Lockdown decluttering has led me down a path to the fascinating, well-lived life of a larrikin named Aubrey Hodgson
A recent lockdown clear-out prompted the discovery of a semi-skimmed and long-forgotten letter forwarded to me by my mother some years ago; a piece of correspondence she had chanced upon while doing some domestic decluttering of her own. It had been written by my uncle, a former professor of anatomy at the University of Galway, during his days doing the rounds at a Sydney hospital way back in 1978.
Writing to my father on the flimsiest of airmail notepaper, with a neatness of hand that belied his profession, he revealed that he had been lucky enough to get talking to “a very interesting character” the previous evening. A legendary figure known in Australian rugby circles as the Bull, Aubrey Hodgson had been singing the praises of the Ireland lock Willie John McBride and the Welsh fly-half Barry John, two titans of the northern hemisphere game the former Wallabies forward, then aged 66, hugely admired.
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