All Balls and Glitter Read Online Free PDF

three of her sisters. The baby stayed in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, where the family had lived. Although Phonse’s dad was still alive, he couldn’t look after her and her siblings because he didn’t have the resources. There was no other family to help out and he had to work away from home even more than my own dad had done with the navy. There was nowhere else for the girls to go.
    The orphanage experience was abysmal. The food was shocking, and the girls had to get up at four in the morning to do the washing and hang it outside in all weathers, with no shoes to wear. They had to say a prayer when they got out of bed (which Phonse still does now) and go to Mass every morning, but in themidst of all that religion, no love or affection was ever shown to the children.
    In 1932, seven years after Phonse had joined the orphanage, her two brothers, aged nineteen and twenty-one, were working at a gold mine out at Bendigo, Victoria, which belonged to Phonse’s uncle. They promised each other that they would rescue their sisters as soon as they found their first big nugget.
    Two weeks later, they discovered a huge one, bought an old Rugby car, and drove all the way to Armidale to collect their siblings. Phonse had been sent to work at a convent school at Gunnedah, NSW, so they picked her up on the way. When she met her brothers, she didn’t know who they were. They drove on and met the other girls, and then their dad got in the car and they didn’t recognize him either.
    The last thing Phonse was told at the orphanage was: ‘Don’t forget you’re Catholic; don’t let them take away your religion.’ It turned out to be somewhat prophetic.
    The brothers took the girls back to Bendigo. En route, they stayed at a hotel and the sisters, not knowing what a hotel was, got up at 5 a.m. to make the bed and clean the room. The younger ones also embarrassed their brothers because they had no idea how to use a knife and fork.
    At Bendigo, arrangements were made for the girls to be looked after by a kindly local woman. She had recently become a Seventh-day Adventist, so she wouldn’t let the girls go to Mass and threw out their rosary beads. She had six grown sons of her own, but she doted on the girls. At last, they had a family and a lot of love and care. While the Catholic religion had, in their minds, brought them all that had been ghastly in their lives, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was where they received affection, compassion and attention.
    For my father, the church was just another thing to rail against, but for Phonse it represented the best thing that had happened to her. It’s easy to see why she remains so devout.
    Although Phonse is committed to the church, she is never judgemental or pious. She loves everybody and everybody loves her. Everything revolves around family and the heart – even the special routine that she taught me for drying myself when I got out of the bath.
    ‘Start with your feet and legs because they’re a long way away from your heart,’ she’d say. ‘Then you do your back and your arms and the last part of your body that you dry is your heart, because that is the warmest part.’
    I still dry myself that way even after all these years.
    Phonse’s cooking is amazing and she makes the best fishcakes in the world.
    Phonse’s husband was my grandfather Revielle, who died in 1985. His complicated name was later abbreviated to Revel, and both my dad and I inherited it as a middle name. Our namesake was more rebel than Revel, refusing to toe the family line on religion. Often, when Phonse turned off the TV on a Friday night, he would switch it straight back on again. He was also something of a gambler.
    Revel, whom we called Mozza, taught me a lot of magic tricks. He used to tell me that if you placed your hands on someone’s temples, you could read minds, and I was totally sucked in by this. He would say, ‘Think of a number between one and ten,’ and then guess what it was by