Christmas Present And Past
Without Prejudice
I have had my Christmas tree up for weeks. I wanted to extend the feeling of Christmas this year. For some reason we are all in great moods. Christmas this year is not the normally dreaded affair it has been in years gone by.
By us I mean my family of girls and their kids. The kids have never been affected by our lack of enthusiasm and this year we, the girls and I decide to celebrate it, full on. Yvette has 3 trees, I have mine in my unit, Alena has a black one and Deb, even though she's away, has a magnificent tree. Mara's place is also "done up", ready for 7am yelling on Christmas Day by the boys.
We have to clean house at this time of the year. It's just s thing women do. Everything has to be clean and shining, lights bouncing of walls, illuminating dust. Christmas to me is like a rebirth. The sad ragged end of the year days are bathed in Christmas lights. Putting gladness into the hearts of the ones that accept it and even crusty old men soften a little with their alcohol presents.
Its the time of goodwill to others and comes along at the end of the year when everyone is tuckered out and ready for a Bex and a good lie down. Or two weeks spent on a beach, comatose, somewhere. Doing no more activity than turning over, counting kids heads, avoiding people rushing by dripping Pacific water.
Maybe a venture into the tumbling swirl of waves, shrieking at the coldness on newly toasted parts of your anatomy. And you body surf down to the edge and get caught in a slight rip and remember what to do, swim across it. The sea is in your nostrils and ears, sensory deprivation and you thrust upwards from the sandy bottom, lungs screaming for air.
Some dumpers out beating you and you conquer others with a slight surge and a slicing off the top like slicing off the top of a hard boiled egg, done to "Let the witch out". You recall your swimming days when all that kept you going was sheer adrenalin and your determination to win, no matter what.
One of the best Christmases I ever spent was with the girls in Surfers Paradise. Grundy's had a huge water slide sitting right on the apex of sea and sand and water on the sea front. The girls and I took a day there once and never stopped climbing and sliding all day. It was the best day, hot with a slight breeze coming off the ocean.
Our feet hated the feeling of the Pebblecrete after a while and being held up waiting for others to take their turn. But we persevered bombing each other in the deep "exit" pool. It was so very Australian when I think of it and it embodies that is so very fine about this country.
Freedom, freedom to be your self. To not care about what your body looks like but more about the way you feel. To be able to swear and get away with it, to be irreverent and child like and in that spot on that day I went back to the fit child I was.
My biggest goal from when I could swim was to be an excellent one. I remembered the cold morning starts, Dad holding a stopwatch dressed in a warm tracksuit and us in our Speedos, though Jackie had a Jantzen suit and I coveted it, badly.
Jantzen and Speedo making us brand conscious even then in the 60's. And who we were trained by. I won a scholarship at 8 to be trained by a professional Coach and there were days and days of learning how to stroke and kick.
Lap after lap of kickboarding just with tiny butterfly kicks, learning to only to kick from the ankle. And days spent underwater increasing lung capacity by travelling further and further down the pool. Learning in a race to keep your opponent in your sight and using the lines on the bottom of the pool as guides.
You never forget the chlorine sting in your eyes and nose, you never forget the feel of the wooden lane markers as you gently swing on them awaiting the results. And you remember the discipline and the starving feelings and salt tablets forced down your throat and being given glucose tablets to suck on and knowing even then at 8 that they didn't work.
I was a little shorty and nearly all my opponents in swimming races were taller girls so I had to lengthen out my freestyle and my dive to stay ahead. At first I was a choppy little swimmer all energy and no style, no proper breathing technique. I would just plunge in, losing seconds in a plunge dive not a racing dive.
A racing dive I had to learn by getting the boys to teach me. My brothers and other older boys in the squad I was in. A racing dive flattening your body out to gain the longest distance travelled in the air and not water.
It took ages to learn but I kept at it and at the same time I was learning to whistle and click my fingers, tie my own laces and trump everyone in my class at exams. A typical middle child, fiercely competitive and a charming negotiator when I wanted something. Usually from Dad, he was easiest.
But back to the beach and the Australian feelings. My parents emigrated when I was 2 so I have no memory of Scotland at all, only family stories by my older siblings who do remember. But having lived in Britain from age 12 to 16, being Australian means to me a lot of things. Things that you never realise you miss until you are not there.
Being able to go barefoot any time and not being seen as unusual. I took my shoes off one time at a fair in England in the summer. The temperature was a good 28 degrees and the grass in the park was cool and inviting, so I slipped off my sandals and ran around barefoot. I was ridiculed right left and centre. One girl called ma an Aborigine.
Older women stopped me and told me to put shoes on, concerned for God knows what. Older men jeered at me, I st ll didn't put them on till later but was shocked at other peoples reaction. I had come there from the Gold Coast where bare feet were De Rigeur and even kids going to school didn't have to wear them.
