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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-AU link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>This is long, and not all of it is horsey, but Chris is in all of it<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>7.2 CHRISSY++++++++++++++++<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Chris was born on Australia Day 1950, it was the year Comic Court won beating Chicquita in The Cup. Comic Court had run in 1949 and 1948, so he knew where to go, she said. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Chrissy was telling Mum about her day of birth, it was a difficult time, her being born and that, her mother was kept in hospital for a year and Chris was with her all that time. Mum got the specifics and as it was about girls, and that, I pumped up the tyres on our bikes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>In 1962 her and me got talking about racehorses, like normal 14 year olds, both of us on the lie lo, and as luck would have it Paddos Mum had a difficult time with the new bub and had gone to Sydney on the medical plane and Paddos Dad had come back and bought The Truth with him, the Cup Special, with naked horses and almost everything else. We were looking at them, reading the advice column, and generally doing the form. Actually, the advice column where I was reading was on the other side of the sheet that Chris was reading, about Comicquita, Chicquita and Comic Court<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Chrissy got the thudding realisation that Comicquita was the child of the winner and second of the 1950 edition The Cup, the year of her birth, and there has to be something boss with that, right. It was 50 and 1, she said, I could win 50 with the money in my sock.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Let me explain, Chris and I both worked after school, she did the milk round, she took over from me, and I worked in the wood yard, with Dave, and his Dad, Dave. Chris got paid in coins and all that went into her sock, her Barraba Football Club sock hanging on the inside of her wardrobe, and when that made a noise when she opened the sliding door and mirror it was time to count it and put most of it into her savings account. She had 41 pounds and change towards a new piano, the current one was fine, except it would take so long to save for a new one she had better start now, type of thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>So this omen she said was very strong, being wrapped in birth parents, sires and dams, Melbourne Cups, Mr Cummings, and Tamure, her Dads 3rd wife was Polynesian and that was a spiritual dance. Its all beyond co-incidence really, don’t you see it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'> No, but you do Christine.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>We both had work soon, so we went on our bikes to her wardrobe to get her money then to the café, on the corner of the lane and the Main Street and the sp shop was down there a bit, Mr and Mrs Hammond shop, it was busy there, men were standing, talking, smoking and it was the afternoon before the Cup. Chris wanted a pound on Comicquita, and asked me to do it. I said no, but, and before I could explain, Dave, the Dad of Dave, walked up to ask if I wanted a lift or something. I asked him to put the bet on for her, and he did, three pounds. She said thanks, and left to go to the dairy out of town and I went home to change for work at the woodyard, with Dave and his Dad, Dave, but you know that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Next day was Cup Day and we were at school, nobody had the radio on, she was at the convent still and asked a parent who, or what had won to be told her pick came second. She came and found me walking across the park to home, I too had heard and said to her well done for going so close. Chris said she would never bet on anything ever again but thank you. It was worth a pulpy, shared, and she put extra ice cream in it and I got my bike and dinked her home. I didn’t know, didn’t realise she had plonked her three on it, a quid maybe, but she said she did, and had the winnings spent last night, before sleeping, and today when she woke up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Music bought her around, and she played without stopping, and talking, for twenty minutes or more when I had to go to work. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>Chrissy was a friend from primary school and junior high school. She played the piano all the time I knew her and in her adult life played in an orchestra, that was her job, her dream job because there was no money in it. She left town at the end of 2<sup>nd</sup> year high school to study music in Sydney, live out west somewhere with her Dad, and catch the Fish at 6.47am to get to Central at 7.47am, it’s a little earlier and longer now. She always got a seat in the second carriage, it was warmer on the left, it was cooler on the right. If it was cold she caught the bus, from Emu Plains to Strathfield, behind the driver and so nice with the foot heater going, then she caught a direct train, to Central, no stops, and she read her music throughout. Funny then, now people listen to music, then she read it, got lost in it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'>She played popular music on the piano, some of it top 40, and although she was tested on the greats, Tit ya cow ski she called him, Bark, Rack Man and Off, Mussenfart Mozart from the second line of the poem of the same name and she passed to be graded again, she came back to music she liked, not what others wanted her to play. She looked at you when she did, in my case a little over my shoulder, left or right, she played without looking at her hands, the music sheet was on top of the baby grand, a Knobe and heavy, beyond her and me, but as I said she engaged and there was no drama, no dancing of her hands, no closing of eyes to keep the mood, she played, glanced at the page sometimes, got criticised because this was her re-writing and playing some poor beggars work. She said she got the tune, then the melody, worked out what her left hand was required to do and started with a pente, a single chord, sustained, then she started, perhaps loud because well, this was an orchestra, and the bass would mirror hers if he was good. She learnt it because she played it, repeatedly, 40 seconds in, flipping heck she’d say, tinkle, my word, to get that bridge to work, then go back and come at me with a full blown rendition of somebodys beautiful tune, her way, their life work, her version. More than once I had to go and buy the 45, will ya, Or source the album, because what was on the sheet didn’t run down the arms to the fingers to the keys and the HMV record player helped there. Bull crap, she said, that is not what it says, she pointed to the speaker, looking at the sheet music, listening. Nah, they don’t get it either and they are playing their version, so am I then. Ok.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I still own a model plane engine, somewhere, but then I had three, different sizes, and collected when I purchased going aircraft for minimal outlays. These were wire controlled jobs and Chrissy and I had fights with them, she had the bigger engine smaller plane model and I had the bomber. Its involved, but I would add the ether to the castor oil and fuel hers, about 7 minutes worth, then dab ether on the intake foam and start that quickly, this would sit on the ground, the tarmac in model aircraft speak, revving it’s guts out. Meanwhile I would start the bomber motor and get airborne with that and do a H pattern, in model aircraft speak, but in reality a rectangle, and as I walked the rectangle and got close to Chrissy revving motor on the ground I knelt and wound in the compression tap on that and off it went. Chrissy watched it going in ever faster circles on the ground but she had to step outside me in the rectangle to keep her plane free of my control wires and away from me basically. It went well most times and Chris got her speed up and up she came, with a holler from her, rarely a squeal and more often a giggle, lots of them. Then she had to fly up behind me and over the top to pass me and meanwhile I circuited steadily, flat, about eye height for me, and I’m tall and sometimes she caught me, sometimes she didn’t and sometimes she ran out of fuel trying to do both those things. The ether supply was a problem because the chemist sometimes wouldn’t sell it to me, no he said you might sniff it and turn maniacal, and I thought I was. Dad bought 2 pints of it back from Sydney so that bump got eliminated. There were others flying nearby to us too, up at the oval at the showgrounds and this was the start of the radio controlled era, that is in full swing now. Then, the radio controlled aspect was more like kerosene control, those planes got airborne alright and did a few laps and more than once when they came out of circular flight and went straight they stayed straight and you watched them go out of sight, way over there somewhere, out of sight and out of hearing, and the operator pressing the buttons and the levers with all his strength which didn’t translate to radio control at all, and the planes getting smaller in the distance and decreasing in height until there was no more sound, sight, except the noise of running feet in the direction of the plane most often. So we felt duty bound to stop our flying, our fun, and we took a sighter down the track of the last seen plane and we peddled in that direction and found them often, well they were always found but not by us always. