The Captain Teddy's daycare bus of doom!

In case of any future court action taken against me I think I should set down in writing the events of that tragic day where I mentally scarred a batch of young children for life in the space of 5 seconds.

It was early morning, I was riding to school, travelling at speeds close to Mach I and as I turned onto Yut Fay Avenue something terrible happened. I had looked down at my bike for only a moment but during that time the Captain Teddy's daycare bus had reversed out of a driveway and stopped right in front of me.

Time slowed down and my life flashed before my eyes (again). I squeezed the handbrakes and locked up the tyres. The bike skewed sideways, the wheels buckled and I was thrown forward towards the bus. I crashed into the bus side-on with my shoulder creating a sizable dent in the panel just above the back wheel. My head whipped against the window with spittle flicking across the glass like a slow motion punch in a Rocky movie.

I awoke an instant later sitting on the road with my back against the bus's back tyre looking at my twisted bike. I heard the driver running around to me and the kids crying inside. Apparently my wide-eyed dribbling head coming at the window at significant speed is a bit scary to children.

I limped home and called Dad saying I had hit a bus and I got to stay home from school which was cool. Dad came home straight away thinking I had a broken pelvis and a ruptured pancreas or something but apart from a sore shoulder I was ok. Dad rang up the daycare centre and spoke to Captain Teddy saying my bike was ruined. Captain Teddy cried that he had a massive dent in his bus and numerous mentally scarred children to brainwash by the end of the day. So Dad called it even.

The bus drove around with the big dent for months afterwards and I filled with pride as I pointed and said "See that dent, I did that!". With the hitting of the bus I now had an impressive tally of targets building up including a Volkswagon, a taxi, many bushes and trees, large rocks, gullies, a little girl skipping home from kindergarten and I almost got a motorbike (he was a nimble bugger).

The End.

Farmer & the Crows

I went to the Strawberry farm the other week & as I walked back to car I recalled Dad's venture into strawberry farming-on a fairly smallish scale I suppose - but big enough to take up the whole yard-I remember Dad said we could eat what ever we wanted from the small patch down the side but our lives wouldn't be worth it if we touched this other lot... so off we took to partake of the "strawberries" we could eat - but yuk! these were hot & horrible, turn a kid off strawberries forever I wasn't impressed,we were allowed to eat radishes. I can still hear Dad laughing, Anyway seeing as we didn't have anywhere to play now we made up the game Farmer & the Crows....Yeah Melissa was the Farmer & Billy & I were the naughty Crows - it went like this - The naughty Crows would come down to eat the strawberries & the farmer would have to come & chase us off or try to catch us ... this was fun for while until Melissa got sooky cause she couldn't be a naughty crow & didn't want to play anymore ....but I'm thinking Dad had probably instigated that game,it meant he had 3 live scarecrows looking after his strawberries ......foiled again I think

Elbow Grease

I remember doing the dishes once during my early teen "indentured slave" period and I was encountering a particularly hard scum on the bottom of a cooking pan. As any self-respecting teenager would do, I started to whinge about how hard it was and why do I have to do it and Ben doesn't do anything etc etc.

Dad said to use "Elbow grease". Now I wasn't savvy with this term so I had visions of a cool cleaning chemical thing that sprayed acid-soaked steel wool under high pressure. So I started to go through the cupboards looking for a spray bottle with a logo of an elbow on it - like Mr Muscle has a bicep on it. While I type this I realise that it wasn't that stupid of me at all - the jump from "Elbow grease" to the picture on the Mr Muscle bottle is quite easy to make, I think I have just removed one of those embarrassing flashback moments that make you bury your face in a pillow. Anyway I could not find it and Mum and Dad thought I was being smartass when I asked where the Elbow grease was kept so I just persevered and cleaned it (or I might of just "let it soak", meaning leave it in the skanky water so Mum has to do it later).

I would just like to make it clear that I now know that "Elbow grease" is a term meaning to scrub at it harder similar to other stupid sayings like "Blanket party" for sleep. I was probably thoroughly disappointed when I discovered this "blanket party" had no cake, lollies or soft drink at all but was actually quite the opposite of a party, words can be so cruel.

Was it normal to sacrifice the bottom half of the roast chook and all the veges to the bottom of the pan and just be happy with the non-charcoal stuff on the top?.

Suck a stone!

Well, peoples, it's been nearly a year since we saw some action over here.

We must all have shocking memories. I'm giving Mum a pass on this because she has all those names to remember and it has used all her brainspace.

Who are you? I am AndraVicDani. Or most times I am "Honestly-Danielle-you-are-a-source-of-annoyance" which can be a bit
of a mouthful at first, but you can work it into something good.

I don't know about you, but I have thought of this blog weekly (or is that weakly?) hope that someone has seen fit to remember something and put it over here.

