befriending a Negro boy( or African‐American in today’ s politically correct language). As social segregation was then in force the adult lead actor( African‐American) was barred from attending the film’ s premiere! We also learnt about Coco Chanel, Molluscs, Hippocampus and others with many more amazing facts.
July came with our much anticipated Crazy Whist evening with 3 tables of 4 battling it out. After every 2 rounds( 10 rounds in total), the 2 losing players at each table swap with other tables so that everyone has different partners all the way through. Being a card game where you play with a partner, table talk( ie hinting to the partner) is frowned upon, but it’ s amazing how people get around this rule. It was a great evening and supper thanks to Janice’ s efforts.
Our August meeting was at Lorraine Budai’ s house. Lorraine read to us a selection of talks she had given in the past to other groups.
At first she read a piece that Christine Hardy had written after she had been to Okinawa Island in the South China Sea, with her husband, who is involved in karate. Okinawa is the largest island of the Okinawa Islands and was annexed by Japan in 1879. It is closer to mainland China than it is to Japan. The people from Okinawa are the healthiest and live the longest of all the people in the world. They have the most centenarians per head in the world due to a combination of diet and lifestyle. We learned about the history and the vital role it played during the Second World War.
Another piece was called“ Sandy’ s story” and was about the amazing journey of Lorraine’ s husband from Budapest in Hungary to eventually arriving in Australia. It was 1948 and Hungary was under communist rule and Sandor( Sandy) supported an illegal movement against the communist regime. One afternoon when he came home from work, a neighbour told him not to go in, as the secret police were waiting for him. He decided to flee the country with his friend Bela and after 3 long weeks of walking by night and hiding during the day, they reached Vienna. On arriving in the American zone they were arrested and thrown in jail. They were interrogated to see if they were true refugees. They found work on a farm in Linz. After some time Sandy joined the French Foreign Legion and within weeks he found himself in Algeria and after that in Indo China and after suffering a gunshot wound and severe malaria, he was transported to a Paris hospital. From there he went to a refugee camp in Hamburg and eventually ended up in Australia in 1951. He started working at the steel works in Port Kembla and after a while ended up in Sydney where he met and married Lorraine in 1957. It was 1980 before he could go back to Hungary for the first time. What a story!!!!
Most of The Hills group at our Crazy Whist night
At our last 4 meetings we’ ll have a book / movie review, attend a play, have a guest speaker, and our final meeting will be of course our Christmas party.
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