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>So we peddled back to the strip if we couldn’t see the owners car nearby where we found the errant plane, put his gear with his gear and went back to our flying. Once one of those big radio controlled escapees was found by us and had a rip on the wing, the doctored fabric there perhaps ripped when it landed in the tree, it was up in the understorey when we found it. So the owner returned, happy to have his plane back, despondent at not having a very good radio control box and angry that I had ripped his plane in recovering it, I hadn’t. The mother got snippity and I said, look I didn’t, and I wouldn’t be looking or helping to look in future. So Mum got told about my criminal behaviour and Mum told her that I wouldn’t be looking for any escapees either, and nor would Chrissy because she would tell her Mum. The plane was for sale in the next paper that came out. My planes were double doped, they had two layers of fabric on the wings, fuselage and control surfaces because that is one way to make them really robust. They needed that added robustness because in the early days I crashed frequently, often skying in a stall then crashing, powering into the dirt from there, but they never broke or got ripped.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>It was fun, it was, and perhaps we were exposed to the principles of flight, restricted as it is. Chrissy was fascinated, truly, and read and read, and was rarely without her bible Flight without Formulae. I gave her the bomber and she cut her hand on the propeller, the first knuckle joint of the index finger, it was revving up and bouncing in place, and she reached in to tighten the compression bolt and the propeller arc got her good, there was blood from the cut, so what does she do? She kept at it, the plane circling on the ground, all revved up and nowhere to go then she whipped her T shirt off with one hand and wrapped that around her hand. She had her bikini top on, so there was decorum and civility, well there was until I got up to her, she was still laughing and bumping with her buttocks as my hands roamed, tickling and touching the square feet of available skin. That plane went up on fast level flight, the pain meaning concentration and application of technique. So she flew her plane until the fuel load went and she coasted, glided it in perfectly, and we looked at her hand and the cut. It was ok, but I’m not a doctor and neither is she, she wanted another go round but we didn’t. I strapped my plane on my back, put the other stuff in the crate on the back of my bike, she hopped on the cross bar holding her oversize plane, away from her and away from that hot engine and off we scooted, heading for her home, wash off the blood and apply a band aid, perhaps some gentian violet, the antiseptic of choice back then. We got home to be met by her mother, asking why her kid was flashing her bikini top to all and sundry, both of those being me, Chris didn’t answer that but said look, he gave me a plane a plane of my own, aren’t I lucky, isn’t he nice. Again the bikini top question and straight away another question about why her t shirt had blood on it and why was it wrapped around her hand. Chrissy hands are special, they always are but hers were her future livelihood, the piano playing maestro she would become, and have I wrecked all that by causing her finger to be cut open, with the ligaments and bones exposed, blood poisoning from the plastic, and she was so angry. I had put all our gear on the veranda, the planes, the crate with the fuel and parts, rags, a banana skin, a water bottle, and when Chris said about her new ownership of her own plane her mother picked up a pot plant and dropped it on the plane, breaking it, the fuselage crushed and nearly separated, nearly broken into two parts. My thinking was that it was an overreaction, more so because she had broken my plane, the one I was going to keep. Chrissy wrestled with her Mum, there were swear words and jostling and this crazy dance going on amongst the pieces of my plane. I saved the other plane and ran to the roadway verge with it, I scooped up everything else into the crate I had, an apple box made of pine, then went and held Christine away from her mother. It seems there had been a pre-existing conflict, believe me I heard about most of them but this one had not been told. Christine had to wear turtle leather gloves if she was doing dangerous things, and yes, getting hit with a propeller would qualify as the result of a dangerous thing. So it quietened a bit, and the Mum apologised for her behaviour to me, but not to Chris who was in tears, from the event that just occurred, from the shame it seems, more than embarrassment anyway that the event had caused her, for the loss of the plane which angered her, and caused her mother to apologise again, then again, to me when it hit home that she had destroyed something of mine, not Christine’s. I stayed for a while and it cooled, there was tension, sure, and Christine said sorry to her Mum for the wrestle, which she won, and the Mum said sorry for what she had done. After 30 minutes or so we got to the real reason we were there, the doctoring and dressing of Chrissy pinky. Mum took her to hospital and they took the band aid off and put another one on so our plastering skills were pretty good overall. Chris came home to our house after a while and she lay crosswise on the bed and she explained, in detail, the fingers protection required now, and the reason for it. I have highlighted it somewhat by talking about it, but there was no extra or added precaution, except the silky gloves she wore, turtle leather it said on the packet, when gardening, or nailing or extra curricular stuff that might cause her finger or fingers to be damaged, just wear the gloves in that case and I think she might have, milk deliveries, watching me in the wood yard, watching, those kinds of things. Within two days the finger healed and she never stopped playing, practicing all the while. She kept the bomber and flew it occasionally after that. I disassembled my smashed plane and kept the bits that I could, the control mechanism, the engine and tank, the ailerons, and the rest I burnt, it flared and disappeared within a minute. I got a hug while this was happening and a sorry from her to me. Wire controls were old fashioned in model plane flying and the best I could do was buy a second hand plane from the paper when I was in Sydney next. I bought 3, a pound each, one had a non-functioning motor that did go with some coaxing then seized in flight, oh no a plane crash but it survived and I had a spare motor anyway. Those planes did not survive several moves by Mum and Dad and I was not there to ensure their safety, their survival, and they went the same way as my clothes from when I was 10 or younger, into the bin and out with the garbage. I had an engine, a motor, in a different spot and this was saved, you could say, but an engine without a fuel tank, with out fuel, without a plane or some flight surface and a method to control it is just an engine and nothing else, perhaps a sinker. They’re are diesel in principal and mine had no muffler, quitener, and the noise was part of the experience, now they have formed exhausts which assists the energy production, a lot. Those engines were tiny, the next size up takes you into the glow plug area, where you heat up the engine before trying to manually start it, still flipping the prop with that distinctive sound, compression without ignition. Somebody has attributed 290 horsepower to a litre from those motors, although they are only 3 cc in volume, they measured the output then multiplied it to get that ridiculous power production figure, perhaps they were salesman, probably used to selling racing bicycles or similar.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>With Chris,I don’t know what she ate, ok, I saw her eat sometimes but she didn’t eat much. Nor was she skinny, and not anything other than a normal girl, with curves and everything. But the eating was a tea bag mug of tea at my place, and my toast, dry, sitting with Mum looking at clothes in Woman’s Day, one leg up and that foot on the seat and sitting on the other. She had fruit at school, sometimes, and an occasional lolly, chocolate caused her problems so did milk. Her one treat was jubes, and she stopped at five, she said she was full but squeamish was more like it. Otherwise she was good, good to be with and around. I have been lucky with my choices, my choices, no there is a mutuality more often, a happy place for me and them, my mates, and often they specialise and become closer, and in this case we got together then got together.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>There is a commonality here, between girls I know and showers and Chrissy was no exception. Often, alright sometimes we would get back to our house, filthy, sweaty, dirty, from riding, exploring, doing things. Chris would ask to have a shower then went, then wanted me to come and talk to her, so I sat in the hallway opposite the door and could see skin for a short while, hair at various locations, and conversation always. Come in here, don’t make me yell, but I didn’t. I think nudity didn’t scare her, and to me, nudity was an invitation to do other things, but to her it was a natural state of being, two friends. I never got nude, I never went in there, close to her and when she re-appeared she was clean and dressed and refusing a kiss because it was my turn to shower now and I closed the door. Then when I was clean, slightly red and warm, then I got that kiss.