Take two: The Mansions of Bedlam, Gerard Windsor (2000)

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I took this photo in front of a sketch mum made of some of the participants in a sort of hybrid vacation and study tour of Oxford that she and dad did in the 90s, a time when I was struggling with work commitments and with the demands of a young family. On the day I started reading this book I met a man – who I know to be Catholic because he told me his uncle was a papal knight – on account of some coins I wanted to sell that had come to me as part of my patrimony. I was paid in cash, the last time I ever got anything from dad being when, in payment for some painting work I did on the interior of an apartment he owned in Elizabeth Bay, I was gifted mum’s green Toyota Corolla station wagon. I was very young and thought it generous but with the years I came to understand how miserly my father was, so keeping coins in a bank’s safety deposit box summed up the man.