Romeo and Juliet, Johnny and Mary, Carly Simon
Without Prejudice
You remember don't you? What it felt like, what it really feels like, a snatched piece of a song bringing back the memory, you remember don't you?
When you were younger, more trusting, when all was possible and nothing impossible. You were your young self, more beautiful, more silly, more willing to take a risk. You remember but you don't have to think about it any more. Your life is comfortable now, soft, without troughs and valleys, just smooth sailing. Bland ???
Put Carly Simons " Coming around Again" on you tube, you'll find out what I'm talking about. That feeling of when you were young that all things were possible. Going to the dances at 15, your best dress on, your friend Denise sitting on the bus next to you. Steam coming off your macs in the warm air inside the bus. Cigarettes at the ready,(God, hope Mum doesn't find out) and breath mints, pink cachous, musky.
Patchouli oil for scent and cow bells in your ears. A Rebel, A Jimmy Hendrix, a Rolling Stone. At 15 I lived in the United Kingdom in Wakefield, Yorkshire. My parents had returned to Family in the UK after 10 years of living in the great land of Oz. They were homesick, that changed as soon as we arrived and it took us 4 years to save up and get the tribe back to Australia.
I at 12 had come from The Gold Coast and Adelaide to this wonderful new place but all I could thinks was how cold I was. The sights and sounds, all new, all exotic, rich accents of broad Yorkshire, mixed with the smells of cooking and heated rooms. Everything was tiny, tiny rooms, tiny narrow staircases, sitting in the frozen "Parlour" with Mum, perched high on a double bed as Granma Lucy played the piano.
Granny Lucy with her wild cap of dark blue black hair and her wicked gypsy dancing eyes. And if she saw me "up town", she would always hand me two shillings for hot chips, the panacea of the teen girl of 14 with spots and a squint. She always looked faintly alarmed when she saw me.
I was not like Jackie my older Sister, I was a rebel in knee high white lace socks, rolled over at the waist pleated skirt, tie awry, white shirt pulled out and a cigarette in my mouth. A sneaky puff that I never inhaled. It was the time of the Mods and Rockers in the Uk. My best friend Denise Edsen and I Grammar School Girls who were the two biggest nerds known to man and trying desperately to act cool.
Denise had ginger red hair which I thought was great and we used to sneak off to her house before going to the Roller Skating, raiding her parents liquor cabinet at first for whisky. Vile ! We looked at each other in shock, the alcohol was fire, liquid fire and we sputtered our way through 2 thimble sized drams.
Before that a Baby cham at a wedding was all we were allowed. We felt giddy on pretending to be drunk and ran to the Railway Station, giggling at everything and we had the swagger of Grammar School Girls gone bad. We looked down on the Public School kids, who had not enough brains to pass the 11 Plus Exam or have a genius winner of a scholarship prize as my Mother had been.
We had the arrogance of youth and thought we knew everything there was to know except algebra and even that was getting easier. We did physics, chemistry, biology, Spanish, French, Drama, Movement, History, religion. P.E. Gym, Hockey, Swimming, Debate team, Amateur Dramatic Productions and Music. All the Masters wore black gowns and mortar boards and seemed to glide along the halls as if their feet were attached to wheels.
The Biggest person there, The BOSS, Eric Yates Esq. He still handed out the cane as punishment and we heard lurid stories of canings and beatings and shuddered. He always looked at me as if I was some sort of little insect that he wanted to swat. I was an "Orsetralian" after all and we are expected to be uncouth. I was callled an "aboriginal" and that was one of the better words!
I who hated to stand out was suddenly looked upon as some sort of novelty child and I died a thousand deaths trying to be accepted. So I became a larrikin, a rebel without a cause. I palled up with the other outsiders, the low wallers, who hung out on the stone fences and smoked, to try and look cool.
We changed from mods to greasers and back again as the feeling took us. one minute we were wearing bubble perms and granny glasses and short floral mini dresses in gauzy chiffon or navy jeans and boat shoes and unbelted Macs. I have a photo of BBF Denise and I are at Bridlington on Holidays and we are identical in every way.
I went to see her on a trip over there to the Uk once. She was the same as ever, 20 years older and Mother to twin boys and happily married. We laughed all afternoon at our "Wild" antics in the old days, with glasses of very mild sherry. We were as loathe to part as we had been the first time I returned to Australia. She walked to the Bus Station with me arm in arm, just as we had been as girls.
She lived in a village in West Yorkshire that looked like somewhere Agatha Christie described in some of her mysteries. Thatched roofs and low ceilings, stone cottages behind stone walls with roses archly draped across the Portico and loads of sphagnum moss lined mesh hanging baskets full of coloured nasturtiums.