I am sure there are rules in Surfers for the wearing of shoes in shops, health ones, but no one enforces it. Sun, sand and heat make the wearing of thongs necessary but then in heat your feet swell ever so slightly and bare feet is bliss. I didn't bother to repeat my action in England.
I stood out enough, with my accent and at a Yorkshire Grammar School had to drop it and take on a thick Yorkshire accent instead. I became more Yorkshire than the rest, taking up a lot of my Grand Dad Wilshers dry wit and Grandma's irreverence. I had to fit in at School, so I started rebelling and being one of the cool kids.
I had to shorten my skirts without my parents knowledge, so as soon as I was out of the mews where we lived I would roll my hated pleated skirt over at the waistband, pull my shirt out at the bottom, over the top of the skirt instead of tucked in and loosen my tie.
On a good day I would get ignored and on a bad day hauled before the headmistress. She was a spinster, no kids, and looked and sounded like Joyce Grenfell but in a quieter voice. She was always nervous and we, my friends, Caroline, a bad girl, and Denise, a geek like me gave her the hardest time.
She gave weak punishments like picking up paper in the Quadrangle and we just wouldn't turn up and neither did she so it was token punishment only. I was most thrilled at the School dinners. No more squished vegemite cardboard sandwiches, even now the smell of an over ripe tomato sandwich is enough to make me gip.
Every day of the week dinner was served at lunchtime in the Cafeteria. Most people hated them, I loved them as my Mother was not known for her cooking prowess and these were better meals than hers. And the combinations startled me, baked beans and fish fingers with mash and white parsley sauce on the Fish fingers. There were plates of bread and butter on the table and giant jugs of cordial.
We all took it in turns to help set up and clear away the cutlery and dishes, there were always sweets, apple sponge and big jugs of custard, comfort food that I gobbled up and stopped exercising. My gym mistress ticking me off and told me to eat less and exercise more or else.
I played hockey for the school and swam and did gymnastics and trampoline and theatre and dance and had stopped it all at about 15 when I discovered "Boys". And Caroline and Denise were right behind me. Caroline was in an accident and was in hospital for months so it was just Denise and I and no one knew then that I had ever been in Australia and I was fitting in.
And Christmases in the UK are insane with food and holly and mistletoe, buttered hot chestnuts can not be bettered as a taste sensation. We had dinners at Grandmas and Auntie Bet's and Auntie Pats and our own. All different and we were drowning in grease not even grease but lard and suet. The English need the extra fat just to shield you from the intense cold.
But you do get used to it, the bitter cold, The first February I arrived there I crawled into a foetal position on my knees in bed, so cold it was, even with the knitted covered hot water bottle Grandma provided. I quaked and trembled in bed, sleep only coming from exhaustion in the end.
In Grandma's house there was no bathroom, only a concrete bunker housing the loos down the street. My poor Grandpa full of bronchitis shuffling down to the toilets with a blanket wrapped around him. In the snow, it was barbaric. Mum and Dad got them moved very quickly to a bungalow in Bottomboat.
There they had 2 bedrooms, a lounge, a big kitchen and a modern bathroom with an inside loo. How I loved that place at Bottomboat, every Sunday we had huge dinners there and sat around stunned and stuffed full of food and the gas heater would be going, it was heaven.
We watched Des O'Connor and Cliff Richard and daleks and Top Of The Pops, my favourite, and The Monkees, which I waited all week to see and George would want to watch Dr Who. We were always ending up in a punch up and hair pulling and red faced and roaring when Mum and Dad came in.
I always thought I came off second best but Dad would point out my injuries on George, gouge marks from my nails, me who bit them. I must have really dug in. George could be a big bad bully when he was younger and was forever getting us in trouble.
Then he turned teenage and seemed to stay in his room for years, he drifted through the house like a ghost. I who was 2 years younger was out and about all the time and tried to ignore him as much as possible.
I was as far as I was concerned was a cool kid and George was a nerd and had only to be tolerated. I had to catch the bus to school with him in the mornings and one time I slipped up and said the word shit and got a clout across the head for my trouble.
I knew he would tell on me to Mum and Dad, swearing was taboo then, Mum and Dad said shit sometimes, rarely, bloody was rude as was cow as in poor "Cow", bastard was terrible so was knob, or balls, fuck was never heard, nor was cunt. It was a different time, a more civilised existence. Slower.
And while George spent his time in his room I was out, always out. Looking, seeking, Mecca twice a week, which was club that served alcohol, and I went Monday nights and Saturday Afternoons. If our parents found out what we got up to in there they would have banned us for life.
I was 15 and always with my girlfriends, the type that you link arm in arm with as you walk up town.
