Crazy
Without Prejudice
It's been a crazy few months. I feel like I am back in April and nothing in the last six months happened. One minute I was smelling the scent of burning autumn leaves and the slight shiver of winter approaching and now I am here semi dressed and semi wilting with the sudden heat. I feel we skipped Spring and dove headlong into the crystal blue of Summer.
Headlong into days of breathless heat, where sunburn, melted thongs, Christmas Roast and Cottees ice cold red cordial belong. The cordial these days can be bought sugar free, and preservative free, and it tastes bland and uninteresting. We of the baby boomer age who refuse to get old, remember when cordial put hairs on your chest, made your fillings ache and coloured your tongue virulent shades of green and orange.
Cordial in the sixties came in a concentrated small bottle. Cold water was added and six cups of white sugar and boiled and poured into sterilised bottles or jugs. Now, that cordial was made for tough kids. Kids who missed front teeth, had freckles, had blisters from endless hours swinging on monkey bars, tight calves from playing hopscotch, elastics, gymnastics and rounders. And played in the streets, backyards, breathlessly hot parks and had to be home by dark.
Ron Tin Tin, I love Lucy, Maverick, Bonanza ruled the the small black tv screen crouching in the corner of the lounge. Black and white T.V. but for us who knew no different, it might as well as have been in technicolor. I can't remember having takeaway except for a meat pie injected with sauce under the crust that burned your mouth and chest if you let the gravy slip. I am sure some of us baby boomers have permanently scarred upper palates from hot pies. And if you have ever had a burned tongue you know full the horrors, the excruciating damage, a mouthful hot food can do.
Even ice didn't help and trust me I've tried it.
We knew not of air conditioning, nor fans, swimming pools were only the local ones, Olympic sized, that you could crack ice on in winter and jump into the shallow end of in Summer. Chlorine turned your hair green if you were dirty blonde like me and just had to be endured. I remember soap and bubbles but not shampoo. Soap was solvol for dirt and was grey and gritty and bath soap was Lifebouy or for the very posh who could afford it, Cashmere Bouquet or Imperial Leather.
We were not posh. Just poor as most baby boomers were in the day. We might know of one wealthy family in a nice house but we vowed them as different, a cut above, superior to us commission kids. My parents emigrated from the U.K. With five kids. I was the youngest at that time. After me came two more, our only Aussie, my younger brother, Never Sweat and after him came a younger sister born in the U.K. Surprising all of us. I was 14 and disgusted at my parents and told no one at my posh Grammar School. I was incensed at my parents stupidness.
Someone came up to me at school and said with delight,
" I hear your Mum had a baby "
I mumbled something and stalked away but I grew to love my baby Sis, we all did. We were all teens and Never Sweat was 10. We taught Helly Belly to talk at 8 months and she hasn't stopped since. Just like me.
We had returned to the U.K. For 4 years. I was 12 and turned 16 when my parents decided to go back to Australia. I hated Yorkshire at first. I was delighted to meet relatives. They were magic. I had never known or remembered having a granny of granddad , an aunt, uncle, cousin and we had loads of them. And the U.K. was the best place to be at that time. Jimmy Hendrix had arrived and the Moody Blues, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, the man from Uncle and Daleks, Top of the Pops and cricket and Wimbledon peppered our conversations.
Hippies rose up in the U.S. seemingly out of nowhere and taught a whole generation, Peace and Love. I wore flowers in my hair and cow bells in my ears and a Paisley mini with matching Granny frilled bloomers. I found a burgundy pleated skirt of my Older Sisters and assumed, wrongly, that she had forgotten about it. I cut twelve inches off the bottom and when she found out she half killed me. She wore my beautiful brand new frilly pure satin top to bed and completely ruined it forever.
Gone were the days when she dragged me off to see Elvis in Blue Hawaii 14 times. And Oliver, West Side Story and Bali Hai. I was the annoying younger sister then and next we were in a strange country and teens and it was all so weird. My older sis was dating and singing in shows and I was the virginal dweeb that had no idea of kissing or boys or sex and didn't want to know. I just wanted to take advantage of the fine education I was receiving and try and understand Sergeant Peppers lyrics.
It was always a bit crazy but when you come from a large family times are always going to be a bit mad. We lived in an old Georgian coach house in Ossett with two reception rooms, two floors, a cellar that filled with water and was bloody horrible, the cellar that is, not the house. The house was lovely with a careworn interior and a grand manner. Coal fires adorned every room and it was one of my chores to clean and light them. I soon became adept at lighting them, plying bellows and big twist s of newspaper with small twigs on top. A cold coal fire is dank and smells but once you got one going there was nothing that could outweigh its warmth and comfort. We toasted muffins on it, roasted chestnuts and potatoes and burned our toes trying to get too close to it.