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Mum and her were a pair, I think Mum thought that this woman child was going to steal her little boys virginity, and there was an uneasiness there, respectful but a distance, helped or seeded by Chrissy Mum talking to my Mum about me and Chrissy, and I’m thinking the topic of my viginity, not forgetting Christine either, were discussed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris guessed what it was about and I didn’t realise, I had no idea that I was the prize in some sort of competition or game, and if I had realised perhaps I would have got unwrapped earlier, or at least undressed, no seriously.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>We didn’t though, we did stuff but not that, we did kissing and holding, hugging and nothing more. Remember how old we were too, and I was older than her by a year and 18 days.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris bought up the topic of Mum steering me, away from Chris and towards chastity, purity, and non-involvement of sins of the flesh. They are not saying don’t be with him, just not away by yourselves for days, afternoons, evenings. Chris said she enjoyed her time with me, our times kissing especially as it was not an end of episode activity, if Chris wanted a kiss, she went and got it, with me it was necessary for me to sneak and hold her for a time, hug that form, and in a little while she would turn to face me and well, you know what comes next. That’s how it was, license free for her, a ritual, glorious as it is, a ritual for me. But no sex, and nothing sexual let me hasten to add, nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'> I was doing the tea dishes and I asked Mum if she thought Chris was too much girl for me, that’s what I said. Mum lit one up and leant against the kitchen counter and said, well, is she, whats happening. So I said, truthfully, we were kissing and hugging, holding hands, and that was enjoyable and expected and while I knew about other things I had not experienced them yet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>the furthering of intimacy Mum said, and I had to say, sorry, what.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Sex, bub, and I said no, no sex, Chris wouldn’t do it I said, Chris has never talked sex with me, she has, and truly we are just good friends.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>You know about the birds and bees. Mum, yes, I have condoms, so.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Well that started her going didn’t it? So half way through her interrogation, I showed her the condom in my wallet, Earls Lubricated Sheath, normal size wise, and normal mothers would have shed a tear when the fruit of their loins demonstrates a cleaving of nurturing and shows a bit of independence and forethought, a pinch of maturity then. Not my Mum apparently, she bloody laughed at me. And I laughed with her. Not sure why but when she said, give it to me I want to tell Dad, and I gave over the condom, and she rubbed it in its packet between her thumb and finger. I have others, frangers, and really it is a sort of currency at high school, a repayment for a favour, here have one of these. I heard Dad laughing, loudly, and I stayed away, I took my comic into the toilet and I heard him walking down the hall onto the rear veranda and into my room, then he said through the door, Oi Gaylord, there is something on your bed. It was the condom and we never had the talk.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>It took a few days but I bought the subject up with Chrissy, not the sex, not straight away, the condom conundrum, show me she said, so I did, and then she opened the packet, rip, and out it came with all its greasy slipperiness.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I had no idea she said, aren’t you sneaky. Was I sneaky, no, and believe me, we had never talked about sexual congress, that’s what they call it in the textbook, never snuck away to do that, and really we found private moments, places, times, to be together as a couple, and we did young teen things and that’s all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris said I have thought about it, sure, but no, not yet. I said the same. We remained friends as a result. Yes, I lied to my mother, did you see it, and do you know why. There was a talk about sleeping together, somewhere, just to snuggle to use her words, nothing more, just get warm and sleep. We didn’t do that either, we talked about it but no, didn’t happen. I gave her 3 condoms. She kept two and made a plastic animal kind of thing with the interior blown up and everything all twisted. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I owned a road registered car, a Ford Pilot ute, v8, with manual gears on the steering column, and this before I had my drivers licence. I got my drivers licence in Dads car, the EJ, and the same day I got my motorcycle licence, with a newish 250cc Suzuki Hustler.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The worst punch, or the best punch, I ever saw was over the use of a towel. What happened was somebody had teased a girl, a little girl, young, 10 or less. It was ridiculous teasing, like it’s my towel, you can’t have it, and that type of thing, apparently the words said by the teaser, then the teaser wiped himself with the towel then threw the towel up onto the top of the fence where it was caught and tangled by the barb wire. Cry now, you big baby was the parting goad to the little girl and he said if she told anybody he would rape her and off he went, towards the pub lane.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris was at the pool, with her sisters, waiting for me to finish work in the wood yard and come down there to cool off, to at least get rid of the wood staining on my legs and hands and arms. Chrissy saw and heard what happened, saw the boy, a man actually, say and do the things I wrote. She told me when I got there, the girl had gone, the man had gone, the towel was still up on the barb wire. I had a swim, and a talk about this, and together, with help from Phil the pool man and his ladder, we got the towel down. At that moment the father of the girl showed up, his interpretation was that I would help him find and punish the man involved, the teaser. I was 14 years old and I wasn’t going to get involved in any affairs involving the father and the man. I do not know his name, the teaser or the father. So the father drove off, I guess to go looking, but actually he went recruiting, his friends got into a posse and they went about the town apparently looking for the man, the teaser. I was not part of this, I was with Chrissy and almost at her home with her sisters when the father drove up and asked Chris to go with him to point out the teaser, the man, and Chris said no, he is about 20, thin, tall, boney, with black hair and he had football shorts on and a singlet. That narrowed it down to three, all three got found and belted up, no other word for it, they did a mass attack on three likely blokes and punched them until they ran away. If the towel man was in that group he was dealt with but how could you tell doing it that way. A day later the Police spoke to Chrissy, and to me, and I was not needed, but they spoke to Phil at the pool and as it turned out the towel man did get caught. It went quiet for a while, a couple of days, then there was another attack on the towel man, he was belted again and the belter got found out and was charged. There was a group outside the courthouse when he first appeared, a few weeks later, and there were words, punching back and forth, kicking from one side and the Police waited for it to settle, and took four away, and they were charged with assaulting the father.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>That night it got noisy in town and down the Main Street, which is where I lived there was shouting, and probably a fight, and then the father came up the street and was standing outside the hall, opposite my house when a man ran at him with a rake, the father avoided the rake and in the process put out a short right, or was it a left, and this connected with the rake swinger and you saw its affect throughout his body, there was an energy transference from his head to his neck, to his shoulders to his back, to his hips, to his legs to his feet. The next sound, after the phaat of the hit, was the rake falling to the ground with the rake swinger falling side on after that, down and staying down, the father looked at the man on the ground, moved him on his side then walked into the Club. The man on the ground did not move, and I left my spot, near the geraniums, turned off the hose and went to where he was. I looked at him and his eyes were, seriously, rotating, his eyeballs were searching for something to focus on and missing the mark completely. Then he became sick, vomited, how much food had he eaten, liquid pie or something. He stopped that, he was covered in that really because it had pooled and ponded around him. My offer was to help him up, help him over the road, and spray him clean, near the geraniums to maximise the water use. He said ok and we did that, I gave him a severe drenching but got most of the clinging bits off him and he took control of the hose and got the remainder. He sat on the fence and asked for a smoke and I went to get him one of mine and when I came back he was fossicking in Dads car, the door was open and he was looking inside, the front then the back seat, looking for something to steal I thought, fossicking. Sorry he said, I gave him a smoke and a light and we stood without speaking. Then a group of cars came back, the fathers friends and they were looking over the road for something, I’m guessing they weren’t looking for the rake, they found that, but not the rake holder because he was kneeling down behind Dads car, hiding I assumed. Then they left and it went quiet and the man stood, unsteadily, then left after asking for my smokes, I said no, then he tried to bully me to get my smokes, me, the angel who sprays. So I watered the lawn where the sick was, I re watered the geraniums, I washed the car and when Mum and Dad came home I said nothing to them about what had happened. I don’t know if the man who got punched and got sick was the teaser. