Winter
Without Prejudice
I hate winter everyone who knows me, knows that I would love to be like a bear and hibernate for the winter. Wake up in Spring. And living in Melbourne the winters can be nasty, full of ill winds and freezing days. the best bit probably settling down with a good book on a Saturday afternoon. Rain streaming down the windows and me inside with warmth and hearth and knowing I am not expected to move. Just read.
I get a thing called winter depression or SAD and sad it is. I don't get enough light into my pineal gland or something and the serontonin levels plummet. It makes you lethargic, weepy, irritable and you want to eat loads of carbs. There is a light box you can buy that has 1,000 lux and if you sit in front of it for an hour a day the depression will lift.
Thinks this year I will just drive to QLD and sit in the sun and write for the entire winter. Catch up with all my family as I have so many up there. Jackie my older sis and Helen my younger. the boys, George, David, Winston, and my nieces and nephews. Vanessa a friend in Beaudesert, she has ten acres, maybe I can pitch a tent on her property. Even in mid winter Brisbane will still be 18 degrees and sunny.
In Melbourne it's not unlike the UK in its weather, and I have knnown it to snow in the street
in Melbourne. I know as I had to walk to work at Myers Chadstone in it and within seconds my short boots were soaked and I had to work all day with frozen toes. It was good to be in retial in those days, the lights strong, the heating warm and the customers in the mood to shop.
If we did stocktake we were paid tea money and at 16, it was a good sum, so all us Juniors would rush to buy home made dim sims at the food counter and take off to Chadstone Bowl so we could sit and gossip and rest our weary feet. Stocktake was fun and we would hide from the bosses and pretend to be counting books or toys or birthday cards.
Behind the scenes in a big store is a rabbit warren of stockrooms, with hanging rails, tissue paper crumpled everywhere, ironing boards, massive sliding cabinets of stock. They are perfect for losing yourself in and hiding from the counts. We did it all the time us Juniors, male and female. One bosses son kept trying to trap us in the cabinets and kiss us at Xmas time. He was always there for Xmas holiday work and livened up our proceedings with his irreverence and Private school ways.
When the girls were small I would get them to school and lie down in front of the gas fire and fall asleeo for most of the day. I didn't realise it was depression I just thought I felt like death warmed over. I would make large pots of tuna casserole with pasta and eat the lot. No one else liked tuna anyway. The carbs would make me more sleepy and for the winter I would be like to Dormouse from Alices' adventures in Wonderland, always nodding off.
That is why I make so much of the Summer as I am energetic and happy and work madly to prepare for the winter ahead. The garden has to be right, the unit and house. Coats and hoodies and track pants come out of storage and hung. Summer clothes bagged up and labelled, ready for the next Summer. By that time the boys will have grown again and boys do not care what they wear, so all the clothes are called into service again.
The tress shed all their leaves which at least means less spiders but I hate looking at bare branches stark against grey skies and its not the cold that is bad its the gloom of grey skies, day after day. I was in Ireland twice in 2001. Once a summer sojourn and one a pre winter. It made no difference it was cold both times. Raining and grey days.On a bus to the Shops one day I saw people in tank tops and short sleeves. Mothers pushing strollers with fat babes uncovered. The sun was shining, I was dressed for Winter, rightly so, it was 11 degrees.
My fiance, an Irishman, stayed there until the true winter set in and the snow. Walking back from the Pub one night he saw a fox creeping down the whitened streets. he stayed still enjoying the sight and thought
"Who would believe this, a fox in the suburban streets of Palmerstown in Dublin.?"
When my parents returned to the Uk when I was 12 I thought I would die from the cold. I was at Granny Wilshers house upstairs. A terrace house amongst a row of the same dreary houses. Pre war homes that had no bathroom, just a concrete bunker of loos down the street. I never forgot my Granddad Wishers cough, long and drawn out as he smoked baccy and had been a miner, now retired. we washed in the kitchen sink and on Saturday nights the kitchen was taken over by a tin bath and we had fun pouring jugs of hot water into it.
The kitchen would fill with steam, windows running with moisture as we luxuriated in a warm bath. We had to be quick and wash everything in minutes and get out and let the next person have their turn. Then it was dress and up to bed with a hot water bottle. I could only get warm by crouching into a foetal positon, knees drawn up underneath me, yet still I was freezing. Mum and Dad pushed to get my parents better housing and they moved into a detached unit in Bottomboat, with a precious bathroom.
Once they moved and so had we to a house in Ossett, we visited my Grandparents every Sunday for roast and Yorkshires, (Yorkshire puds) made perfectly by Grandma, crisp golden and hot. Yorkshires made in muffin tins, so they were about 4 inches in diameter and eaten with a thin gravy called "Ash" with hot Yorkshire Relish sauce. Then would come the "joint", beef, pork with golden crackling, boiled bacon (not as bad as it sounds, more like a pickled pork in Aussie.Gammon and Danish streaky bacon were to die for in the Uk.