An English village is truly like stepping back in time to the 40's some of them, pre war
You remember don't you? What it felt like, what it really feels like, a snatched piece of a song bringing back the memory, you remember don't you?
When you were younger, more trusting, when all was possible and nothing impossible. You were your young self, more beautiful, more silly, more willing to take a risk. You remember but you don't have to think about it any more. Your life is comfortable now, soft, without troughs and valleys, just smooth sailing. Bland ???
Put Carly Simons " Coming around Again" on you tube, you'll find out what I'm talking about. That feeling of when you were young that all things were possible. Going to the dances at 15, your best dress on, your friend Denise sitting on the bus next to you. Steam coming off your macs in the warm air inside the bus. Cigarettes at the ready,(God, hope Mum doesn't find out) and breath mints, pink cachous, musky.
Patchouli oil for scent and cow bells in your ears. A Rebel, A Jimmy Hendrix, a Rolling Stone. At 15 I lived in the United Kingdom in Wakefield, Yorkshire. My parents had returned to Family in the UK after 10 years of living in the great land of Oz. They were homesick, that changed as soon as we arrived and it took us 4 years to save up and get the tribe back to Australia.
I at 12 had come from The Gold Coast and Adelaide to this wonderful new place but all I could thinks was how cold I was. The sights and sounds, all new, all exotic, rich accents of broad Yorkshire, mixed with the smells of cooking and heated rooms. Everything was tiny, tiny rooms, tiny narrow staircases, sitting in the frozen "Parlour" with Mum, perched high on a double bed as Granma Lucy played the piano.
Granny Lucy with her wild cap of dark blue black hair and her wicked gypsy dancing eyes. And if she saw me "up town", she would always hand me two shillings for hot chips, the panacea of the teen girl of 14 with spots and a squint. She always looked faintly alarmed when she saw me.
I was not like Jackie my older Sister, I was a rebel in knee high white lace socks, rolled over at the waist pleated skirt, tie awry, white shirt pulled out and a cigarette in my mouth. A sneaky puff that I never inhaled. It was the time of the Mods and Rockers in the Uk. My best friend Denise Edsen and I Grammar School Girls who were the two biggest nerds known to man and trying desperately to act cool.
Denise had ginger red hair which I thought was great and we used to sneak off to her house before going to the Roller Skating, raiding her parents liquor cabinet at first for whisky. Vile ! We looked at each other in shock, the alcohol was fire, liquid fire and we sputtered our way through 2 thimble sized drams.
Before that a Baby cham at a wedding was all we were allowed. We felt giddy on pretending to be drunk and ran to the Railway Station, giggling at everything and we had the swagger of Grammar School Girls gone bad. We looked down on the Public School kids, who had not enough brains to pass the 11 Plus Exam or have a genius winner of a scholarship prize as my Mother had been.
We had the arrogance of youth and thought we knew everything there was to know except algebra and even that was getting easier. We did physics, chemistry, biology, Spanish, French, Drama, Movement, History, religion. P.E. Gym, Hockey, Swimming, Debate team, Amateur Dramatic Productions and Music. All the Masters wore black gowns and mortar boards and seemed to glide along the halls as if their feet were attached to wheels.
The Biggest person there, The BOSS, Eric Yates Esq. He still handed out the cane as punishment and we heard lurid stories of canings and beatings and shuddered. He always looked at me as if I was some sort of little insect that he wanted to swat. I was an "Orsetralian" after all and we are expected to be uncouth. I was callled an "aboriginal" and that was one of the better words!
I who hated to stand out was suddenly looked upon as some sort of novelty child and I died a thousand deaths trying to be accepted. So I became a larrikin, a rebel without a cause. I palled up with the other outsiders, the low wallers, who hung out on the stone fences and smoked, to try and look cool.
We changed from mods to greasers and back again as the feeling took us. one minute we were wearing bubble perms and granny glasses and short floral mini dresses in gauzy chiffon or navy jeans and boat shoes and unbelted Macs. I have a photo of BBF Denise and I are at Bridlington on Holidays and we are identical in every way.
I went to see her on a trip over there to the Uk once. She was the same as ever, 20 years older and Mother to twin boys and happily married. We laughed all afternoon at our "Wild" antics in the old days, with glasses of very mild sherry. We were as loathe to part as we had been the first time I returned to Australia. She walked to the Bus Station with me arm in arm, just as we had been as girls.
She lived in a village in West Yorkshire that looked like somewhere Agatha Christie described in some of her mysteries. Thatched roofs and low ceilings, stone cottages behind stone walls with roses archly draped across the Portico and loads of sphagnum moss lined mesh hanging baskets full of coloured nasturtiums.
An English village is truly like stepping back in time to the 40's some of them, pre war