................
It's been a crazy few months. I feel like I am back in April and nothing in the last six months happened. One minute I was smelling the scent of burning autumn leaves and the slight shiver of winter approaching and now I am here semi dressed and semi wilting with the sudden heat. I feel we skipped Spring and dove headlong into the crystal blue of Summer.
Headlong into days of breathless heat, where sunburn, melted thongs, Christmas Roast and Cottees ice cold red cordial belong. The cordial these days can be bought sugar free, and preservative free, and it tastes bland and uninteresting. We of the baby boomer age who refuse to get old, remember when cordial put hairs on your chest, made your fillings ache and coloured your tongue virulent shades of green and orange.
Cordial in the sixties came in a concentrated small bottle. Cold water was added and six cups of white sugar and boiled and poured into sterilised bottles or jugs. Now, that cordial was made for tough kids. Kids who missed front teeth, had freckles, had blisters from endless hours swinging on monkey bars, tight calves from playing hopscotch, elastics, gymnastics and rounders. And played in the streets, backyards, breathlessly hot parks and had to be home by dark.
Ron Tin Tin, I love Lucy, Maverick, Bonanza ruled the the small black tv screen crouching in the corner of the lounge. Black and white T.V. but for us who knew no different, it might as well as have been in technicolor. I can't remember having takeaway except for a meat pie injected with sauce under the crust that burned your mouth and chest if you let the gravy slip. I am sure some of us baby boomers have permanently scarred upper palates from hot pies. And if you have ever had a burned tongue you know full the horrors, the excruciating damage, a mouthful hot food can do.
Even ice didn't help and trust me I've tried it.
We knew not of air conditioning, nor fans, swimming pools were only the local ones, Olympic sized, that you could crack ice on in winter and jump into the shallow end of in Summer. Chlorine turned your hair green if you were dirty blonde like me and just had to be endured. I remember soap and bubbles but not shampoo. Soap was solvol for dirt and was grey and gritty and bath soap was Lifebouy or for the very posh who could afford it, Cashmere Bouquet or Imperial Leather.
We were not posh. Just poor as most baby boomers were in the day. We might know of one wealthy family in a nice house but we vowed them as different, a cut above, superior to us commission kids. My parents emigrated from the U.K. With five kids. I was the youngest at that time. After me came two more, our only Aussie, my younger brother, Never Sweat and after him came a younger sister born in the U.K. Surprising all of us. I was 14 and disgusted at my parents and told no one at my posh Grammar School. I was incensed at my parents stupidness.
Someone came up to me at school and said with delight,
" I hear your Mum had a baby "
I mumbled something and stalked away but I grew to love my baby Sis, we all did. We were all teens and Never Sweat was 10. We taught Helly Belly to talk at 8 months and she hasn't stopped since. Just like me.
We had returned to the U.K. For 4 years. I was 12 and turned 16 when my parents decided to go back to Australia. I hated Yorkshire at first. I was delighted to meet relatives. They were magic. I had never known or remembered having a granny of granddad , an aunt, uncle, cousin and we had loads of them. And the U.K. was the best place to be at that time. Jimmy Hendrix had arrived and the Moody Blues, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, the man from Uncle and Daleks, Top of the Pops and cricket and Wimbledon peppered our conversations.
Hippies rose up in the U.S. seemingly out of nowhere and taught a whole generation, Peace and Love. I wore flowers in my hair and cow bells in my ears and a Paisley mini with matching Granny frilled bloomers. I found a burgundy pleated skirt of my Older Sisters and assumed, wrongly, that she had forgotten about it. I cut twelve inches off the bottom and when she found out she half killed me. She wore my beautiful brand new frilly pure satin top to bed and completely ruined it forever.
Gone were the days when she dragged me off to see Elvis in Blue Hawaii 14 times. And Oliver, West Side Story and Bali Hai. I was the annoying younger sister then and next we were in a strange country and teens and it was all so weird. My older sis was dating and singing in shows and I was the virginal dweeb that had no idea of kissing or boys or sex and didn't want to know. I just wanted to take advantage of the fine education I was receiving and try and understand Sergeant Peppers lyrics.
It was always a bit crazy but when you come from a large family times are always going to be a bit mad. We lived in an old Georgian coach house in Ossett with two reception rooms, two floors, a cellar that filled with water and was bloody horrible, the cellar that is, not the house. The house was lovely with a careworn interior and a grand manner. Coal fires adorned every room and it was one of my chores to clean and light them. I soon became adept at lighting them, plying bellows and big twist s of newspaper with small twigs on top. A cold coal fire is dank and smells but once you got one going there was nothing that could outweigh its warmth and comfort. We toasted muffins on it, roasted chestnuts and potatoes and burned our toes trying to get too close to it.
................