Then we would have apple pie and hot custard or Yorkshire Parking which is like a dense gingerbread and is one of the best things you have ever tasted. We fell in love with all the wintry delights in the UK. Snow fights and warm as toast shops with huge blowers of warm air as you walked in. I was 12 and the whole time I was in the UK, almost 4 years, I loved it. Despite the bitter cold winters.
I learned to be a Grammar School girl, going to my Mothers old school. I quickly adapted to the weather and the formal school and was soon wearing my hooded coat trimmed with fur, thick brown stockings, clumpy shoes and pleated skirt (4 inches below the knee ) white shirt, tie, blazer and huge school scarf. I carried a wicker basket with my books in and so desperate to fit in I followed every one else and looked down on all the normal school kids.
We were Grammar school kids with our undercover swimming pool and I swam in races and was made Swimming Captain after a while. There were huge gymnasiums with huge trampolines set in the floor. you could flip and bounce high into the air on them and then there were other gyms with pommel horses where we were taught to vault and land with a slap. the walls were climbing frames we were expected to climb to the top of with nets or hand holds of leather.
We would be 18 feet in the air and I never ever looked down, I hated heights and still do but I was determined to conquer the fear. The showers were long steaming corridors of flesh and I neither looked left or right when I was showering. I can remember who had a bush or arm pit hair and who had the biggest boobs when we were all getting dressed. Some girls flaunted their bodies and talked of boys. I was gob smacked not having seen the naked female form ever except mine and I never ever bothered to look at it.
There was a theatre where we did dance and movement and acted in plays. It was also our meeting place for morning assembly in front of the Headmaster, "BOSS", as in yes boss. He was a commanding figure in gown and mortice board and never walked but just glided almost like he rolled on wheels. All teh other Masters also were begowned. They looked intimidating and they were. I think I know the Anglican hymn book by heart, every day a new hymn and our teen voices would warble "Abide with Me" and "Onward Christian Soldiers"
I was entranced one morning when snow covered the landscape outside Jackies and my upsatirs window at Roseleigh, our mews coach house home. We had our own fireplace in the room and we pinched all the coal from the coal scullery when the boys weren't around and lit it.
I hate winter everyone who knows me, knows that I would love to be like a bear and hibernate for the winter. Wake up in Spring. And living in Melbourne the winters can be nasty, full of ill winds and freezing days. the best bit probably settling down with a good book on a Saturday afternoon. Rain streaming down the windows and me inside with warmth and hearth and knowing I am not expected to move. Just read.
I get a thing called winter depression or SAD and sad it is. I don't get enough light into my pineal gland or something and the serontonin levels plummet. It makes you lethargic, weepy, irritable and you want to eat loads of carbs. There is a light box you can buy that has 1,000 lux and if you sit in front of it for an hour a day the depression will lift.
Thinks this year I will just drive to QLD and sit in the sun and write for the entire winter. Catch up with all my family as I have so many up there. Jackie my older sis and Helen my younger. the boys, George, David, Winston, and my nieces and nephews. Vanessa a friend in Beaudesert, she has ten acres, maybe I can pitch a tent on her property. Even in mid winter Brisbane will still be 18 degrees and sunny.
In Melbourne it's not unlike the UK in its weather, and I have knnown it to snow in the street
in Melbourne. I know as I had to walk to work at Myers Chadstone in it and within seconds my short boots were soaked and I had to work all day with frozen toes. It was good to be in retial in those days, the lights strong, the heating warm and the customers in the mood to shop.
If we did stocktake we were paid tea money and at 16, it was a good sum, so all us Juniors would rush to buy home made dim sims at the food counter and take off to Chadstone Bowl so we could sit and gossip and rest our weary feet. Stocktake was fun and we would hide from the bosses and pretend to be counting books or toys or birthday cards.
Behind the scenes in a big store is a rabbit warren of stockrooms, with hanging rails, tissue paper crumpled everywhere, ironing boards, massive sliding cabinets of stock. They are perfect for losing yourself in and hiding from the counts. We did it all the time us Juniors, male and female. One bosses son kept trying to trap us in the cabinets and kiss us at Xmas time. He was always there for Xmas holiday work and livened up our proceedings with his irreverence and Private school ways.
When the girls were small I would get them to school and lie down in front of the gas fire and fall asleeo for most of the day. I didn't realise it was depression I just thought I felt like death warmed over. I would make large pots of tuna casserole with pasta and eat the lot. No one else liked tuna anyway. The carbs would make me more sleepy and for the winter I would be like to Dormouse from Alices' adventures in Wonderland, always nodding off.
