Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Isn’t it amazing how the simplest things can  take you back to your childhood? Of course, for some of us that’s no  great transition since we have never really left our childhood :o)  But I made a comment the other week that caused me to remember things we did as children and I used the word “Naughty” and It occurred to me that this word has an entirely different meaning for children than it has for adults, thus anything I said is of a child version not an adult version. Where I grew up we were surrounded by fields and woods and we  children used to play in the woods or do things along the river bank.  What I meant by  naughty is the fact that some us were wicked in that we stole things from our mothers.  Oh relax !! – what  earthly use did we have for money?  No, every so often  some of us would sneak into the pantry and “steal”a couple of potatoes from mum’s potato bag, then we would all go off to the woods. Since most of us had been camping on a regular basis, we knew how to set out a campfire. Once we had that lit  and going fairly well, we would put the potatoes we had pinched  round the side of the fire and cook them. A bit of salt if someone  thought to bring any and that was our “feast”. In those days potatoes were cheap and were measured not in pounds but in stones. A Scottish stone was equal to about 16.5 pounds. Our mothers had a separate bag for potatoes because mainly they were unwashed and were bought in  either a stone, half stone or quarter stone.  Potatoes were dirty so they were not kept in the nice, clean  grocer but in the back of the fishmonger in great metal tubs, scooped out, weighed on the big scale then dumped into the potato bag. Not like today where everything is washed clean and sanitized and put in plastic bags so we can all have the fun of adding to the landfill. Thinking back, in the world I lived in I had a great childhood, good friends, good school and collectively we hated dentists. Doctors were a necessary  evil but dentists were just an evil. Still don’t like dentists. Ah sorry, it’s probably a generation thing.  You know, we thought we were so clever but thinking back,I’m quite sure our parents knew what we were up to.

Very strange thing happened to me a short while ago – by short I mean within the last hour. I was  going through my mail and other stuff and I could hear Benji  pottering about in the background. Never really took a lot of notice as he seemed to be ok doing whatever he was doing. Anyway, I finished what I was doing and  made the momentous decision that a coffee would go down well now. I swung my chair round to get out and go make the coffee and that’s when I discovered what the Benji had been up to. All around my chair he had placed all his toys. I don’t know what to make of that – coincidence, seemed like a good idea, no meaning whatsoever?? I don’t know, I really don’t know, but it does seem an odd thing to do.

The weather continues to behave in a weird way. I took the boy out for his walk at 5:45 this morning and instead of light, the sky was very dull with dark storm clouds moving around and the wind was quite cold. About halfway through our walk I felt a few spots of rain as the clouds seemed to get darker. However, nothing came of it but the dark clouds are still lurking about and the top temperature for today is 21c. As it happened, the dark clouds passed, eventually, the sun came out but it stayed cool all day and we reached a top of 23c well below average.

The ladies have their coffee evenings on a Tuesday and coffee mornings on a Wednesday. They  each pay a few dollars – some of this goes to the hostess for  coffee, tea, and so on, the rest gets set aside for charity. This year they will present $1000 to the  Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), $1000 to Anglicare (Church of England Charity Service)  and $1000 to the family, here in the community, of  a little child who was struck down with Meningococcal. The child lost several limbs but he survived and will require on-going medical treatment. All of the local community have been great  and have been fund raising on their behalf – a community in crisis, uncertainty,  concerned about the future and almost 10% unemployment – but we can still pull together to help one of our community who needs us.