Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

The Eccentricities of my Father (From My Memoir-in-Progress, Up to the Hills)

By

Uncle Fr. Tony Coelho S.J / Noel Joesph Mathias

My Uncle Fr. Tony Coelho S.J. (left), Noel Joseph Mathias (right)

(I am continuing a memoir of my father. The previous parts are

  1. Polyphemus, the Cyclops: A Memoir of my Father, Noel Joseph Mathias (Part I)
  2. A Memoir of My Father, Noel Mathias. In England, in the Forties & Fifties
  3. The Things My Father Said
  4. At Play with my Father, Part III )

My father claimed that each of his thirty-two teeth, denture or otherwise, was sweet.

At buffets, he went first to the dessert table, even at the posh Taj Intercontinental or Oberoi Sheraton in Bombay, Delhi, or Madras, where—along with his brother, Theo, who was the Director, and his brother Eric–he interviewed applicants to The Xavier Labor Relations Institute at which he taught.

It was only after he had eaten trifle and Black Forest gateau and chocolate eclairs that he ate a little roast beef to refresh his palate. [Read more…]