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table. “Why are you such a myopic git, David? I share a room with Granny and Potty, and I have nowhere to spread my things without picking them up the minute I’ve finished with them! Whatever space I have here is also occupied by others. So now I’m going to luxuriate in my own space.”
    “At Kings Cross.”
    “Yes, at Kings bloody Cross! Where the rents are affordable.”
    “In a lodging house run by a foreigner. A New Australian.”
    That killed me, I laughed in his face. “Mrs. Delvecchio 34
    Schwartz, a foreigner? She’s an Aussie, with an Aussie accent you could cut with a knife!”
    “That is an even greater indictment,” he said. “An Australian with a name that’s half Italian and half Jewish? At the very least, she married beneath her.”
    “You bloody snob!” I gasped. “You bigoted git! What’s so posh about Australians? We all came out as bloody convicts! At least our New Australians have come out as free settlers!”
    “With SS numbers tattooed in their armpits or tuberculosis or stinking of garlic!” he snarled. “And `free settlers’ is right-they all came out here for a mere tenpound subsidised passage!”
    That did it. I jumped up and started whacking him on both sides of his head right over his ears. Wham, wham, wham! “Piss off, David, just bloody piss off!” I yelled.
    He pissed off, with a look in his eyes that said I was having one of Those Days, and he’d be back to try again. So there you have it. I do like my familythey’re good scouts. But David is exactly what Pappy called him-a constipated Catholic schoolboy. Thank heavens I’m Church of England.
    Wednesday, January 20th, 1960 I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to sit and write this, but things are looking all right. I managed to talk Dad and the Bros out of inspecting my new premises (I went last Sunday to have a look, and they’re not fit yet for inspection), and I’m working like stink to get my things together for next Saturday’s move. Mum has been colossal. I’ve got heaps of china, cutlery, linen and cooking utensils, and Dad shoved a hundred pounds at me with a gruff explanation that he didn’t want me touching my savings for England to buy what by rights belonged in my Hope Chest anyway.
    Gavin presented me with a tool kit and a multimeter and Peter donated his “old” hi-fi, explaining that he needed a better one. Granny gave me a bottle of 4711 eau de Cologne and a set of doilies she’d crocheted for my Hope Chest.
    There’s a sort of an archway between my bedroom and my living room in my new flat-no door-so I’m going to use some of Dad’s hundred quid to buy glass beads and make my own bead curtain. The ones you can buy are plastic, look awful and sound worse. I want something that chimes. Pink. I’m going to have a pink flat because it’s the one colour no one at Bronte will permit anywhere. And I like pink. It’s warm and feminine, and it cheers me up.
    Besides, I look good against it, which is more than I can say for yellow, blue, green and crimson. I’m too dark.
    My flat is in the open air passage that goes down alongside Pappy’s room and leads to the laundry and the backyard. The rooms are big and have very high ceilings, but the fixings are pretty basic. There’s a kitchen area with a sink, an ancient gas stove and a fridge, and it’s
    impossible to make it look nice, so I rang Ginge the head porter at Ryde and asked him if he could find me an old hospital screen-no trouble, he said, then started moaning about how dull the place is since I left. What rubbish! One Xray technician? The Ryde District Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital isn’t that small.
    Ginge was always one to exaggerate.
    Matron came to visit X-ray yesterday. What a tartar she is! If the H.M.O. is God, Matron has equal rank with the Virgin Mary, and I think virginity is a prerequisite for the job, so it isn’t an invalid comparison. No man would ever get up the courage, it would take a dove flying in the window to