eight year relationship, which sees Mandy wear the diamond-encrusted wide wedding ring Natalia gave her on their wedding ceremony in Spain five years ago.

We discuss Australia’s Marriage Act and its definition of marriage being between a man and a woman, and how it is entrenched  in the collective mind of the electorate as being unequivocal. This is despite a Private Member’s Bill seeking to amend the Act to include same sex couples.

Q: What are the main issues that the Australian public has to grapple with over gay marriage?                                                                                                                                                                   

“Somehow it is still seen as a novelty, especially for someone like myself who has been so straight most of my life.

“People don’t take it seriously as a life choice which is very important as to who you are as a person.

Q:  From your own experience, what is it about gay marriage which people reject?

“I think it is fear of the unknown; they don’t understand. Australia is conservatively indoctrinated. We have had a very conservative government, the longest serving government which was very much in bed with the Americans.

“IN  America, when gay marriage was approved in California, they overturned the amendment in California. It was passed and then revoked it.

“There are only 17 countries in the world where gay union is recognised.

“The reality is we can be of the same sex and fall in love with each other; it happens because for them it’s natural. You are born with those tendencies.’’

Mandy says she has grappled with feelings for other women in the past but never knew how to deal with them.

“I was a sole parent with two boys, running my own building company, the first female builder in South Australia. The last thing I could even think about was questioning my sexuality. Those feelings were such a surprise.’’

Mandy was married to her sons’ father the first time for six years and her second relationship, with another man,  lasted 11 years. “ I have been in relationships with men all my life.’’

Q: What is the difference between being with a woman rather than a man?

“I cannot speak for other people, but for me, it’s the first time in my life I feel whole. It is weird for people to hear me say that.

“People put the emphasis on the sexuality rather than the fact that it is a relationship between two human beings.

“If you have two men together, two women together or a man and a woman together, we all go through the same chemical reaction, the (falling in love) brain chemistry, the same attraction, the same ups and downs of any relationship.

“It’s the commitment to being in a relationship with another person which makes it the same life choice.’’

“That whole notion of homosexual behaviour is still confronting to many peopleand I cannot tell you why, especially when I live in that (gay) community.’’

She talks of the world-wide gay community being inclusive.

“I feel  very happy to be in it.’’

It was Mandy’s idea to go to Spain. She had visited Barcelona years beforehand and always vowed to return. She  intended to live there and set up her building company.  On the other hand, Natalia, a  contemporary dancer was going to Germany to dance professionally.

However, as the date of parting drew nearer, Natalia decided to go to Spain with Mandy.

Q: What were you looking for in Spain?

“I wanted a new challenge, people do stop growing.

“ I had worked for 13 years as a interior designer/builder, but I wound down the business, Keillor Building Associates,  and only told my trades a week before I left.’’

Mandy designed the first Cibo café and the immensely popular Chainti Classico restaurant.

However, at the first meeting with a building contact in Barcelona, she knew it wasn’t going to work in a new country.

“I was meeting with a well-known interior designer, Donna Kelly, whom I had corresponded with beforehand.

“She started talking to me about the building industry and my eyes glazed over and I decided I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t find 30 blokes, train them in a different language and do the same things I had done in Australia.’’

Instead the two women capitalised on Natalia’s skill as a teacher of Pilates and Mandy’s business management acumen.

“We walked out of the meeting  and I said to Natalie  “we are going to start up a Pilates studio.’’

Their business, Studio Australia Barcelona, has grown at a rate of 25 per cent a year into a successful health and wellness centre.

“I teach body sculpting and body shaping because I have also been a body builder,’’ says Mandy, who certainly walks her talk with a slim body and blooming with health.

“We have more than 1000 clients or patients and we do a couple of hundred sessions a week.’’

She says living in Spain has left her feeling more European, but  she is “actually proud to be Australian’’.