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The father pleaded guilty, did the right thing, apologised for his actions, did not avail himself of two of the 7 excuses available to him, just stood and spoke to the Magistrate and said he felt an overwhelming anger towards the victim for the torment and the trauma he had caused his child. He was given a suspended sentence, to be of good behaviour for 12 months, he was a first offender, a Vietnam vet, an ex soldier of 12 years standing, they had left the town at this stage, the child needed counselling and more. The teaser skipped bail and he was re-arrested twice more. He was charged with a public order offence only<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The court case involving the other men didn’t go ahead, I heard it was because the witnesses did not show up to speak. The Police tried a couple of times to get it heard, to get it out in the open but those involved couldn’t be bothered perhaps, or did not want the prime cause to be aired, the taunting, the torment of a 10 year old girl and the taking and using of her towel and the threat associated.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The railway line ends on the other side of the river here, they would not build a bridge to allow entry to the town and they had no intention of extending the line further west, along the river. Where it comes from is interesting, its flat really flat and the line has been built up, on a bank above the plain, for water control perhaps. The line itself is rough, in fact, you would be surprised how bumpy it looks, with dips all along it everywhere and to see the train approaching and it rocking from side to side as it goes in and out of the dips, that is a sight to behold. Chris and I did that trip lots. In fact, it was probably the trip of choice for us, especially on Monday arvos late when the train was due, you would try to get out alongside the line opposite the white bridge on the road, then run down the creek and get under the line there just as the train went over head. Hey, it’s a country town. Chris would scream, and I would call out. We both laughed after that. Some days we didn’t do much, just went to her house while she played the piano, she was very good at that. She made a living out of doing that later, and still does, and has played in quite a few bands, orchestras.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Christine situation was similar to mine, or the mirror of it I should say. She is the oldest by about 5 years, then there are her step sisters. She sees her natural father still, a couple of times a year, he has a girlfriend now, he re married after divorcing Chris Mum but he went for a younger girl. Christine talks to me about it, I listen that’s all, she doesn’t want advice, I mean what can you say. If she could murder the girlfriend and get away with it she would, she would to save her Dad she says. I laugh but I’m not sure why.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I’m an orphan, no I’m not, an only child then, no not true either but my brother is 9 years older, and my sisters, three, are 2 years older each from that. So the year I started school my sister was finishing the last year then went away to Uni, they all did, to school later then Uni. I was with Mum pretty much, and I didn’t mind. Mum liked Chris, but she did have reservations about her, really Mum liked everybody, I think everybody did like Chris, she had shorter light brown hair which we dyed black one holiday, and it took most of that time for the hair colour to come back and for the stains to leave my hands, should have worn gloves like it said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I worked for the milkman 3 days a week, and Chris was often on the truck with me, organising the next saucepan load. It was bulk on the truck, in a churn, cold, and we took measured pots of milk from there, a quart minimum, with a flip lid on it and I ran through the front gate, jumped the dog, took the money out of the bottom of the saucepan and sluiced in the milk, Chris blew a whistle, and I ran back to the truck again and Arra drove off to the next one. We had cream, glorious yellow cream spun off from the hospital milk, they wanted cream free for the babies and the clinic, and we made a shilling every pint we sold of that, it was cheap and it was nice. Chris and I had a drink of that as we drove around. Just a sip for both of us because it can make you sick sometimes. She bought jubes and we had jubes and cream, which sounds strange but tasted ok. As fast as Arra could drive around safely we did the deliveries. The big buyers were the cafes who used milk in their shakes. They bought the big containers out to the truck, they had iceblocks in the containers and we poured the milk in them, straight out of the master churn, a big 60 gallon I think, stainless steel contraption. Arra measured that, I did the loading, and Arra collected the money, then there was the hospital who took the most milk, some of that was paid for by the Government and the rest was with a cheque and we delivered milk to the kitchen there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'> Chris continued to do the milk run after I left it, I split my money with her, it was a few shillings only and that was the reason I left really.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris left town at the end of that year to go to school and to do music at a college and to live with her father.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>We had a band in town and Chris was in that, as was I, both singing, her playing, and me making noises on the drums sometimes, when the regular drummer was unable to play due to ill health, he was very sick actually, and bass, strung for a left hander, my own, when the regular bass player became a DJ for the gig and really I just did harmonies on the G string and not much else. I started playing a few stanzas in from the start, it was so obvious that I had not a clue, as a parent said about us. But if there was a bit of boogie about it then we were passable, some said. Chris was the best of that though, we played at the school hall, it was records and us, and really we were the music at intermission, some Roy Orbison, a Chuck Berry or 3, Everley Brothers and Buddy Holly. I didn’t have a microphone when on the drums, this may have been a blessing. But we did our best and we passed music at school so that was a bonus.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I had footy training twice a week, and Chris had basketball near that. We went together, sat together, and that was the last we saw of each other until after. She waited in the cold for us to finish, all glowing hot and sweaty, and we walked to her house, holding hands, and later we used to kiss at the park before we got there. It was now about 9.00pm and she went inside after saying goodbye at the door, her Mum often invited me in but I had my footy boots around my neck, a towel, mud, grass clippings and I couldn’t sit anywhere because of mud, grass clipping, sweat. So I ran home from there to a shower and then, about 9.30pm Chris would ring and we would talk for 10 minutes or so and it was time for bed. Mum found this perplexing, Mum would say I’ll just check if he is in, Geez Mum you are the controller of little big young me, you know I’m in the house, but yeah, she would ask, do other boys get late night phone calls from their friends, a girl in this case. To which I would say Yes Mum then I don’t know Mum and it’s only Chrissy, you know her. She wanted more info though. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The other nights I had work in the wood yard and Chris did music then, piano practice. Friday afternoon and evening was often with Chris, at home or at the pictures but I sometimes had work at the exchange on Friday, and nearly always on Saturday. We sat together, but in a group downstairs at the pictures. Christine surprised me once because really she had never shown much affection, I was often reaching for her, or holding her from behind, just for the basic 22 seconds or less then she moved off. I asked honestly if we would be kissing sometime soon and she started there and then, after the first squirm it got to be ok, and we did that a lot, well when it was expected. Anyway this night at the pictures she cuddled me, I mean, put her head on my chest, put her arms around me, and cuddled me. It was ok, I like that, and it surprised the group, there were no other girls that night with us, but Chris did that together with me from that time on. