Nanna Roberts

Both my grandmothers were war babies.
Nanna Roberts, born in 1939 has strong recollections of the bomb raids in England.
While my Austrian Omi Helga, born in 1943 experienced much less of the hell of war, she battled through the food shortages and general sad and admonishing disposition of the general populous in the aftermath..

They both experienced the rebuilding of their nations, feminist revolution and both immigrated with their children to Australia.

Omi arrived in 1964 at 21 with her illegitimate 3 year old daughter my amazing mother.

Nanna arrived with her husband and four sons in 1968 at the age of 29.

I will get to Omi another time. Safe to say she has left some big impressions on me.

Nanna is our subject for now. Nanna is one of a kind. Forgiving, kind, gentle, well mannered, fierce, sage, stubborn, self sufficient, and by her own description lazy.

She has a philosophy which to this day I stand by. She declared to me once, “if you want the job done right the first time, then assign the task to the laziest person. They may take a little more time to do the work, BUT it will be done well and hopefully only once.” She continued by saying “I my girl, am a lazy person”.

The inherent truth in this philosophy is that the more work you do with your head, the less you need to do with your actions, and the more likely it is you will achieve your goal first time around.

It fits in nicely with the saying measure twice cut once.