Judy

Judy was a friend of the family. One of the regular friends of Dad's who would visit at least once a year during the school holidays. She was the widow of his best friend. A man to whom Dad had been best man; a man who had died at the hands of someone inexperienced in hospital thanks to a dose of the wrong medication. Many years later Dad was best man again to someone else and that man also died; he died in a tragic accident riding his motorbike into a powerline that had fallen on to the road overnight. Dad said he would never be anyone's best man again after that.

Judy never remarried. Her sister, who was a buyer for Myer, and dutifully came and lived with Judy in their enormous Californian bungalow on Whitehorse Road on the Kew boundary and helped raised their three children; two girls and a precious boy who from what I can gather was the spitting image of his dad.

One thing I always recall about Judy is that she was never, ever on time. Mum would start the day by preparing a meal and telling us, "I'm cooking this quiche (or whatever it was) because it will keep and Judy and Mongy are going to be at least a few hours later than they tell me". And she was always right.

They'd drive from Camberwell to our farm in Toolamba and would emerge out of this enormous people mover Tarago. The kids were giants compared to us. Big, tall, gangly and extrovert compared to us.

We enjoyed the kids' company. They were so much more cultured than us. They seemed to be seeing movies that we didn't have a hope in hell of seeing, playing a lot more sport than us and having so much more freedom than our cloistered lives living with "I'm not a taxi you know" Mum. Their weekdays were different to us. They went to Carey Grammar and we went to a government school. Years later I ended up at the same uni as their middle child. She was doing agriculture (a year above me) and I was doing arts so we really only crossed paths in the agora during the year. She also did work experience at Dad's work and lived with Mum and Dad. She was driven mad by the mosquitos in her bedroom, something we'd all learnt to live with on a flood irrigated farm.

Judy drove dad a bit mad with her constant conversations about people they knew who had died or were dying. She was fixated on death. She worked in a hospital as a nurse (and higher up) doing shift work so she might have been fixated or it might have just been her daily life.

Judy and Mongy came to my medieval wedding. They were the only ones dressed normally in a sea of 70 odd costumed friends and family. A year later I bumped into their older daughter and she said to me, "I told them so many times they had to wear medieval dressups and they wouldn't believe me". It didn't matter.

Years later I had three children of my own and I was always late and I really empathised with Judy. It's hard work mobilising so many people on long trips especially when they're small.