Mighty Margaret

We rode out to Parramatta, to the Female Orphan School. I tried to hide my eagerness as we dismounted at the entrance but in truth, I was excited. Mrs Susanna Matilda Ward, the matron, was both renowned and renounced among the ladies of Sydney Town and I was keen to meet her. A demure girl, who may have been one of her charges, ushered us into the parlour and into the presence of a delightful tableau of feminine beauty. Mrs Ward herself was the centrepiece of this enchanting vision. She was very handsome, of course, especially for a matron of her advancing years and she greeted us with an air of genteel delight that made us feel immediately welcome. She smilingly addressed father with exaggerated respect and, had it not been for her laughing eyes, I might have thought her obsequious. She then expressed such admiration for my humble, 16- year- old person that my ears burned.    My eyes, meanwhile, were drawn to the quartet of young ladies draped prettily around her. My ...

This is a story about my mother. Like everyone in her generation – the Veterans, born before the end of the War – she has a wealth of life experience to draw on as she negotiates the slings and arrows of old age, including ageism. We Boomers can learn a lot from them.  Like many older people, she doesn’t make a fuss or seek sympathy, but she won’t let scammers who seek to prey on seniors get away with it. Take the morning the phone rang, and it was “Simon” from Microsoft. He was calling, he said, because she had a virus in her computer. In her best “little old lady” voice, Mum sounded panic-stricken.  “A virus?” she cried, “How could I have a virus? Is it fatal? What about my grandchildren, could they catch it from me?” In vain, Simon tried to reassure her. All she had to do, he explained repeatedly and patiently, was to turn on her computer and he would fix it. Mum wasn’t listening. She couldn’t be distracted from the fearful consequences of a virus in her compu...