Grandad's Cauliflower Cheese

We were always quite a political family. Rather unusually so, I would imagine, now I think about it. Sunday lunch discussions often centred around current affairs. Dad would be in charge of lunch, but the conversations and debates were much more multi-vocal. You could say what you wanted to say. Ask a direct question and you’d get a direct answer back. I try to be the same with you boys. We were all analytical about things. In this way, we were very similar to each other. We’d all sit around the dining table trying to find out how things work together: the politics behind it all. It’s important to understand the world that you’re stepping out into. To see motive. To understand why the world is the way it is. Without this knowledge it’s very hard to change anything. Everyone, to some extent, is self- interested. If you can fathom what someone’s interest is, then it suddenly becomes a whole lot easier to act effectively.

Dad always cooked the Sunday lunch. That was his domain. He was usually away with work during the week, Monday to Friday. He had set up his own management consultancy firm. It had a lot of governmental contracts, hence it was based in Canberra, but it was also growing and soon had offices in both Sydney and Melbourne. (As a consultant, he’d help people make decisions. It might just be a case of breaking down the political resistance surrounding the decision, in order to confirm what people already know.) On Sundays, though, he was centre stage in the family domain. He made a mean crackling alongside his roast pork and the cauliflower cheese was out of this world. There was a knack to it. Keeping the cheese at the top. Dad had it down to a tee; he’d perfected the art. I’m no slouch in the kitchen, but I’ve never got near to competing with your Grandad’s cauliflower cheese.