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ration paddock’ and that it was simply normal practice to keep sheep separately for the family. It is anchored in my mind because my mother showed her newness to country habits by making a remark about the paddock that made people laugh. It stays in the mind when somebody laughs, even gently, at your mother, even if she laughs happily, too. Sometimesshe recounted the story of her naïve remark, so she could not have been too unhappy about it. In fact, I think she enjoyed the joke – which I can’t remember – because it showed her naïvety, and perhaps her youth.
    Mrs Puckridge and Mrs Secker were my mother’s chief advisers in all matters of child-rearing. One day my father came home from work to find my mother biting off the fingernails of one of their babies. My father, astounded, asked what she was doing. My mother said that she was doing it because Mrs Secker had told her that if you did that your child would not be a thief. My father said, ‘If Mrs Secker told you to throw one of your children down a well, you would do it!’
    Another time my mother surprised my father was when he arrived home to find the backyard covered in what he thought were tents. He asked why they had been pitched there. ‘Oh, they’re not tents; they’re sheeting!’ he was told. ‘I’ve bought calico and I’m going to make sheets. It needs to be bleached in the sun before I start.’ His innocent question made his wife laugh and she would tell the story years later as an illustration of how he had been reared sheltered from the facts of existence when every penny counted and where the domestic had a thousand tricks to extend the life of every artefact.
    In fact, calico sheets are very strong and last a long time. They are pleasant to sleep between because they are slightly thicker and to me, at least, give a feeling of safety.That may be because I grew up sleeping in them and all my childhood I felt safe.
    The Puckridges had a beautiful only child called Ida, who was several years older than me and known for her contralto voice. At every concert in Tumby Bay – fundraisers for the Red Cross and the war effort – Ida sang her songs. She sang ‘Blow the Wind Southerly’ and others that Kathleen Ferrier made her own.
    I was up there on stage after Ida sang, reciting my little poems taught to me by my elocution teacher: ‘The Dove’ and ‘Daddy and Babsy’.
    ‘Lifting the dying dove in her arms she…The dove laid its head in her arms and died.’
    I used the greatest pathos I could muster to add to the sentimentality of these poems. They went down well. Those who thought them pathetic held their tongues and the applause rose as I bowed holding my skirt out to each side in a curtsy.
    During interval at these concerts, people walked down the aisles with cans, asking for donations for each performer’s act on behalf of the war effort. The donation was a form of voting. The performer who received the largest amount of money in the cans with their name on them won a prize. My mother always took a can around for Ida. This may be the source of the saying ‘carrying a can for a person’.
    It would not have done for a parent to carry a can for their own child. That would have seemed boastful. So it never occurred to me that there was anything unusual in my mother trying to get the most votes possible for Ida, more votes for Ida than for me.
    This ancient courtesy has caused trouble for me because I never thought, with this example before me, that it was proper to praise my children or to call attention to them. When they gained an American stepmother, who had been reared in a society that I think must have held the opposite view, and whose praise knew no bounds, it was undoubtedly pleasant to them and a great contrast to their own mother’s reticence.
    Naturally, I can tell a child I love them and even that I think they are wonderful or beautiful. But the daily practice of praise eludes me, even though I have given it a shot.