Page 1682 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 3 May 2005
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We arrived safely and not too late, rushed into the building, asked the receptionist the way to the wedding and went in to find the proceedings well under way and speeches already being made. We sat in a couple of chairs just inside the door, thinking to let the speaker finish and then find our seats at the table. Meanwhile we looked around the room at the two or three hundred people present.
‘Strange,’ I told my wife. ‘ I don’t seem to recognise anyone.’ We sat on until the club manager Sid Bowyer, an old friend, arrived and said: ‘This is the wrong wedding. Yours is upstairs,’ and promptly took us away to the somewhat bewildered looks of the wedding guests.
We got upstairs and found the right wedding but the proceedings had not started. We were chatting away happily when an emissary arrived from downstairs and the other wedding with a message: ‘We know we didn’t invite you. We were happy to see you. Why did you leave?’
While we were trying to compose an answer the guests were called to their places, the couple arrived and no sooner had I sat down when the master of ceremonies rushed up to tell me the priest was running late and would not be there to say grace, and would I fill in for him?
All were seated and called upon to order and yours truly rose in his place and solemnly intoned the prayer for the Parliament. Everyone sat down and, as good Catholics all, decided the strange prayer they had just heard must be a new Protestant one and promptly forgot all about it.
This is the bit that I enjoyed most. It says:
On the way home my wife summed up the evening. ‘First you went to the wrong wedding, then you left when they wanted you to stay and you ended up leading them in the wrong prayer. Quite an achievement in one night.’
I reckon that is about right. I wanted to share another small story, which is one that amused Al. This took place a few years later when Al was in federal parliament and his daughter, Gabriella, was about five years old. Gabriella desperately wanted a cat. Ellnor said no, but one day Al brought home a tomcat. The new cat was an instant hit but would often disappear at night to make its mark on the neighbourhood.
Gabriella would get very upset that both her new cat and her dad were away. It was decided that something had to be done, so a trip to the vet was organised to de-sex the cat. The next day the cat came back from the vet and certainly did not want to go outside. This led young Gabriella to suggest to her mother that Al could be taken to the vet and maybe he would not go out so much either! Al saw the humour in that.
The last time I saw and spoke to Al was at the launch of a book about a young Iranian or Afghani girl who tried to make her way here to the land of milk and honey. It was the story of her plight and her eventual deportation back. It was a very moving launch, and I remember seeing Al there.
Every single time I ever saw that guy I was touched by his humanity; he just quietly went about his business moving mountains. If there is something that has been said here today which is absolutely correct, it is that everybody in Australia knows who Al Grassby is.
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