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Working on the exchange means phone calls, from all over the place, sometimes from all over the world although I just patched them through to International Pacific mostly or International Atlantic and the operator took it on from there. Then that operator would ring me to find out who I was, just a chat that’s all. But Chris would ring sometimes at strange hours and we would talk for ages, hours almost, just whispers from her, then to hang up she had to unplug the phone, put the receiver down carefully, then plug the phone in again, that way it doesn’t ring or go ting when it energises. But that was enjoyable, those midnight and later talks, it was always her ringing me, dial 07 for the operator and I would answer then how are ya, then an explanation of how the picture finished, or the second feature ended, who was smoking now, it is impressive how much small talk two teens can make and we did, and strangely we talked longer on the phone than in person, nothing wrong with us is there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>It ended when we went away, both of us, her to school and me to footy camp in the holidays and when I came back she was gone as I expected. Nothing even vaguely private had occurred between us, there was kissing, and I knew how to do that, there was long periods of holding and hugging and talking, but the eventuality was known well in advance and we prepared ourselves for that, sounds dramatic but she said lets see how we go at doing our things apart and I agreed, knowing it was finished. Nice friend, honest and true. There had never been a harsh word, an indecision, an argument, once we disagreed over a tennis score but there was a packet of PK at stake here. She never declared me as her boyfriend, rather a friend who is a boy she would say without prompting, he is nice was another of hers, and I did not trumpet her as the one and only, that it was Chris and Me, that was a given really, you saw us everywhere together, me and her, or us, me and the others and Chris. I moved school that year too, she stayed at the Convent and I went to the high school and there was a new bunch to associate with. Tall and thin, she preferred shorts to anything, winter and summer, and she was 96% leg anyway, girls often are, with longish hair at the end, brown, always down and out and if control was necessary it was in an off centre tail, over her left shoulder. She wore bangles on her left wrist and a scapular always except at the pool. She was the first girl of any age to wear a bikini, although her little sisters often only wore their undies but that doesn’t count. The Nuns asked her not to wear the bikini, ever, but to be appropriately attired, so she wore shorts and a t shirt after that. She argued with her mother, and there seemed a lot of exasperation there. I never got that story, she vented on other things but not about her Mum, I suggested it was because her mother was right and she was wrong and Chris said, probably. You got castigated for swearing, she said bloody often, it’s not swearing she said by way of explanation, she tried smoking, she sipped alcohol a couple of times, sherry and beer, and said no thanks after that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>She played piano beautifully, well I thought so, and she looked at you when she played, or looked out the window to the side, occasionally she glanced down at the sheet music, always on top, it was a grand style, and never, or hardly ever did she look at her hands, her fingers, as she played. If there was a glance down it was her right hand, then her eye moved to the side of the keyboard, off the keyboard perhaps, she did say that, as if that left ear was the one in use for this piece. She said she learnt the music by repetition, and that the composer was just suggesting where you should be in the melody but after 12,15 or even 20 run throughs she will tell you she knows it. She found a composer she liked, an American, obscure, who had written for guitar mostly and his daughter transcripted that for piano after he died, about 70 songs, tunes, pieces, pianoforte, light opera or music hall music, country melodies, country and western waltz, and a few bar room stompers, full of the art of piano playing, no key left untouched and some of the key board hot from the action. She played, practiced, and if it was not right, she kept the right hand moving and looked for the correct tune in the papers on top, then the tunes joined when she got that right and she played to the break or the bridge, then she might go back to the start and play through. But looking, no, not at you, not at anything particular. Just zoned, the music, the sounds, and then you realised she was probably not looking at you when she was playing because you would move and her head and eyes would move in response, so she might have been somewhere else, over your left shoulder maybe. But competence she had and technique. There was practice everyday, not scales so much, just perhaps a few tests to get the spread right, she had big hands, or big fingers on big hands. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>There was all the classics, Mum music, a few from the broadway shows, a lot of popular tunes and there was good, really good, tunes in them. Ok, some were a variation on a theme, but most often she was playing anything from the top 10 of the hit parade, the rhythm working and the lead picking out the tune, the words, and me in my tuneless singing would do just that. That’s what we did at her place, no mucking about, we were there, there was a piano there, play the piano, get the designated 2 hours practice out of the way. She was single minded with that too, no teach me to play something requests were granted. No, a lot of sssh, I want to get this down, and she would cycle through a tune several times, many times, and some times a request of ‘you have that record doncha, can you get it I want to hear it I can’t get that last part’. I would, I get that 45 and ride back and forth, there were other things to get too, a banana, an eraser because mines at school, water the back garden. She had classes but split with the teacher locally, the teachers days did not correspond with hers, Chrissy, there was a money issue, payments and she bubbled and boiled along doing her own thing for a while until she was given a week each holidays to go to tutoring in Sydney. I believe competency was ok, but you have to play through certain levels, be judged on that, and move and grow with it otherwise no professional organisation will employ. It’s a job, playing an instrument, and there are so few vacancies that you have to be the best and then be nude, or have different hair or piercings, or tattoos and she wanted them, and you had to know the styles, ¾, bossa nova, swing, waltz and I don’t know any others but she had to. In effect, her education suffered, these are her words now, she was locked in at 12 year old form and while good at that had not progressed any where from that. It was music, she loved it, and the rest could wait. She didn’t think it was going to be the classics, playing at the opera house, she did popular music there and not some maniac long hair opus with movements that were 11 minutes in duration. No, popular music in a band, never say band but say orchestra, and she could only name three and they had players queueing. Well, start your own, Chrissy and the Slew Foot Five or something. I think that’s been done. She wrote, she did quick tunes with jazz phrasings, repetitive technical pieces that showed her abilities, and stored them on top of the piano hoping that would be the centrepiece in a longer tune. She would not write about love, failed romance, not much of a hetrosexual couple at all, in fact I got ahead of myself, there was a few words, just feelings, descriptive jottings with sentences that changed often, again perhaps the centre piece of a longer tune. Her words, made up on the spot and in league with the music, also made up on the spot, was often about girls, girls and girls, and the intensity of friendship there, the life of them. This would build in her psyche from then to her later life when she did have the real thing, genuine friendship, love and life with a girl. This was secretive at first, the protection of anonymity necessary to maintain their careers but earlier than most, and at last, they came out to their friends and the world and may be accepted as an institution now, Chrissy and her friend. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>She liked to hold you, and I didn’t mind that, we would peddle somewhere, along the tops of the levee, a track about two vehicles wide then run off down a ramp to a grassy area, our place, amongst the tracks I had made but out of sight, more because of the topography rather than any design or ideas of mine, and I would still be on the bike, and her on hers and she would reach across and encircle you, it’s as if our place was the only place for us, the first thing she did when we got there was a hug, that’s the reason we came here and this is what we were going to do when we got here. The bikes got dumped and we sat against the sloping wall of the levee, the river was a distance away, you could hear and see it, and I had my arm around her shoulders and she encircled me, her legs over mine, and we talked that’s all, important stuff, about how wood delaminates on pianos, how stickers and transfers on bikes don’t last like they used too, about her toes, long toes and fingers, so you can play the piano, what with my bloody toes, crazy boy, about scagi worms, the long thick native worms which were becoming extinct, as thick as your little finger, about kites and how useless are they here, no wind ever this far inland, about the colours of football jumpers and she was an expert because she knew all the combinations and some team over towards Baradine or Barraba had the best, the colours of the country and the sky, a V, the colours extended to the socks, to the team blazers, to the blazers. Another was all green, jumper, shorts, socks and this showed a lack of imagination, another was red and orange, that’s a clash, neither or either, it’s one or the other. Chrissy talked, I listened, I talked, she listened, there was none of the waiting to interrupt, none of the oneupmanship, the oh yeah what about this then. A lot, well, everytime, there was a brief talk about kites, she liked the wind, and had a collection of wind driven machines, whirligigs, eagles, tipping birds, mills, stracers, lots of most things collected or built from diagrams in magazines, library books, aviation books, everything. The no wind factor here was perplexing, if there was a wind she was standing