“The best thing about being Australian is we aren’t constrained by history. We break our own rules; we take the best that the world has to offer and we shape it to be ours. It stops us being inhibited.”

They are unusual  thoughts coming from a lesbian who had to cross the world to marry.

More on Mandy on www.studioaustraliabarcelona.com.

 

 

 

 

Grand old auntie at 90

Auntie Lilian, my father Frank’s younger sister turned 90 and I threw an afternoon tea for relatives to celebrate . The old lady, who lives in  a self-contained hostel unit, is the matriarch of our large extended famil. My 93-year-old dad and my other two surviving aunties, Yvonne and Betty, her widowed sisters-in-law were other elderly guests.

As they sit on the settee sipping from pretty porcelain cups, I mull over their lives and how tragedies in Lilian’s and Yvonne’s lives taught me profound lessons about  grief.

Yvonne’s only son was 15 when he had an road accident in Crafers and was killed instantly. I will never forget that evening when my mother sent me, the oldest of her five children, to comfort her the same evening as the tragedy.

I didn’t know it then but I experienced a hard lesson of life in the cruel nature of grief, how it renders people emotionally numb. My auntie was so grief-stricken that I could hardly stand to look upon her pain. Recently, Yvonne also lost an adult daughter, my younger cousin to cancer, which has left her with only one daughter, Trudy, because her husband, Uncle Alan died about a decade ago.

Lilian, too, has had a walloping of grief in her early married life. She has only one son, who did not attend her birthday party, but she also gave birth to a little girl, named Heather in Renmark Hosdpital on Christmas Day. She was the second child and nobody noticed in the skeleton staff that Heather was a rhesis baby, which meant her blood was different from her mother. Despite an ambulance dash to Adelaide, tiny Heather died. I can still recall that little white coffin propped up on the arms of a chair in grandma’s humble State Bank bungalow alongside the railway line at Islington.  I was five or six years old. I can picture Lilian that day, sitting, prostrate with grief, unable to say anything to anyone.  I can still remember watching the sad troupe of family and church friends walking behind the hearse over the railway line  to the Islington Cemetery opposite grandma’s house.

Ten years ago, when I interviewed Auntie Lilian on her 80^th birthday, I asked her the saddest moment of her life and the gentle old lady wept for the daughter she had lost 50-something years ago. Yet, today, the sun shines outside and myt Auntie is all smiles as sister Anne leads her to blow out the candles on her cake and we all sing “Happy Birthday’.

My grandmother, Emily was pregnant with Auntie Lilian on the sea voyage out from England in 1921 when she and grandpa, Harry, migrated with their two little boys, my dad, who was 2 and Uncle Les, who was one year old. When we travelled back to meet the English family in  1978, we learnt that grandma had been sick every day of the four-month voyage she described as a “never-ending nightmare’’.

Dad’s family has not been close-knit, but Auntie Lilian and I have shared our lives sporadically and I have taken the aunties out to lunch for Lilian’s birthday for the last few years.

I had not seen Trudy for 35 years, but we connected again instantly although I am almost a decade older.

The elderly aunties arrived with scones and shortbread to add to the cup cakes, apple tarts, , spinach turnovers, quiches and sausage rolls that I made this morning. My mother, Florrie, always cooked up a wonderful afternoon tea, and my sister Anne upheld family tradition by bringing rum balls, It looked a magnificent spread around the birthday cake.

The  Aunties are ageing well, but it is dad, who is visually impaired and deaf, who holds court, leading conversation. But first he weeps, touching his sister and saying “Is it really you, Lil?’’

He lives in low residential care at Renmark and had telephoned me to ask to see her for her birthday. Dad makes rare requests and so my son, Tyson went to Renmark to pick him up and he is staying with us at our home. Once he is settled in his chair, next to his sister, he reminisces how Lilian had played a pivotal role in meeting our mother, who was working as a Land Army girl on picking fruit block on the adjoining block.

