#theres no like tags for this its just me reading a stupid fucking memoir my granddad wrote with 0 fucking oversight

[isaacathom]

ok this is actually a fun bit of writing here, even if the preceding shit was kinda garbage

tl;dr this bitch has to rant about this stupid book because i naively want to learn something about my family’s history and this is the only fucken way to do it

‘When he discovered he had to work to help provide for this instant family of a large flock of children, ‘Mick’ showed his true self and devotion to the family.

Within a year of the marriage, he left the fold, leaving his wife to fend for herself in the daunting task of raising her children.’

like.aside from just being kinda awkwardly worded (he bangs On and On about how his mum was the 11th of 11 children like fuck i get it its a big family, holy shit) i think thats just. a good concept there. the space really sells the punch. wouldve been better if we hadnt been told beforehand that Mick was a cunt, yknow. but thats nice

also lets keep going. ‘6 step brothers and 4 step sisters’ theyre actually her Half Siblings. they all share the same mother. theyre related. she’d be step if she was adopted, which she was not, because if she were, surely we wouldve been told about those circumstances.

‘[his mother] easily met that high standard as she was a very pretty young lady’ please dont perv out over your fucking mother you pig of a man. also you would hope ‘jock’ (his name is fucking robert but ok, Jock) was interested in more than how pretty Nellie was when they got together, right......... like there had to be more to it. am i naive? perhaps

‘scottish clan gordon’ the what. but we arent gordons???? are you. are you hundred percent sure. are you positive about this. are you sure thats why your name is gordon. alright buddy

‘according to buzzy’s story’ please never refer to yourself in the third person

‘hotels rarely burn down’ ?? i dont buy that at all. my guess is this famous hotel (which.... you didnt name so ok)

ok so theres a picture in here of my dad standing at some random gate, and he says its the same gate as a picture of his dad..... where is THAT picture??? this picture means nothing without that historic context, and it feels hollow if the actual picture isnt there.

granddad you dont. you dont need to wikipedia article dump me information about glasgow??? i mean sure, cool, id rather just be reading the wikipedia article.

jesus christ. so hes talking about his dad, right. who he’d technically set up earlier by saying he came to melbourne at 19. before he launched into a whole thng about his mother and shit. and suddenly hes come back to his dad to explain that his dad (so gordons grandfather) used to beat him! and its like, wOAH, where the fuck did that come from??? shit dude. thats rough. but he just mentions it suddenly out of nowhere. oH JESUS actually. sorry. i misread (yknow, because its written like shit). he means.... his brother??? right, he means his Brother Robert, was beaten by his dad, also named Robert, who was the one who came to melbourne aged 19. ok. ok that makes slightly more structural sense but ooof. ouch. poor robert (the younger). in my uh, defence, this book is written awful and i've never met robert? (my.... understanding is that he probably died before i was born? like with mary, who i dont recall having met either)

ok uhhh ‘most of the gorbal’s tenemenets were eventually demolished by the wise founding fathers many decades later, in the 1980s’ the WHOM. this isnt fucking america, this is scotland, what in the actual fuck are you TALKING about????????????????????????????? ‘modern day replacement improvements and architecture designed to achieve, what?’ fucker they were trying to fix the mistake they made in crowding 90k people into the fucking gorbals. maybe they didnt succeed (they didnt) but they were trying, it was naivete rather than fucking malice, you bitter old fuck. like, you visited in the 1980s.... and published this book in 2007......... without thinking to check back......... like hey maybe theyve gotten better? (newsflash - they fucking have) sooo... fuck

‘could the [my family] be related? [to the mcdonalds]’ yes??? we literally are. theres no question of that. being a sept of clanranald, we are Literally related to the fucking macdonalds. you absolute buffoon. yea its distant, and maybe thats your point, but when combined with you launching into this giant diatribe about rhw Campbells for shit that happened long ago, it seems youre picking and choosing how close ‘related’ is. we are. literally. related to the macdonalds. also it wasnt thought up in glasgow, they were from fucking new hampshire. but sure. 

‘his sheila wife of his’ excuse me?

‘so the name was related to a buzzing bee i suppose’ ? i still dont get it. like, he then explains that apparently his twin sister had difficulty saying Brother, so she called him Buzzy. that makes sense to me. i can understand that. but the buzzing bee thing? not sure i follow, given the prior context he provided. i dont get it. this is written like garbage. theres no structure. we went from jumping forward in time to the birth of my uncle Dale (my dads older brother) and suddenly we’re talking about Mick’s running career and gordon’s childhood! what the fuck happened.

‘coupled with the bigoted attitudes that were rife during those periods’ says the man who got angry at a black (i THINK, mightve been a separate story)  frenchman who couldnt speak english in France because ‘we saved them’. fuck off. youre just like them, you old codger.

also hes decrying his grandfather mick for being ‘no true irishman’ even though micks dad was full irish? by that exact same metric i can call my grandfather no true scotsman, because his dad is full scottish and thats it!!! you fucking fool. no true irishman, holy shit, how little self awareness could this man have.

‘then excessive drinking liquor isnt for me’ but is Is for your wife, is it gordon??? drinking wine when shes on antibiotics??? fucking incredible. god theyre. theyre so stupid.