on tippy toes on the top of the levee, arms out, shirt out, cardigan out, catching and feeling it pass her, go round her, under and over. Wind Milly was a proposed nickname for less than 18 seconds, once and once only, apparently she did not approve. None of this solved the lack of wind, and fart jokes meant nothing to her, nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>We solved that wind conundrum, the railway station and the fuel depot were 1700 yards apart, a big upright holding tank for diesel, and a horizontal tank for petrol, ramps and stages for loading, and over head pipes for filling up 44 gallon drums, the container of choice around here. The train came to the station first and there were fuel carriages on the back of that and the engine separated those and Bracer, the engineers son, arranged for us to ride on the last carriage as it got taken to the depot. Christine and I with Bracer and another were on the last carriage as it moved, moderately paced, towards the depot but it was enough to get the kite airborne and diving and skying as a kite should, Chris doing the controlling, standing on drums, with sooty legs and pants, silver paint chips on her feet, a smile always and her laugh. It was damaged, kite death nearly but we repaired it while the engine went around to hook up to the empty carriages, the open big long ones with sides and on the return to the station it really went kite-like, more out than up, but we made wind for it, for her, and we got filthy, sooty, diesel residue on our feet and legs, arms and clothes. The train slowed, the kite nearly got retrieved, nearly got it on board and it hit the rocks near the rails and got dragged and ripped up, tore up, torn apart. Didn’t matter to Chris, she would make another any time, bamboo sticks and brown paper, this one was bamboo and pink tissue and was nick named ‘Non-Chalance’ because of it’s unwillingness to be a kite, up until this point in time. Bracers Dad was in on the treat, so it was ok.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Best birthday ever she said, the Box Brownie got hot from use I reckon and she had those photos stuck side on on her mirror for a while, her smiling face, her head and shoulders, her arm up holding the string, and the kite in view beyond that, not high but more out than up, need more balance she said, more weight in the tail piece, to hold the nose up a bit.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The next one she made was extensively tested on the bike, adding and subtracting balance weight, shifting the string tie on spot, glueing the sticky tape for extra strength and it seemed perfect. We tested it along the levee, her peddling like a maniac, holding with one hand while she zagged and zigged along. Don’t you know it we finished at our spot and the kite got wrapped, and I got cuddled and kissed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>She kept the photo but gave me the kite and I had that for years, unflown from a train though, never again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Bracer was crazy, and I did crazy. Twice we went off on the train, the rail motor, it was sitting at the end of the platform, out of the way kind of and we went on board, is that what you do, all aboard, just us and walked the length of the two carriages and got to that end driving compartment, he sat, pulled a lever left, a lever down, there was a hiss, the motor started and in 4 seconds time we moved. His Dad came out of his office and Bracer waved at him, waved back at him I meant, and we trundled, rocked and rolled, and noisily went out to the first wooden bridge, about a mile out, more maybe, and before the road. We stopped there, coasted to a stop then couldn’t change the driving pattern over to the other end. So we put the brakes on and that fixed it. Remember that, in order to reverse direction you have to have the brakes applied, got it. So we could now idle back the other way so we did, giggling like kids, which we were. We did that most of the afternoon, promising not to cross the road which is a no-no somehow, and we didn’t. We actually saw 18 miles an hour sometimes, speed hogs. In the end it was about 2 hours before departure and we stopped where we started, Bracers Dad came on board and re-set everything and the regular staff started and nothing was said. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>There are no steam trains here, just the relatively lighter rail motors and smaller engines pulling small lines of carriages along the plains, slowly, you can pace them on your pushbike, and if the driver was so inclined he would toot you. How they didn’t tip off the rails with there fast flip flop left and right movement over the bumpy track. There was a stack of coal at the work yard at the station, it was behind a fence, in a barbed wire enclosure with a locked gate and with lights on all day and night, there was a refuelling bowser with a tank to hold the fuel and further along was a turn around T, the train ran up one side, away from the line, they flipped a crossing switch, the train backed down the other side back onto the main line now, and was magically facing the other way as a result, it ran up past the station and the waiting carriages, then backed down the line to hook up to its load, the carriages were swept, the windows cleaned and it sat there waiting for something to happen. Not a lot did though, 4 in trains a week, 6 passengers total, 2 tons of parcel freight, importantly the ice cream came on the train in big rugged up containers with dry ice in them and not a lot of anything much on the way out, my bike once when I sent it off to be repainted, three greens. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>When Bracers Dad took the train to the T we went with him, it’s a country town as I said. The coal storage was interesting, the gate was open and Bracers Dad was taking barrow loads from there to the station for the office fire. Chrissy picked up and dropped a few pieces and there were imprints of plants, leaves, flattened but you could see them, so we spent a while finding some more, it is a long process, and we got black dust on us, everywhere. We took our three pieces and Bracers Dad put one of those on display, in a glass fronted box on the wall of the waiting room with a light on it so you could easily see the definition of the imprinted leaf. Chrissy took hers to school wrapped in paper and showed us kids and the Nun said what is this Christine, a fossil Sister, a fossil and how do you explain this fossil in relation to the catholic edict of which you are supposed to live your life, and the life of your partner and children Christine. Christine mouth moved a bit and there were no sounds and when she spoke it was not about fossils, Chrissy said I am undecided about a partner, there will be no children, no children I am certain of that Sister and the coal was bought here as an interesting fact, not to be at cross purposes with anything you say or teach us Sister. No children Christine, marriage and children are catholic tenets aren’t they, marriage and children go hand in hand with your future life young lady, remember that. Alright, enough nonsense, children class now. Get rid of that, throw that away please, now.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Christine looked at her fossil, looked around, wrapped it up and put it aside. That lovely coal and its leaf is at the high school were years of kids, schooled in the real world, can, and could, and still do wonder about how the leaf got in there. Mine, my coal fossil, we broke into ever smaller pieces and set fire to it in the back yard, disappointing somewhat, and how it boils water for steam in a train must be an act of God, applying the rules of the Nun there. There was no flame, some smoke, minimal heat and I thought it was out but when I looked where we had it, but a day or so later, it had burnt, consumed itself and all that was left was the shape of the coal rocks but as ashes, fine dust, and nothing else.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>We enjoyed our train rides.We did this again later, another day, but in the evening and Chris was with us as was Bracers friend. Looping back and forth in the dark train, no headlight, no lights anywhere, just a torch in the drivers cabin. Magic. To get above 22 miles an hour involved a different combination of lever positions and Bracer knew these but we didn’t. We stopped at the station again and then Bracers Dad took us for an hours run, with his Mum and the other kids so that was good too. We parked back at the station and Chris and I peddled back into town, no lights and sat on her front verandah and talked for a while. I didn’t tell Mum and Chris didn’t tell her Mum. We said we would have if they asked, specifically what did we do yesterday but nobody did. That’s not wrong, is it? