My Mother's mother died before I was born, but was always present in our kitchen and backroom until almost the seventies, when all the oldies had died and only my parents and her words were still there. Every adult who passed through our house knew her or had married someone who knew her. She was a nurse before there were 'nurses' back in nineteenth century and was also great friends with my Father's mother, who I met often until she also passed on in 1960. Both my parents were young of old parents, and all my aunts and uncles passed on of old age before my parents. I sometimes have a feeling of myself being extremely old, and in my minds eye can call forth the descriptions of Boer fortrekkers from nineteenth and early twentieth century, Kashmir in the English days of anxiety of Russian infiltration, as if Kipling were in the next room having a sherry with the aunts. The generations seem so short today, and many of my family's children do not have evenings around a fireplace memories of yesteryear or even yester day when Brisbane flooded in 2011, let alone Brisbane flooding in 1974, and Cyclone Tracy, and Santa never making it into Darwin is just a laugh. Ah well. Perhaps some of my writing will get read in later years. 👌