“I saw your mother on the bus, this stunning looking brunette in shorts and I said to Ted (Lilian’s husband) “how do I meet that girl”?,’’ dad recalls.

“He answered ‘Well, Jim borrowed my ladder and you can go and get it back if you like’,’’ he says.

He laughs and adds “And look at all the people here today from our meeting.’’

There are 15 people here today, by no means all the family, and not my two daughters particularly, who live interstate, but we are bonded by blood and marriage and. amazingly, we are aged from 17 to 93. My only regret is that mum isn’t here to enjoy the party.

As the old aunties, full of thanks and praise, climb into Trudy’s car, it occurs to me that I feel uplifted by giving pleasure to others – and in retirement I have the time to enjoy.

 

Welcome Giulia, Farewell Loulou

The year in France had its moment of joy with the birth of Giulia Sarkozy, daughter of one-time supermodel  Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, 43, and the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy. (Hands up those who thought the marriage wouldn’t last).

Mr Sarkozy missed the birth because of an urgent meeting in Frankfurt to try to stitch up a rescue package for the Eurozone crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.    He spent a mere 50 minutes with the infant and her mum before rushing off to a waste disposal centre in western France, thus dismissing his paternity leave rights.

“We are fortunate enough to have a great joy,’’ Sarkozy told the assembly of workers.

“All the parents here can understand our very profound joy, a joy that is all the more profound for the fact that it is private.’’

They cheered the president and presented him with a bib for the new bub, an oak tree for the garden and Mince Alors, a book for Carla. Ironically, translated as “Thin Then’’, the book gives advice on losing weight, particularly after pregnancy and how not to become obsessed with dieting.

Ironically, Carla is making a very public appearance right now in cinemas around Australia with a bit part as a tour guide in Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris.

French media reckons France’s First Lady is unpopular,  yet Italian-born Carla has proved to be a stylish, gracious and beautiful consort to the President.

On a much sadder note, French fashion legend, Loulou de la Falaise, Saint Laurent’s colourful muse, died at her home in northwest France this year, aged 64.

Louise Vava Lucia Henriette Le Bailly de la Falaise acted as Yves Saint Laurent’s “creative partner, confidante and sentinal’’ for three decades from 1972 until 2002, according to the obituary published in The Times.

She had eccentric roots with a wild Irish beauty, Rhoda Lecky Pike as her grandmother and a mother who said she christened her newborn daughter with perfume instead of water in 1948. However, because of her mother’s many affairs, little Louise was placed in foster care.

At age 20, she was a junior editor of Queen magazine when she met Saint Laurent, who had established his fashion house six years beforehand upon the death of Christian Dior in 1958.

De la Falaise and Saint Laurent immediately took to each other. “Apart from her striking red-haired, wisp-thin beauty, he was attracted by her directness of manner and edgy sense of humour.  After a disastrous showing in 1971, she appreciated his gesture in sending her a box of high-cut emerald green fox fur coats,’’ The Times reported.

Within three years, Loulou was in Paris working with Saint Laurent, making jewellery for his fashion shows.

Loulou launched her own fashion label and eccentric accessories upon the retirement of Saint Laurent.

Once when asked what clothes she collected, she said: “I don’t collect clothes – I hand them down. They do sometimes turn into a pile of dust, but that’s tribute to a good life.’’

 

Oscar has overtaken our house

Meet the newest member of our household, a handsome, hybrid poodle/Maltese/Shi Tsu named Oscar. Our new puppy is an adorable bundle of fluff, champagne coloured with an angelic face which belies his wicked playfullness.  He is the tiniest little soul and yet he is like a charged electric current of energy in our household.   He wakes at  about 6am, he whines to be let into our bedroom and he then bounces about our bed like the bunny in the battery TV ad. The four-legged dynamo does not stop racing through the house, chasing his own tail around the lawn, and already at 11 weeks of age, he has developed eccentricities.  He loves shoes and shoe-laces and has a thing for smelly socks! His teeth have the strength of a lion already because he will drag husband Olivier’s big shoe – bigger than Oscar himself – down the hall to his lair. His new padded basket is where he deposits his precious things and he doesn’t mind being popped into a carry bag provided he can poke his head over the top.