I have had my Christmas tree up for weeks. I wanted to extend the feeling of Christmas this year. For some reason we are all in great moods. Christmas this year is not the normally dreaded affair it has been in years gone by.
By us I mean my family of girls and their kids. The kids have never been affected by our lack of enthusiasm and this year we, the girls and I decide to celebrate it, full on. Yvette has 3 trees, I have mine in my unit, Alena has a black one and Deb, even though she's away, has a magnificent tree. Mara's place is also "done up", ready for 7am yelling on Christmas Day by the boys.
We have to clean house at this time of the year. It's just s thing women do. Everything has to be clean and shining, lights bouncing of walls, illuminating dust. Christmas to me is like a rebirth. The sad ragged end of the year days are bathed in Christmas lights. Putting gladness into the hearts of the ones that accept it and even crusty old men soften a little with their alcohol presents.
Its the time of goodwill to others and comes along at the end of the year when everyone is tuckered out and ready for a Bex and a good lie down. Or two weeks spent on a beach, comatose, somewhere. Doing no more activity than turning over, counting kids heads, avoiding people rushing by dripping Pacific water.
Maybe a venture into the tumbling swirl of waves, shrieking at the coldness on newly toasted parts of your anatomy. And you body surf down to the edge and get caught in a slight rip and remember what to do, swim across it. The sea is in your nostrils and ears, sensory deprivation and you thrust upwards from the sandy bottom, lungs screaming for air.
Some dumpers out beating you and you conquer others with a slight surge and a slicing off the top like slicing off the top of a hard boiled egg, done to "Let the witch out". You recall your swimming days when all that kept you going was sheer adrenalin and your determination to win, no matter what.
One of the best Christmases I ever spent was with the girls in Surfers Paradise. Grundy's had a huge water slide sitting right on the apex of sea and sand and water on the sea front. The girls and I took a day there once and never stopped climbing and sliding all day. It was the best day, hot with a slight breeze coming off the ocean.
Our feet hated the feeling of the Pebblecrete after a while and being held up waiting for others to take their turn. But we persevered bombing each other in the deep "exit" pool. It was so very Australian when I think of it and it embodies that is so very fine about this country.
Freedom, freedom to be your self. To not care about what your body looks like but more about the way you feel. To be able to swear and get away with it, to be irreverent and child like and in that spot on that day I went back to the fit child I was.
My biggest goal from when I could swim was to be an excellent one. I remembered the cold morning starts, Dad holding a stopwatch dressed in a warm tracksuit and us in our Speedos, though Jackie had a Jantzen suit and I coveted it, badly.
Jantzen and Speedo making us brand conscious even then in the 60's. And who we were trained by. I won a scholarship at 8 to be trained by a professional Coach and there were days and days of learning how to stroke and kick.
Lap after lap of kickboarding just with tiny butterfly kicks, learning to only to kick from the ankle. And days spent underwater increasing lung capacity by travelling further and further down the pool. Learning in a race to keep your opponent in your sight and using the lines on the bottom of the pool as guides.
You never forget the chlorine sting in your eyes and nose, you never forget the feel of the wooden lane markers as you gently swing on them awaiting the results. And you remember the discipline and the starving feelings and salt tablets forced down your throat and being given glucose tablets to suck on and knowing even then at 8 that they didn't work.
I was a little shorty and nearly all my opponents in swimming races were taller girls so I had to lengthen out my freestyle and my dive to stay ahead. At first I was a choppy little swimmer all energy and no style, no proper breathing technique. I would just plunge in, losing seconds in a plunge dive not a racing dive.
A racing dive I had to learn by getting the boys to teach me. My brothers and other older boys in the squad I was in. A racing dive flattening your body out to gain the longest distance travelled in the air and not water.
It took ages to learn but I kept at it and at the same time I was learning to whistle and click my fingers, tie my own laces and trump everyone in my class at exams. A typical middle child, fiercely competitive and a charming negotiator when I wanted something. Usually from Dad, he was easiest.
But back to the beach and the Australian feelings. My parents emigrated when I was 2 so I have no memory of Scotland at all, only family stories by my older siblings who do remember. But having lived in Britain from age 12 to 16, being Australian means to me a lot of things. Things that you never realise you miss until you are not there.
Being able to go barefoot any time and not being seen as unusual. I took my shoes off one time at a fair in England in the summer. The temperature was a good 28 degrees and the grass in the park was cool and inviting, so I slipped off my sandals and ran around barefoot. I was ridiculed right left and centre. One girl called ma an Aborigine.
Older women stopped me and told me to put shoes on, concerned for God knows what. Older men jeered at me, I st ll didn't put them on till later but was shocked at other peoples reaction. I had come there from the Gold Coast where bare feet were De Rigeur and even kids going to school didn't have to wear them.