That is why I make so much of the Summer as I am energetic and happy and work madly to prepare for the winter ahead. The garden has to be right, the unit and house. Coats and hoodies and track pants come out of storage and hung. Summer clothes bagged up and labelled, ready for the next Summer. By that time the boys will have grown again and boys do not care what they wear, so all the clothes are called into service again.
The tress shed all their leaves which at least means less spiders but I hate looking at bare branches stark against grey skies and its not the cold that is bad its the gloom of grey skies, day after day. I was in Ireland twice in 2001. Once a summer sojourn and one a pre winter. It made no difference it was cold both times. Raining and grey days.On a bus to the Shops one day I saw people in tank tops and short sleeves. Mothers pushing strollers with fat babes uncovered. The sun was shining, I was dressed for Winter, rightly so, it was 11 degrees.
My fiance, an Irishman, stayed there until the true winter set in and the snow. Walking back from the Pub one night he saw a fox creeping down the whitened streets. he stayed still enjoying the sight and thought
"Who would believe this, a fox in the suburban streets of Palmerstown in Dublin.?"
When my parents returned to the Uk when I was 12 I thought I would die from the cold. I was at Granny Wilshers house upstairs. A terrace house amongst a row of the same dreary houses. Pre war homes that had no bathroom, just a concrete bunker of loos down the street. I never forgot my Granddad Wishers cough, long and drawn out as he smoked baccy and had been a miner, now retired. we washed in the kitchen sink and on Saturday nights the kitchen was taken over by a tin bath and we had fun pouring jugs of hot water into it.
The kitchen would fill with steam, windows running with moisture as we luxuriated in a warm bath. We had to be quick and wash everything in minutes and get out and let the next person have their turn. Then it was dress and up to bed with a hot water bottle. I could only get warm by crouching into a foetal positon, knees drawn up underneath me, yet still I was freezing. Mum and Dad pushed to get my parents better housing and they moved into a detached unit in Bottomboat, with a precious bathroom.
Once they moved and so had we to a house in Ossett, we visited my Grandparents every Sunday for roast and Yorkshires, (Yorkshire puds) made perfectly by Grandma, crisp golden and hot. Yorkshires made in muffin tins, so they were about 4 inches in diameter and eaten with a thin gravy called "Ash" with hot Yorkshire Relish sauce. Then would come the "joint", beef, pork with golden crackling, boiled bacon (not as bad as it sounds, more like a pickled pork in Aussie.Gammon and Danish streaky bacon were to die for in the Uk.
Then we would have apple pie and hot custard or Yorkshire Parking which is like a dense gingerbread and is one of the best things you have ever tasted. We fell in love with all the wintry delights in the UK. Snow fights and warm as toast shops with huge blowers of warm air as you walked in. I was 12 and the whole time I was in the UK, almost 4 years, I loved it. Despite the bitter cold winters.
I learned to be a Grammar School girl, going to my Mothers old school. I quickly adapted to the weather and the formal school and was soon wearing my hooded coat trimmed with fur, thick brown stockings, clumpy shoes and pleated skirt (4 inches below the knee ) white shirt, tie, blazer and huge school scarf. I carried a wicker basket with my books in and so desperate to fit in I followed every one else and looked down on all the normal school kids.
We were Grammar school kids with our undercover swimming pool and I swam in races and was made Swimming Captain after a while. There were huge gymnasiums with huge trampolines set in the floor. you could flip and bounce high into the air on them and then there were other gyms with pommel horses where we were taught to vault and land with a slap. the walls were climbing frames we were expected to climb to the top of with nets or hand holds of leather.
We would be 18 feet in the air and I never ever looked down, I hated heights and still do but I was determined to conquer the fear. The showers were long steaming corridors of flesh and I neither looked left or right when I was showering. I can remember who had a bush or arm pit hair and who had the biggest boobs when we were all getting dressed. Some girls flaunted their bodies and talked of boys. I was gob smacked not having seen the naked female form ever except mine and I never ever bothered to look at it.
There was a theatre where we did dance and movement and acted in plays. It was also our meeting place for morning assembly in front of the Headmaster, "BOSS", as in yes boss. He was a commanding figure in gown and mortice board and never walked but just glided almost like he rolled on wheels. All teh other Masters also were begowned. They looked intimidating and they were. I think I know the Anglican hymn book by heart, every day a new hymn and our teen voices would warble "Abide with Me" and "Onward Christian Soldiers"
I was entranced one morning when snow covered the landscape outside Jackies and my upsatirs window at Roseleigh, our mews coach house home. We had our own fireplace in the room and we pinched all the coal from the coal scullery when the boys weren't around and lit it.
