My dear old Pop My dear old Pop had a voice to rival Nat King Cole. In my mind it is his voice that sings the beloved soundtrack to my childhood; a musical smorgasbord of jazz greats and hollywood idols. My grandfather spent his working days sweating it out behind a couple of Clydesdales […]
I first met Peggy at the Cumberland Nursing home, in Wheelers Hill, almost three years ago. I was singing Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose with a small group in the loungeroom of the high-care residence when a beautifully dressed and uncannily birdlike woman wheeled herself in and quietly sat at the very periphery of […]
When Peggy’s husband left her with three little children in the late 40s she sold everything she had and bought a terrible little house in Aspendale. They had been living as a family in Melbourne, she was an Essendon girl – born and bred – but she’d spent holidays as a child in Aspendale […]
I spent a good while this morning editing a video I took, at a concert in Dandenong some time last year, of a gorgeous Greek woman by the name of Helen. I then put in a call to the residence where we met to ask her if she would mind if I shared the video. […]
Tomorrow afternoon I meet with the lovely Peggy for a and a cup of tea. Peggy and I met a couple of years ago when I sang for the first time at an aged-care residence in Wheelers Hill. She appeared on the fringes of the small group, gathered in the living room, about 15 minutes […]
As Nell had sadly passed away, I could no longer just drop into the nursing home where she lived and pick her brain about her remarkable life, or ask her to clarify details and dates, and so the search began for fragments of Nell, that I might put them together in an honorable and respectful […]
I first met Nell on St Patrick’s Day in 2011. I hadn’t been living in Melbourne long and this trip to the Bupa Caufield residence was my first. As always, I had dolled up and, on this particular day, made certain that there was a splash of festive green in my outfit and an hour of Irish […]
with a song in my heart 