I have been prodded into a self-revelatory post by the delicious Blakkat, because of my retreat into anonymous mouth-foaming far left political commentary at the expense of my interior life - with which Ms Blakkat's tag now encourages me to reconnect.

Well, I suppose now that there is some (very faint) chance that the sedition laws might be repealed if our PRIME MINISTER (oh, how it delights me to say our PRIME MINISTER and not be referring to John Winston) refrains from, ehem, fucking it up, I might crawl out from under my rock, rubbing my eyes and twitching in the glare as I do.*

GET ON WITH IT! I hear you shout, if indeed you are still awake.

So get on with it I shall.

I have several 'first memories', all jostling for position in my crowded head, so I shall recount three. We moved from NZ to the UK to NZ and eventually to OZ in quick succession when I was a tot, so the memories are from all over the place - spatially, temporally and mentally.


1. My first breach of trust

I have always been adventurous in the culinary sense, and it's clear to me that this started at a very young age. By the age of about three, as a fat toddler waddling around our suburban idyll in the hilly suburbs of late 1970s Auckland, I had apparently already managed to ingest several plastic objects and a couple of flies, all of which 'passed' without incident. Or so my mother tells me, though she was horrified at the time. My actual memory takes up in a knife-shiny expanse of hospital room with alien smells and strip lighting as far up as the clouds from my vantage point. Why was I there? At the time I had no idea. I am now told I had raided the bathroom cabinet for new objects to conquer and eat, and, falling for its smooth texture and sweet smell, had swallowed one of those tablets of bright blue toilet freshener.**

I was a gracious, well-behaved child, and I would, rather theatrically, extend the hand of friendship to strange people wherever I went. It was no different at the hospital. As my mother escorted me past all the nice people in this big hotel, I hailed each one and smiled graciously at the doctor, even as blue foam trickled down my chin. By this time I was politely complaining of a bit of a bad tummy, but I was unaware of the potentially dire nature of my situation. My mother and the benevolent doctor conspired to keep this from me. And so I chatted and smiled with the nurse as she gave me the most enormous glass of orange juice in what I thought to be a very kindly gesture. I knocked it back gratefully and was presented with another. And another. And another. At which point I politely refused to drink any more. The doctor turned to mum and said "I think you'd better leave now". And I watched her walk across the linoleum floor and close the door behind her. But that was ok - I was with the nice doc. Still unsuspecting, still magnanimous and diplomatic, I turned to him and said "I've actually had enough now, if you don't mind". He then enlisted the help of the nurses in holding my mouth open while they poured fluids down my throat. Of course, this was for my own good - they induced vomiting and out came the pesky poison. This was 70s medicine at its best. Anyway, I lived to tell the tale and become the obnoxious, argumentative person I am now, so unrecognisable from that smiling little eskimo. I left the hospital in tears, my faith in nice strangers severely bruised. Analysts might argue that my fear of spewing derives from that one sorry, half-remembered day in the hospital, but I think I can reassure you that there was no lasting trauma. Not from that, anyway...

2. Social graces

A couple of years later, when I was five, we were living in a large city to the west of London, far from the healthy, grassy, temperate foothills of Titirangi. My parents were running a convenience store. Not one of those modern places with lights so bright they sterilise your eyeballs and slick, sparsely adorned rows of shelves - this shop was dusty and stacked high with everything from fireworks to scotch eggs to plastic Christmas trees, and it had one of those front doors rigged with a cowbell to announce the shopper, just like Ronnie Barker's shop did on Open All Hours. There was dark cellar which I used to pretend housed the Red Baron and other relics from the War, and a camphor chest spilling over with dress ups. Each day I would swan down the stairs into the shop in one of mum's frillier nighties (or a pillowcase if I was trying to be a ghost) and parade around, charming the shoppers (I don't like to think how much... but moving swiftly along) and scaring the other children. I was a right little poser and a ham, and would put on performances for unsuspecting customers where I'd burst into song or recite poetry.

We had this humungous black labrador called Mac, who was bigger than me, and he used to shit all over the lawn out the back of the shop, which was always overgrown. On one occasion I swept through the shop and out into the backyard in one of mum's longer nighties. Mac had laid some rather fruity nuggets out there, and, not being one to pick my way through his minefield, I returned from my journeys with my hem trailing dogshit like the rim of a champagne glass. The punters would have loved that. I was hastily ushered upstairs after that.

There was only one flower in that backyard - a red tulip surrounded by weeds. It lived a brief, wondrous life of five days, until Mac urinated on it. At least, that's what Dad told me - no doubt for a laugh, but I believed him. It took me a good while to forgive Mac for that.

One other memory I have is that my dad used to scatter loose change in the shallows when we went to the seaside and then tell me and my cousins it was washed up pirate treasure. I bought it (I was a sucker back then. I always bought fairy/ghost/santa crap - I will reserve my dignity and decline to tell you how old and how devastated I was when I discovered the Easter Bunny was a lie. But boy have I made up for that now with my hating on religion... but I digress). My cousin Pedro was more wily. He had seen my dad sprinkle the coins liberally but discreetly from his pocket and had decided to cut out the middle man. In a flash he was tugging on Dad's cords. "Uncle Derek, Uncle Derek - give me some money!" Little cynic.

I could go on and on and on now that I've started... but I will spare you.























I don't know if I can rustle up five bloggers to do this who won't already have done this or may not wish to participate. A wish list might be John Surname, MSKP, Chai, Melbourne Dreaming and Secret Wombat. I would love to hear some tales from the mists of time from you lot.

*Because, I have to say, I did sometimes wonder if ASIO were going to come for me. Not because my views are radical, but because the government of JWH did seem to want to outlaw common sense and gag its exponents. To wit, as I have ranted more, I have retreated from indulging in personal fancy - that is, until it dawned on me that my blog was no longer the nice, idiosyncratic, pop culture-devouring, wistful affair I had started it to be.

**I will not hear a bad word about my parents in this matter. So they let me wander once or twice. It meant that I climbed lots of trees, discovered hedgehogs at the bottom of the garden and hung out with the dog without supervision - besides, they also fed me avocados and bananas, read to me nightly and quizzed me about world geography and I couldn't wish for a better start in life than they gave me.

***I can't link to anyone, or get my photos to fit, or do anything fancy at all on my Mac. And blogging from work is not allowed - Blogger is blocked. So... sorry about the primitive interface. It's the words that count though, hey?