20180503 – Thursday – Waiting for my trailer.

20180503 – Thursday – Waiting for my trailer.

Well, here I am again, sitting in Maccas and waiting 2 hours for my trailer to be completed. I am actually very happy that Maccas exists, because when I am in a strange town, there is usually a Maccas somewhere, so just key it into my GPS and find the nearest one. There are toilets,  and I know how everything “works.” And I can have a salad and a coffee and know that the food is no TOO bad for me.

I am supposed to be calling in to Garnet and Renera A’s place, and then after that to Janett Ryan’s place to “chill out” with the Ryan’s until the HVE midweek class at Janett’s place tonight.

But I will stay here until I pick up my trailer. Eli, I think his names is at Charlestown Canvas, has told me my canopy is “looking great,” and the colour is just beautiful. Well, as long as it WORKS, and no leads or wires have been damaged, I will be happy. 

So since I have a couple of hours to “kill,” I thought I would talk to you about my external hard drive. My external Hard drive has “my life” on it. I began keeping a diary, on and off, from age 8 years. I wrote prolifically up until age 16, (1955). 

I first of all used an Olivetti typewriter to write “my story,” and then I purchased the very first IBM electric typewriter which I simply loved. I was only good at two “subjects” at school, and that was English and the other was sports, tennis, softball, table tennis, cricket, and I loved horse riding and holidays at “Glen Shera” at Mt Compass where my Uncle was the manager of a sheep and cattle station there.

I was behind the door when the maths skills were given out. God gave all those skills to my brilliant brothers and left me mathematically illiterate! And what did my parents choose for me? All business subjects, shorthand, typing, bookkeeping, economics, geography, all subjects I simply loathed. So the inevitable happened, I did the things I loved and didn’t do the things I hated.

Oh and did I mention, that I loved boys. I started my diary with my very first entry which was headed “My boyfriends,” and I kept this updated year by year with an ever changing array of boys. 

Apparently I was not really pretty, but apparently I had “something,” in my day they called it “IT.” School was segregated and contact between the sexes was NOT permitted. Well, I didn’t much like girls, and so I could not do without boy company. Of course with three brothers there were always plenty of boys coming home after school but at school it was more difficult. 

I had thick plaits which apparently made me easily recognisable in a crowd of girls, and so to avoid conflict (regular conflict) with our prudish “headmistress,” I had my hair cut at age 12, so she wouldn’t be able to recognise me so easily. So my father and my brother Charles were always “on my case.” Maynard was kind and cared for me. Graham had his own conflicts, but generally we got on well. 

I would find myself always up at the headmistresses office for something or other. She complained to my mother that what she couldn’t understand was that I had very “high principles” yet I simply did not obey every other law that the school had.  I would skip classes, get the other girls to help me climb out of a classroom window to go off to Victor Harbor for the day. I was in 1st year high school when my brother Charles (Rick) was in 5th year, and Ron Hicks was also in 5th year that year and Charlie took it upon himself to retrain his sister, namely me. This I resisted with every bone in my body.

When I had been playing “keep the ball away” with other girls and boys and had just skidded along the asphalt on my backside after being thrown down by some boy or other. I would look up and I would see my brother’s legs towering above me, and I was “in trouble” again. My friends would say to me “Is Charles your brother” and I would say, “ Yes, well don’t blame me.” 

So anyway the point of all this is that I needed my Diary. My diary was my friend. I could tell my diary everything, anything and it was my confidante. And with some gaps, usually when all the interesting stuff was happening and I was too busy living it to record it, I kept my diary on and off for my entire life time. No wonder I have a prodigious memory about past happenings. I think I remember just about everything that has happened to me in my whole lifetime.

To be continued.