Anycause, I have come here with a request. You see, I grew up hearing some of our family's stories, but never having lived a part of it (yes, except the poisoning of Michael, but honestly. I think that it was mostly attention seeking behaviour on his behalf, now that I think about it. It wasn't ALL me. Most of the time it WASN'T me at all! I was just standing nearby) but those stories of you guys have now worked themselves into my own little family's life. For instance, Riley and Tully quite often tell someone to 'suck a stone!'. Whenever someone is bemoaning something the others see as petty, they are told to suck a stone.

Why?

Because, when Dad (granddad) took you guys across the Gobi Desert on Fraser Island without water and someone complained of being thirsty, the story goes "Well, pick up a stone and suck it!".

Tell me the story. Who was there? Who was thirsty? Who was the one that (foolishly? bravely?) asked for a drink? How old were you? Did it really ... no. Don't answer that, I don't care if it really happened or not. It's part of MY story now, so it has to stay.

I miss you guys. I hope you write back.

signed
Honestly Danielle.

Cleaning the yard

Why was it when Dad came back from the Navy we were always sent out side to clean up the yard? this invariably ended in a punchup, mostly me & Bill cause Lissa would have feigned illness & Mum would let her go inside (this did nothing for my jealousies towards Lissa)& Andrea would have curled up for a sleep somewhere but occasionally all 4 of us were in the punch up so Dad in his wisdom would make us go sit in a corner of the yard until he said we could move but the yard was very wide at the front & very narrow at the back..I dont know how many times Bill & I were sent to the narrow back end where we'd continue the punch up or at very least name calling until one to many "you are's" or "stop copying me" or "you're a fat pig" was too much & the punches began again until we realised the dark shadow blocking the light was Dad with another part of a fruit box....
Speaking of fruit boxes what about Mums new vinyl lounge that someone sliced with a razor blade, we all got a hiding for that cause who ever did it wouldn't own up ... all I know is it wasn't me so who was it?

Bill is obviously deluding himself, I was the innocent being led astray. Im sure Melissa & Andrea can verify the facts fortunately Dani was too young & was spared.
Mind you I laughed as I do recall the go cart down Ormond Rd,while I do recall going down the hill in said go cart,thrilling & scary at same time,other kids were there as well, dont know why we always manged to have an audience when we were about to get a hiding ....

Memories

I do remember that clothesline, vaguely, buried somewhere deep in my subconscious (not the clothesline, just the memory of it) along with all the other things I thought I had blotted from consciousness for reasons like guilt is a terrible burden to carry around so best dump it somewhere ASAP. Deny everything immediately before it's had time to lodge like a cuckoo's egg in the brain only to hatch one day into something unexpected.

I remember the clothesline to be a brown colour, maybe it was rust or primer. Probably primer in this instance because it hadn't been around long enough to rust. That's where my recollection ends. I have no knowledge of any subsequent attempts to test its ability to withstand the weight of two children swinging from it. I believe this to be a thinly disguised attempt by my sister to implicate me in something I had nothing to do with for iniquitous reasons of her own. Probably in retaliation for the time I chased her up the road weilding the first thing that came to hand which in turned out to be one of mum's stilleto heeled shoes.

Back to the clothesline. Things are coming back to me. Yes, it was definitely brown. I can see my sister swinging on it but I am nowhere in sight. She jumps up and down doing her best to test its lateral and vertical stability and yes, there it goes flying over the fence. My sister runs away. I am still nowhere in sight. That's all I remember, I swear!

I do remember a poster of a giant rooster that was in the process of being burned in the wire cage we used for an incinerator. The incinerator was next to the fence (fence being wooden posts with three strands of wire I think) the other side of which was a whole paddock of dry grass just waiting to be set alight by some unforeseen event like me taking the burning poster from the cage and throwing it over the fence. Thankfully, it failed to cooperate and smouldered away before crumbling into a pile of ashes.

The boy down the road, I can't remember his name, wasn't so fortunate. He set alight a whole suburb of bush and we had to help put it out and he got in big trouble.

On the subjects of go-karts, I remember the time Vicki and I (I think it was her idea) took our home-made cart across the neighbouring paddock to the dirt road (what was its name?) that ran in a steep descent to an intersection with Seventeen Mile Rocks Road, a rather busy main road that ran past the front of our house, which included a diabolical corner that was consistently underestimated by numerous drivers as they attempted to negotiate it at ridiculous speeds before discovering it was impossible just before slamming into the telegraph pole, or opposing cliff face, or missing both and sailing into the bush, or sliding out of control and rolling into the ditch at the bottom of the hill. All in all it probably wasn't the safest place to play, which was more than likely the thinking of our father as he yelled out for us to desist in our quest to kill ourselves. Not quite understanding him as he stood there yelling and waving his arms about we continued in our mad pursuit of ever greater thrills which were about to descend in the form of our father jumping the fence brandishing a piece of wooden fruit box of which there was an iniquitous abundance. The rest is history, as they say. Whoever said history never repeats itself was wrong, wrong, wrong.