Happy New Year!

It somehow seemed very appropriate, at age 50, that I drink in the New Year with a bottle of 2003 Krondorf chardonnay, labeled to celebrate the 100 year birthday of my now-deceased friend, Edna Blackshaw.

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Perth for Edna's landmark birthday in 2003, as she was quite an inspirational person in my life. When I first met her in Sydney, sometime in the 1970s, she was already a retired Infants headmistress, living in French's Forest on Sydney's north shore, and was the beloved grandmother of Shane, a little girl my brothers and I used to babysit. We called Edna "Grandma", too. (For several years before she actually met us, she knew us only as "IanBrian&Keith", and she was probably surprised there were three of us!) Later, she moved to the little hamlet of Brooklyn, on the Central Coast, and later to Perth, in Western Australia, and I spent several very memorable interstate holidays with her and her family over the years. In her 80s, Edna went back to university study, and created some new records for that WA institution when she graduated.

In early 1980, though, Grandma Edna had generously donated one of her several vintage white wigs to an important project of mine: one Therin of Andor. At the time, I couldn't buy a suitable white wig for all the tea in China. (If it wasn't a very expensive, long-haired platinum blonde women's wig, then it was a Captain Cook wig or a judge's wig.) Edna had one that was perfect, but it couldn't just be a loan, since the Andorian's antennae would require permanent changes being made to the wig.

I gave Edna a framed picture of blue-skinned Therin during my last visit, which she kept on her mantelpiece in the nursing home, and her quite lucid explanations of the Andorian species (and her unusual relationship to this important Starfleet captain) sometimes caused her visitors and carers to express concern about advancing Alzheimer's Disease.

Anyway, the wine was a special gift to all attendees of Edna's centenary celebrations. Last night seemed the perfect occasion to pop its cork. Thanks Edna!

Happy 2009!