User Profile

James
Parker

James Parker is a Tasmanian historian (but with deep connections to Sydney), who writes and talks on mainly colonial subjects – especially convicts, women and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

The Van Diemen Decameron

Boccaccio and the church

by James Parker

04 Feb 2021

On the first day of story-telling in The Decameron, a theme was to be chosen for the narratives by the young, but somehow senior, Lady Pampinea – who was the main instigator of the whole project. However, she decided that everyone could choose their own topic on the first day – and four of the group of 10 tell stories that are about the failings of the church and the clergy.

The Van Diemen Decameron

Dead-heading the roses

by James Parker

04 Feb 2021

Joanna: I was in the garden, dead-heading some roses, when my husband of some 25 years came out and declared that he had fallen in love and was going to live with his secretary. We’re not supposed to call them secretaries now, are we? But that is all that I could see that she was – apart from the obvious. A common little thing, Kylie something-or-other. Pretty enough if you like that sort of thing – too much eye make-up and too short skirts – but men do, don’t they? As my mother once said, “Love looks not with the eye but the cock.” Mother could be vulgar at times, it was a rather endearing trait in a character which could otherwise be a bit forbidding.