My dad wanted to call me Enoch. My mum wasn’t so keen. A transaction was negotiated at a picnic for two under a gum tree out of Broken Hill somewhere. It was the kind of transaction between parents that children prefer not to think about – ever.
At that point I was minus one month old. The deal was sealed, undoubtedly for Neil but unlikely for Joy, and Clifford I was soon-to-be.
The truth about how close I was to being a fully-fledged-Utah-inspired-Enoch came out at my fortieth, courtesy of my mum, Joy. It was also the same night we announced Mela and I were having a fourth child. Xavier was a lovely surprise.
In the middle of my speech, my mate Silvers started the “Enoched ‘er up” chant. It came from the left. As usual Dave was back row, almost standing in the dark but somehow still managing to be front and centre. The chant gained immediate traction and volume, and soon became “Enoch, Enoch, Enoch”.
Snooks, fronting the superb band that night, thought he’d get in on the act with the Enoch chant. The only thing is he thought they were saying Ewok. So half the crowd are chanting Enoch, the other half are yelling Ewok, and all of Mela’s Greek cousins on the table in the middle were the only ones to notice.
My name is Clifford Milne and I reside in Adelaide, South Australia. The rest of my clan include Mela my wife and children Ataliah, Phoebe, Judson and Xavier. So I can recapture some of the unpredictability of my years growing up in India, I have set up shop in Port Adelaide. Our website is here.