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>These were great days, sort of day after day of new stuff, with a good friend, or my work for which I got paid, and Chrissy would come over after that and we stayed up until late then I walked her home. Mum stopped that, it resulted in quite a ruckus, from her end, but it was a school night often and there was no socialising much then and certainly bed at 10 but Chris and I had after midnight episodes sometimes, home work, then a piano recital, a demonstration of how a big boy should play the piano, not how he did, a milo, a goodbye and a peddle home in the dark, down the lanes, away from the black Mariah who would seize your bike. Mum said no, and she rarely said no, so I said yes to her no and told Chris and she was accepting. Chris and her Mum were friends most times and there was not a lot of connection between Chrissy and the young ones, not hatred or despisement, just a non-interest from Chris. Mums motives were that we, Chrissy and me, would move onto a physical relationship too young, it was patently obvious to Mum, and while she wasn’t over protective of me, she might have had more concern for Chris, Mum said that. Mum could see the situation developing. We, Chris and me, had not planned anything, for like a birthday, or the parent disappearing for a day and a night, like mine did from time to time and I was alone in the big creaking house, eating cheese for every meal. Mum could see a situation, lets leave it at that. Saved, thanks Mum. That Mum intervention, that’s what it was spoilt a plan for Chrissy and me, we both liked the river and we had plans to go rafting on it, build a raft, a platform which floated, maybe 44 gallon drums and a frame work, with a hut on top. All contingencies were dealt with as there was to be a toilet hole in the deck, undercover, and bedrolls in there, undercover, cooking on a piece of steel with wood, branches from the river bank, water was not a problem, food capacity might be, although somebody suggested fish. Have you ever tasted fresh water river fish, I‘d rather starve, although my stand point has never been tested. Yes so we would build the frame, the drum bit, then put up a framework for the hut, with the door facing forwards because that seemed to be where the door should be, an area to walk around on, and not tip the thing over or be out of balance, and to have a long oar steering point on the back end, a spare oar, a transistor radio useless during the day, adora cream wafers, a .22” rifle, 400 dollars, some board games, some rope, some more rope. What happened was nothing. Hannas would help build the frame and come with us for the first week, from up above Collarenebri to home, then Chris and me for the remainder, others were invited but school holidays in the city seemed more exciting than a stinking hot raft on a stinking hot day. The drums were procured, from the dairy, good condition diesel 44’s with their bungs screwed in, 15 of, as was the flat steel for the framework for $10, the rusty remains of a one time shed that never got carted off to the tip and Hannas started measuring and planning. Chris did the plans, drew what she saw as required, a hut about 5 feet high, with a rug over the floorboards, minimal and just sufficient to hold the rug above the water otherwise the deck was bare timber, with gaps between. There was a canvas tent to go over the frame, a yellow one, yellow tinged really.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>We asked the River Commission for some maps, why and we said, and they said no, no rafts, certainly no rafts made from stinky diesel drums, and we said we intended to return the drums to their owner and they were in good condition. We got the maps, but did not get permission to raft anywhere, yet. We had put in a good solid fortnight on procuring and preliminary building and if there was something good to come out of this it was that I bought a vehicle, to transport stuff to Hannas, who had a shed where all this top secret boat building was going on. The purchase and procurement of the ute will be dealt with soon, it was a process of elimination.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I think you can guess that we didn’t go rafting, in the 4<sup>th</sup> week mother got a whiff of what was going on, of the involvement of Chrissy and me, and Hannas – his name really and this led to a discussion in our kitchen, Chris sipping her tea, me my milo, and Mum asking what’s going on and we told her. No. That was pretty much the end of my Huck Finn planned adventures. I never read those books, we didn’t do them at catholic school. Chris accepted that too and she went home and told her mother what she had planned to do. Hannas did build the raft, using goods he found himself, my steel, the drums got returned as we said, and the vehicle ownership matter flared large and loud. My folks saw it as a breach of trust in that I would purchase something without confiding in them, without allowing them to be involved, and it might be a bomb, a wreck and it might kill you, or hurt or maim you, or put you in jail for using it, driving, and you might hurt somebody else, you might kill them even, or hit a sheep or a cow or a dog and be responsible. I kept the vehicle and Mum drove it mostly, it was a Ford Pilot utility, a factory conversion from a sedan, with a v8 motor.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>We used the ute and Hannas Dads trailer to get his raft to the river, we went up the Cryon road a while to a property that had a boat landing on a rock base into the river, although here we were on the Pian Creek, a tributary and we back it in and it floated straight off and Hannas tied it up. It was bouncy I guess, the buoyancy wasn’t quite right, there was plenty of it but Hannas was going to put an outrigger drum on either side just to buoy it a little more. The raft had a leanto on it, a roof only affair, no walls, boards to walk on, not all boarded and the obligatory toilet hole.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Hannas was going to pole the raft downstream to town and tie it up on the other side, in a back creek which had water all the time. It took him most of the day, there not being a lot of current in the creek but when he hit the river the little craft zoomed along, well with the current. The outrigger would be tied on there, tied and sparred. Chris and I were waiting in the ute when he arrived. Next day, in the afternoon after school we went back to the raft to find it tipped up. It could not have got into that position by itself and it was thought that some of the locals had found it while we were at school and not being able to free it from its chain and padlock had set about to destroy it. They did. We righted it, Hannas was affected, he was nearly in tears. We freed it and commenced to pole it upstream, back to the loading ramp, Hannas and me on the raft and Chris in the ute using the fishing tracks on the other side. It took three days to move it up there after school but we couldn’t do it every day, we had jobs, the printery for me, then the wood yard on Saturday, milk deliveries for Chrissy and the fruit and vege shop for Hannas, his parents business. We did though, we got it there and out of the river and took it back again to Hannas shed, where it sat for many years, outside getting rusty. Chris and I talked a bit about that, that trip that wasn’t. We didn’t go opal hunting, we didn’t go on the train trip to Sydney and come back on the plane, we didn’t go down to the marshes to go bird counting, we didn’t go to the rock concert in Moree, another train trip missed. We didn’t go on the footy trips to the three towns, the bus out and back and lodging with families there, I went but Chrissy didn’t, she was going to run the water and help with the team uniform despatching but somebodys nephew got that job, got pissed and did nothing. We didn’t go camping and shooting overnight, her with her new camera and the flash bulb that stuck up on top. We didn’t walk and camp the creeks, the five creeks that surround the town and you walk in the beds of them and climb up the banks every so often to find your self in somebodys paddock or at the back of somebodys old house and all the while you are below the level of the plain surrounding you for miles and miles. Like trenches in warfare was her first words when she saw and tried them. We did drive the ute, Chrissy did a lot of that, out to the common, a paddock south of town, then on the track there, and the track got better, softer, with our tyres making the dust. Then we parked it at Hannas, as agreed and walked to her place and I went home. We kissed of course, we fooled around a little but not a lot. Chris said we never went anywhere much were we would be alone, you and me, nothing overnight, you know, she said. I knew, and we never did. The assertion of the Nun, the decreed you are a girl, babies are in your life as a result, Chris talked about that sometimes. You know she said, I’m not sure now if I want a husband, I don’t , no, and I don’t want kids, I can have kids without a husband, I can have different fathers, Geez wouldn’t that cause a stir. What a tramp. But no, no husband, no father, but you. I said, you only like me because I’m here. Spot on, and then we got interrupted by the dog and a creek rat, and didn’t get back to it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris had a dog, Mouse, and he refused to leave home. It’s a given that her and me were always out and about, miles out some days and she had taught him, showed him, invited him to ride on her bike in the yard at her place, his front paws on the handlebars and his backside and back legs on her lap. He enjoyed that, he ran beside her then jumped up to be carried when invited. If you put him up there then left the yard he jumped off again, and trotted back through the gate, had a drink at the leaking rainwater tank and sat on the rear veranda near the laundry, avoiding eye contact with you. He slept on her bed, he got between her and me on the lounge, sat there, wiggled in until he was wedged then looked at me, expecting a pat which he got in copious applications. He ate their food, meaning what was cooked for them he ate, so it was a serving for him, and one for evey one else. He sat across the door way when she played the piano, strictly I was practice, regimented tasks leading to improvement. Where he lay, or sat, you had to step over him to enter or leave, but he was a piano loving dog, no doubt about it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris played the piano on the stage in the auditorium at school, it was a good one, not the grand style at home, but the mechanic for the school piano did hers as well. He travelled all day to get to our town and he worked on the school instrument in the afternoon, single tink, tink, tink-tink for each key while he slackened then tightened the mechanism. He had a device, an oscilloscope that heard the key sound and showed if it was involved in the present tuning. The tuning of one was different to the other, Chris piano was set for single room, a gentler tuning, and the school piano was set for the auditorium. Hers was a Knabe, a full size, the piano at school was a baby, a Steinway no less, apparently they are good, she said. I could tell the difference between the two. Most days until 4.00pm she played the school instrument, did the concerts, the assemblies, the anthem, and strangely she was approachable then, joking, saying listen to this, whats that Animals record. At home, well it was better to be elsewhere for those couple of hours, you could listen and watch, you could move between brackets, otherwise no to talking, moving, coughing, any body function involving the emission of gas, which includes breathing out it seems, or yawning. No. Stay away and come back after tea, or after 5.00pm and stay for tea.