MONDAY MEMORIES: The Past Arrives

My past arrived today. No I am serious - it did literally arrive today. The courier dropped the boxes at the door about 10:00am and in both the boxes is history. The larget box contains my mother and father dining setting, which was an engagement present. It was a full set for 18 years - until I was 15, too lazy to open up the door of the linen press where the towels were, reached through and dragged a towel across and took the sugar bowl, milk jug and one other piece with it. They fell to the concrete floor and broke into tiny pieces. I wasn't popular as you could guess - and I was mortified by what I had done. I learnt my lesson and always opened the correct door for the towels after that.

Where I am going to house all the plates? In my linen press - waiting for Dylan too be too lazy to open the door properly and to drag out other pieces all over the polished floor boards. I'm looking forward to returning from holidays to organise a very 70's dinner party to welcome the new setting into our home. We might even break out the silver that Dave's mother gave us ... but that belongs to a whole different era - as does the contents of the second box.

The smaller box contained all my journals and diaries - back to my diary when I was 13! And reading that was a laugh and cringe-fest ... I never thought I was THAT obsessed with boys, but its all there in black and white, or green, purple, blue. And it was so '80s as the following photos of the insides of my diary will atest to!

Scott (Jason Donovon) & Sharlene's (Kylie Minogue) wedding on Neighbours was the biggest event on TV in '87 for me - I can probably, much to my embarrassment hammer out a few bars of Rose Tattoo's "Suddenly" which was the wedding song. It was also the year I though Pat Cash was hot and stayed up until 1:00am to see him win Wimbledon with my Grandmother during the one week semester break (before there were four school terms a year). Pat Cash's parents lived in Ringwood in Victoria, as did my Aunt and Uncle. My Aunt told me that PC's mother made all his trade mark black and white headbands. And then there's Patrick Swaye - the beginning of pretty much an life long crush on the hunky Texan. In '87 I saw him as handsome, limping Orry Main in the TV adaptation of John Jake's North & South. Oh yeah - and there's Steven de Jong. The first of my unrequited loves - but that's a whole story in itself!

I was in love with Alasdair Gillis from one of Nickelodean's 80' flagship 'You Can't Do That On TV'. The show with Barf Buggers, water that fell on you when you said 'water' and green slime when you said 'I dont know'. Guest starring - and its written in my diary - is Alanis Morrisette and I was hideously jealous because she flirted with the boy that I had a crush on! This did not stop me many years later buying Jaggered Little Pill

Here's a VERY young Michael J Fox in the days when he played Alex P Keaton (he's 46 years old now) I loved Family Ties and this was in the days when it was prime time and now mid afternoon re-runs. I remember the episode with Tracey Pollen in it, who went on to become Mrs Michael J Fox. Billy Vera and the Beaters sang 'At This Moment' in the episode where Pollen's character, leaves on a bus ending their on screen relationship. And then there's another Neighbours memoir - the birth of favourite couple Des and Daphnes first baby (apparently called Jamie from my scribblings). It was a few more years before I gave up watching Neighbours. It took a while to grok the message in this cartoon (featured in the back of the diary) .... but I do like the
little comment that I've scrawled on the second cartoon (as I only ever studied to be smart and top the class - I was never actually interested in money!)

Thankfully the diaries do get 'better' the further on in years we go - less drivel about who I am enamoured with on TV and more about what I was seeing, hearing, feeling thinking.

I'm glad that over the years I stuck momentos away in them - paper clippings of my favourite bands, photos, cards, envelopes, notes - there are even petals from the very first rose that I ever got on Valentines Day in one diary (circa 1993 and his name was Sid, and we'd gone to high school together).

In the diary preceeding (1992) are two $20 (paper)notes that I asked an old boyfriend to keep for me when I had to go to hospital in a hurry for an eye operation back in 1992. I ran out of the ward once I finally got admitted, in my nighty, with the money in my hand. I would have done anything to have kept him there with my in Melbourne - I was all alone, facing a major operation and without friends or family with me. But I let him go. I knew he was already going to have to do some explaining to Miranda and his mates. I've been bloody broke at periods in my life, but I NEVER took that $40 and used it - knowing that he was the last person to have that money.

I can still remember the car trip with him to the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital Melbourne. We'd broken up about two weeks earlier but I needed to get to Melbourne and two days before New Years Eve everyone, including my parents, were out of town and I was unable to drive myself. He was my last resort and I had to literally search him out and interupt a lunch he was having with mates in the Mall.

The radio station we listening to was counting down the all time best 100 songs, and When Doves Cry came on ... I remember the patch of highway we were travelling along at the time, looking out at the dry brown hills and feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. He'd left me for a girl who was the antithesis of me - short, strawberry blonde ringlets, miss priss, who was his best mate's sister. He'd know her practially all his life, but she'd waited until I came along to get her manicured talons into him. I felt life was really unfair.

I feel a little more complete knowing that all my diaries are with me once again. They've been in storage at my Mum's place, in a camphorwood chest since 1995, and while a lot of what is in them is painful, there are lots of good memories, simple memories that I am going to enjoy reliving all over again in the coming months.