His favourite toy is a fluffy mouse and he has learnt how to stamp his paw on a pirate toy which squeaks.  Some of our well-meaning friends questioned the wisdom of buying a puppy because of our harrowing journey with Olivier’s cancer, which continues. Yet Oscar has been the best decision. He is one big bundle of joy to us both and we are like doting parents, laughing at his antics throughout the day; worrying if he is out of sight. But the best outcome is that Oscar has become our focus on happiness – an antidote for the sadness which lurks in our life. And his playful tricks keep our minds off Olivier’s cancer prognosis.  He is a big part of the art of living fearlessly in the shadow of terminal illness.

However, one of the big problems with owning a puppy is toilet-training as this is crucial for the future enjoyment of having a pooch in your everyday life.  Luckily, Oscar’s breeder, an efficient woman named Rae, had trained him to piddle on paper and our beautiful new home is now strewn with patches of newsprint at every doorway,  which he uses most of the time.  The idea is you gradually reduce the number of newspapers to just one, by the doggie door. However, his poops are another matter altogether and we must watch our feet and keep the carpeted bedrooms closed.  This is the reason he has been banned from sleeping in our bedroom overnight.

Any words of wisdom about toilet training puppies out there in cyberland?

Meanwhile, here are the latest pix of our 11-week-old puppy.

Talent galore

What a talent pool of artists this festival state of ours has spawned.

When naïve artist Marie Jonsson-Harrison held a girlie lunch for a group of fellow female artists, they were invited to bring samples of their works which revealed amazing diversity in medium and artistic style.

The group has been meeting irregularly for 20 years, and was founded by three naïve artists – Valli Palmgren, Ursula Kiessling and our host Marie (of course), who then invited other artists to attend as guests.    These include Jenni Mumford and Lynley Cooper,  both recognised contemporary artists and Marie’s neighbours Sarah Philips, who is a talented muralist and abstract artist and Suzie Flashman,  whose medium is photography.

It was an exciting, stimulating meeting of talents – and all in an exceptional environment on her large balcony seemingly suspended in the sky with far reaching views up and down St Vincent’s Gulf.  And vegetarian Marie’s table was stacked with healthy foods, too. A wonderful gathering of the sisters!

 

Are We Any Different? by Cheryl Bridgart

Popular textile artist Cheryl Bridgart is delighted at the success of her present exhibition, Are We Any Different?  at the Adelaide Zoo’s exhibition space.

As always, Cheryl presents her artworks with great style and the Zoo is the idea space for her mix of paintings and embroidery which depict the relationship between animals and humans in  vibrant fashion.

Opening night was a wonderful statement  of her talents exhibited in  the ideal venue at the new exhibition centre at the gates of the Zoo.

The space was packed and she sold 29 paintings of the 45 on display on the night.  Cheryl  spent 12 months sketching the animals at the Zoo and Monarto and then used acrylic paint on linen for the paintings, but she embroiders on paper which she has washed beforehand.  “It takes hundreds of hours to have the stitching create the artwork,’’ she says.

Cheryl  is known  internationally for her fine art freestone machine embroidery where she creates portraits and fant

asy pieces, animals and landscapes.

In a recent accolade, the Zoo has extended the term of the exhibition until January 31.

“I wanted to capture that blend of human and animal connection and on opening night many people told me the art brings back childhood

memories of visits to the Zoo,’she says. “ Everyone had their stories and everyone had a favourite animal.’’

Her home/studio is the restored historic Pikes former horse stables in Carrington Street – also an exotic exhibition space where she displays her works.

“I have sold five more paintings since opening night with people telephoning to see what else I have for sale and visiting me here.’’