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Chris went down to the courts sometimes to practice her baskets, she was the goalie most times and I went there to catch and return the ball. I went there really to be in the company, the hearing, the sight, the sound of my friend. Some older boys made a situation unbearable, their sex salted talk just too much and Chris went to leave. One boy snatched the ball from her and I snatched it back. I think he realised I was stronger, taller, more protective than he thought and he moved off. His friend was in my training team at footy and he said sorry to Chris and nodded to me. The other boy was sullen and said nothing, did nothing, except he threw a brick that landed nowhere near us, but it shattered on the road. Chris asked me to keep riding on, away, but no, I saw him throw it and he can’t, shouldn’t do that. He was in the process of leaving and made a great show of not being implicated, not admitting to throwing but I saw him, Chris did too. It came down to name calling by him of us and when I got close he backed off and away, saying what, what, so away he went, muttering but what he did was unsettling, not necessary, he was jealous it seemed almost, upset that two kids could be in company with each other and his role was to make trouble. It affected me, can’t you tell. I rode back to Chris and she was crying, sobbing. I don’t like fights, there was none, I don’t like confrontation, there was some, there was three of them and there was you, and no matter how I said it it didn’t seem to matter. So I held her as we walked home, the long way, pushing the bikes, her leaning on me in the dark. She got better, she did, she was good by the time we got home but she was frightened, frightened of that which had happened. She was upset at what had been said by the sullen one, it was not nice, not true, and concerned sexual relations between us, Chrissy and me. As I said, jealous, incapable of having a relationship, doesn’t know how to behave, doesn’t know right from wrong, has never been shown, never been lead in the right direction. Yeah, it affected me for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I left the catholic junior high school early in the year that she left to go to her Dad to go to the music college there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Roller skating became big and I never did it, never tried it, pleased I didn’t because Sellsy broke his arm, but strangely almost every other kid in town was on skates after school, except us, Chris and her sisters and me. There was no TV, it did come eventually, snowy furtive images and a man talking about Australia and wishing he was English. On Saturday I went to golf with Mum and Dad often, Christine had music in the morning and recital in the afternoon, when a few students did do that as well. Music was important to her, she could read and write it, play it and liked it, another language which she spoke fluently. In the evening we met if we could or I worked and we spoke on the phone as I said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>The group broke up, some what dramatically, and I was away when that happened. Hannas girlfriend got friendly with Sellsy, and then Sellsy girlfriend took up with somebody else, an older boy, like 6 years older or so. Hannas got annoyed about all of this, he had been the Mr Fixit for all of us for such a long time, punctures, welding, use of motorcycle of which he had three, records, cards, books, magazines, those sorts of magazines, homework. Sellsy was a good footy player, really good in the centres, one of three from school, I was too, playing in the town team, easybeat at tennis, and a swimmer superb. He did fall out of love easily though, he had two girls to my none, and this episode saw him solo for only a short while. Sellsy left and stayed away, we saw him in town often but he didn’t talk much, well he talked to me and he asked about the others but he didn’t talk to them is what I meant. The friendly girlfriend moved on and while this is not the logical mid point in her involvement she fell pregnant to one of the guys working on the golf course, building it. There was no embarrassment, she had the child and kept it and reared it. Strange words aren’t they, but the generalisation back then was the opposite of all of that, secrecy, a quiet pregnancy and birth, the baby given over for adoption, and the girl returning to her hometown, with her reputation intact. Sad, and better that our society have grown up and away from that. I mean she wasn’t raped she said, he is a lovely man with soft eyes, and it wasn’t as if she was a virgin, and that really summed up how we spoke, her and me. Mum was amused to come home one afternoon to find me and her drinking tea, tea, on the benches around the cypress pine in the back yard with the baby with her, and she, Mum, ignored me, and her, and talked to the baby and then had to have a hold and a cuddle, all the while in possession of a custard roll, with cream in the fridge, cross purposes there somewhere, don’t you think. I was on holidays from school then. But we spoke more, that girl and me, and she took up with the father which was good, that it didn’t last was more a result of their age, hers in particular. The baby came home to granny and the girl moved on and away. A Mum, a single Mum and then single at 18 years, a little older than me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>After Chrissy left town to go to her Dad and a proper school, I left the Nuns secondary school to go to high school, I was a bad student by any test except I had brains and no connection with catholic religion based teachings, at all. I was a cynic I thought, a smarty said some, I was too big for my boots to use the correct cliché, Dad saw this and I was moved. Thank God, which is so against everything I didn’t believe in.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>I came second in my first, shortened year, at that new school and I became friends with the boy who beat me, a natural brain, so easy for him. He did crosswords at lunchtime and raced the teachers at that. Well, I was impressed. He had been in the band also, this was now defunct, if it was ever functioning, but there was fun in music, in rhythms and beats, syncopated noise was interesting and he had a drum kit, actually he had the works, amplifier, equaliser, guitars, bass, electric, and two really good guitars, well made. He could read music, he could talk languages, he was good at jigsaws, he was good at crosswords and he knew things, he knew history, Australian history. Us students had a version of the war that was permitted to be taught, not him, he researched and read, researched and asked, and he got the background, he got all the answers. Then he kept this information to himself. He told you what he knew if you asked, just the facts appertaining to the question, and no more.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>That last year at the convent school high school I struck up a friendship with D, the oldest girl of several children, 13 in all, boys and girls. She was going away to school next year and I was progressing onto the new high school for a year. D was great, a touchy feely type, my type and there is plenty written about her already, her and me. But before all of this she spoke, complained, of having to do the shopping, some of it, for her family, just her and not the built in army of sibling helpers she had. I was between jobs then, between brushing and bagging spuds at Johnsuns and working at the printing works, my afternoons were taken up normally but this day I said, magnamously, stop at my house and I’ll go shopping with you. She did, knocked on the door and waited, but not for long, I was hoping she would and she did, and off we strolled, I lived in the Main Street anyway. D kept strictly to the list, there was no money exchange all booked up and in 20 minutes she was done, an impossible amount to carrying on her own and she says, well I do, all this and more sometimes, two trips, one to the bakery, go back and get the rest, take that straight home, go back to the bakery and collect what she left and go home. No so much the weight but the volume, not helped because there were 4 loaves of bread as well, hence the bakery depot.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>But that is a different story, may be next time<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Cheers<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'>Tony<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br />
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