I am sure there are rules in Surfers for the wearing of shoes in shops, health ones, but no one enforces it. Sun, sand and heat make the wearing of thongs necessary but then in heat your feet swell ever so slightly and bare feet is bliss. I didn't bother to repeat my action in England.
I stood out enough, with my accent and at a Yorkshire Grammar School had to drop it and take on a thick Yorkshire accent instead. I became more Yorkshire than the rest, taking up a lot of my Grand Dad Wilshers dry wit and Grandma's irreverence. I had to fit in at School, so I started rebelling and being one of the cool kids.
I had to shorten my skirts without my parents knowledge, so as soon as I was out of the mews where we lived I would roll my hated pleated skirt over at the waistband, pull my shirt out at the bottom, over the top of the skirt instead of tucked in and loosen my tie.
On a good day I would get ignored and on a bad day hauled before the headmistress. She was a spinster, no kids, and looked and sounded like Joyce Grenfell but in a quieter voice. She was always nervous and we, my friends, Caroline, a bad girl, and Denise, a geek like me gave her the hardest time.
She gave weak punishments like picking up paper in the Quadrangle and we just wouldn't turn up and neither did she so it was token punishment only. I was most thrilled at the School dinners. No more squished vegemite cardboard sandwiches, even now the smell of an over ripe tomato sandwich is enough to make me gip.
Every day of the week dinner was served at lunchtime in the Cafeteria. Most people hated them, I loved them as my Mother was not known for her cooking prowess and these were better meals than hers. And the combinations startled me, baked beans and fish fingers with mash and white parsley sauce on the Fish fingers. There were plates of bread and butter on the table and giant jugs of cordial.
We all took it in turns to help set up and clear away the cutlery and dishes, there were always sweets, apple sponge and big jugs of custard, comfort food that I gobbled up and stopped exercising. My gym mistress ticking me off and told me to eat less and exercise more or else.
I played hockey for the school and swam and did gymnastics and trampoline and theatre and dance and had stopped it all at about 15 when I discovered "Boys". And Caroline and Denise were right behind me. Caroline was in an accident and was in hospital for months so it was just Denise and I and no one knew then that I had ever been in Australia and I was fitting in.
And Christmases in the UK are insane with food and holly and mistletoe, buttered hot chestnuts can not be bettered as a taste sensation. We had dinners at Grandmas and Auntie Bet's and Auntie Pats and our own. All different and we were drowning in grease not even grease but lard and suet. The English need the extra fat just to shield you from the intense cold.
But you do get used to it, the bitter cold, The first February I arrived there I crawled into a foetal position on my knees in bed, so cold it was, even with the knitted covered hot water bottle Grandma provided. I quaked and trembled in bed, sleep only coming from exhaustion in the end.
In Grandma's house there was no bathroom, only a concrete bunker housing the loos down the street. My poor Grandpa full of bronchitis shuffling down to the toilets with a blanket wrapped around him. In the snow, it was barbaric. Mum and Dad got them moved very quickly to a bungalow in Bottomboat.
There they had 2 bedrooms, a lounge, a big kitchen and a modern bathroom with an inside loo. How I loved that place at Bottomboat, every Sunday we had huge dinners there and sat around stunned and stuffed full of food and the gas heater would be going, it was heaven.
We watched Des O'Connor and Cliff Richard and daleks and Top Of The Pops, my favourite, and The Monkees, which I waited all week to see and George would want to watch Dr Who. We were always ending up in a punch up and hair pulling and red faced and roaring when Mum and Dad came in.
I always thought I came off second best but Dad would point out my injuries on George, gouge marks from my nails, me who bit them. I must have really dug in. George could be a big bad bully when he was younger and was forever getting us in trouble.
Then he turned teenage and seemed to stay in his room for years, he drifted through the house like a ghost. I who was 2 years younger was out and about all the time and tried to ignore him as much as possible.
I was as far as I was concerned was a cool kid and George was a nerd and had only to be tolerated. I had to catch the bus to school with him in the mornings and one time I slipped up and said the word shit and got a clout across the head for my trouble.
I knew he would tell on me to Mum and Dad, swearing was taboo then, Mum and Dad said shit sometimes, rarely, bloody was rude as was cow as in poor "Cow", bastard was terrible so was knob, or balls, fuck was never heard, nor was cunt. It was a different time, a more civilised existence. Slower.
And while George spent his time in his room I was out, always out. Looking, seeking, Mecca twice a week, which was club that served alcohol, and I went Monday nights and Saturday Afternoons. If our parents found out what we got up to in there they would have banned us for life.
I was 15 and always with my girlfriends, the type that you link arm in arm with as you walk up town.