‘not proceeding as a scholar as i could have’ you literally admitted like 5 pages ago that your twin sister was Far smarter than you, but sure! ~scholar~. if you were meant to be a scholar surely you wouldve bounded back from missing days with a vengeance. youre talking complete tosh.

im confused why theyd be doing bombing drills in South Yarra.... in preparation from a japanese air raid.... like im sorry, if the people north are doing their jobs, theres no physical way they couldve gotten to south yarra....... but ok. thats not his fault i just think thats strange.

im 110 pages in and he hasnt actually gotten to the point where he meets eleanor??? aside from a few time jumps forward and a brief mention of ‘meeting her in a milk bar in south yarra’ so like. hoi vey? the fuck.

oh jesus thats. thats a heavy thing to just chuck in the middle of a sentence??? like ‘oh yea after Skete the next scout leader was a paedophile who abused me and the others’ wwwOooahhh there buddy back up. what???? holy shit. ouch. thats. thats rough.

‘absolutely belted this poofta bastard’ yknow what? fair. id also beat the fuck out of a pedo with my boot. thats Relatable. good going on that, i suppose.

ooh thats full third person, weird.

one thing that is definitely kinda interesting, and very telling about his relationship with his family, is that he only ever refers to Nellie as ‘mum’, but refers to Mick as, well, Mick! rather than ‘granddad’ or anything of the sort. like its just sorta interesting when you get this big family photo and Nellie is the only one not called by her first name.

‘returning to those earlier days’ NO! FUCKING MOVE FORWARD IN TIME YOU GIT!!!! holy shit i just want to read about new fucking shit.

......... so like, at some point while playing footy, an opposing player kicked him in the leg and caused a fractured tibia. so a few weeks later... one of gordons friends took a mark on that player and kneed him straight in the head, with that player never playing again. and he’s PROUD of that!!! he’s proud of his friend for ruining a guys footy career. like yea, the guy was a dick, he broke your leg and it was at least partially malicious, but like........... you fucked him up????? hardcore?????? a straight up ruination. but go off i guess.

its interesting that he doesnt go even remotely into eleanors history beyond the fact (so far) that her father Leo didnt say much but was a good dude. then again the books all about him soooo fuck it i suppose.

‘recognition of our scottish heritage’ eleanor isnt scottish tho. shes irish. shes an o'donoghue. what the fuck. like yea naming them dale and glen is a ‘clever’ nod back to scotland (i actually do think thats cute and clever, joking aside. its the exact sort of ‘clever’ shit i love pulling) but............. shes not scottish. unless we’re waiting for volume 2 all about eleanor.

hE USED TO LIVE OUT HERE??????? IN SPRINGVALE????? fuck me. no fucking wonder we live here, huh, jesus. that. certainly explains something, i suppose. like ‘if you were raised in holbrook and YOU were raised in thomastown, why do we live in knox?’

OHHHHH HERES THE FRENCH THING!!!! OHHHH HERES ONE OF THE FRENCH THINGS. OH BITCH behold

so granddads being a dick, as usual, and he’s on some tour in paris. and the tour guide launches into a long thing about the glory of france, like french history and the fighting record, etc. and granddad calls out and tells him to knock it off, because ‘our australians died by the thousands for your country’

i. eh... uhh............... is he. is he aware? of how many french people died???? for france?????? how many????? il tell you how many - apparently 1.44% of the total population of france. thats 600000 people. how many did we lose? around 35k. thats, uh, a smaller fucking number. than the amount of french people. who died. for fucking france. you fucking idiot.

it kills me. is he gonna include the french speaking one too???

oh hell that sure is a picture of my father. good heavens. holy shit my brother really does look like him. thats uncanny, man.

‘one son Scotty’ his name is Scott, actually. not scotty. but cool, i got a really small shout out, weirdly BEFORE my older cousins did???? oh dear is he gonna talk about my uncles divorce actually. oh god. thats. thats terrifying to consider. oh, cool, he didnt in that small section, hopefully it doesnt come up haha (i can only IMAGINE what sort of vile shit he’d say about cathy)

also, ooh, more nuggets on grandma’s family. her dad was a freemason! thats cool.

ooh! he was the president of holbrook shire council! thats kinda neat actually.

ooh! the glenndale motel actually still exists! thats cool as hell. not that granddad told me that i just googled it

OHHH ITS THE FUCKING FRENCH SPEAKING STORY OH MY GOD

Ok first off ‘i slammed my fist into the counter and said very calmly’ yea no fuck that, youre fucking lying. theres no way you slammed the counter and spoke calmly. you almost definitely abused this poor french metro worker who, being a French Man living in France, is not required to know english. you fucking babboonnnnnnnnnn

apparently he nearly fell off a mountain innnnnn geeermany? austria, austria. and as he mentions my dad pulling him back up, he words it as ‘stopping me from falling to my final destiny’ what fucking wording IS that. my god.

uh well ok thats. about it i suppose. there was a big hullabuloo about like, hotels and shit, and there was probably some racism about Islanders in there (like i find it hard to believe there wasnt but im not gonna go back and double check, because this book reads like absolute garbage). but eh. yea?

uuhhh so that was an Adventure, for sure

#long post #book liveblog #theres no like tags for this its just me reading a stupid fucking memoir my granddad wrote with 0 fucking oversight #half of it is almost definitely inaccurate or straight up incorrect. the rest is just poorly written and structured #ike it was a chore to get through because my eyes just bounce off the page because it reads like how I fucking type on the internet #but without any intent! my shit grammar is at least supposed to convey fuckin. speech patterns or something #his writing is just poorly thought out and hasnt been edited in the slightest and its just Disgusting my guy