Our Margaret!

Our Margaret says I'm forbidden to talk about her in here if I continue to refer to her as "Grumpy Old Margaret" and "Frankly Frightening Margaret" and to use words such as "Formidable" in connection with her.

I'm also forbidden from using words like appalling, daunting, dire, dismaying, fierce, imposing, impregnable, intimidating, redoubtable and terrifying. And neither can I call her words like all-powerful, ballbusting, challenging, colossal, dismaying, effortful, indomitable, intimidating,  onerous, overpowering, powerful, puissant, rough go, staggering, strenuous, tall order, toilsome, tough proposition nor anything else that includes the word tough.

I guess bossy-boots is out too.

To be honest, I think Margaret is one of the best people I've ever known and I've known her a long time.  Twenty-two years, I've just worked out.

Back when I first met her, she was my boss, and I found her so "puissant"  I immediately started a comic strip called "The Torments of Grendal" wherein she featured as a large cave-residing monster atop a pile of bones, devouring everyone around her and spitting out the bones with an insouciant burp. I too featured as a character known as Timorous Wee Mouse. And the stories in the strip were always simple retellings of stuff around us that actually happened.

But it was only six weeks later when I realised in a sudden flash that I totally got her and that I really, really liked her.  As well as being Frankly Frightening and Formidable, she was straight-talking and true, clever, erudite, interesting, had a terrific sense of humour and was great fun, and that there was no bullying nor an ego-stroking-agenda behind her Frankly Frightening Puissant Indomitability!

Given who I realised she was, I wasn't at all surprised to later find out that she was the niece of a Legendary Outback Figure, the Boss Drover Edna Jessup,  (if you don't get that reference think of a highly respectable "Annie Oakley" and you're in the ballpark).

Edna Jessup was the mighty lady who for decades lead the annual "Outback Drove" - taking the cattle and cattlemen across the Australian Outback to the markets on the coast.  (Trying to find a reference to her on-line and there isn't one.  The closest I could get was the 1946 film The Overlanders.)

Or maybe Nicole Kidman was meant to be playing her in the film "Australia":



But since I've never seen the film and have no desire to, I don't know.

Since there's nothing there - and I guess Outback types don't contribute much to Wikipedia - I'll have to tell you that there were only ever three folk who were given the term "Boss Drover", meaning the Cattle Drove Boss you respected and trusted so much you'd follow them to the ends of the earth.

Only three head drovers ever earned the title Boss Drover and they were R.M. Williams, Pic Willet, and Edna Jessup.



Everyone always said that Our Margaret was the very image of her Aunty Edna and also that she took after her in personality too.  And yes, I agree.  Our Margaret is ... yes, overwhelming in her Formidability and Indomitability but still someone who earns nothing but your total respect and trust and so who you'd willingly follow to the ends of the earth.

All in all, the very best type of person this planet produces.

(I only ended on that note because I don't want Margaret to devour me alive and spit out my bones with an insouciant burp. I really wanted to end it with "Go Grendal!")