Orange and Black

I had a few big plastic tubs of stuff I had kept over the years, things I felt were important, memorabilia stuff and the like.  I decided that I had just a little too much and wanted to try and squeeze my 30-something years down to two tubs.  It was time for a cull.  One thing I stumbled upon was my Balmain Tigers jersey.  The sight of it immediately transported me back to Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games at Leichhardt Oval. 

I am not sure how my interest in the Footy started.  It must have just been a phase, all part of growing up, because I don't care for the sport at all now (although, a large reason why I have no interest now is because I have zero respect for the people that play and represent the game, which is a huge issue in itself).  I was 12, 13 maybe and I needed a team.  My Dad would be out on Saturday afternoons working in the garden or doing other jobs around the house and he always had his radio with him, and I remember from a very young age listening to The Continuous Call Team which he always had on during the Footy season.  I asked Dad what team I should follow.  He told me there was only one team, the Balmain Tigers, it was his team and he had been supporting them since he was a kid.  I suggested that we go to one of their games, the look on Dad's face was priceless.

Anyone familiar with parking in the Inner West of Sydney would know it was a nightmare.  And you needed to park in the back streets far away and join in the growing crowd of people making their way to the Oval.  Not us though, because Dad had a plan.  There was a mental hospital only a very short distance from the Oval and Dad would go there and tell them we were visiting a patient, they always let us in even though as time went by, I would be dressed up in all my orange and black gear.  We always got a park and only ever had a 5 minute walk to the Oval.  We sat on the Hill.  Back then the 'old school' grounds would have one side of the field without any official seating, but you would pay to sit on the Hill.  We brought a picnic blanket and sat on that to watch the games.  At the back of the Hill they set up a large TV screen, it was the very early days of the video ref and when that was called everyone on the Hill turned around to look at the screen and watch the instant replay.  If the call didn't go our way coipesous amounts of empty beer cans would be thrown at the screen.  How times have changed.

At Half Time, Dad would wander off to grab a beer along with most other people.  Everyone on the Hill would stand for a stretch and a chat, kids would run around and the cheerleaders would come out to perform.  I was a confused teenager trying to be a feminist and would yell out things to the cheerleaders.  Things like, other career options they could have taken instead of become sex objects for men.  Like I said, it was the awkward phase of my life where I thought I knew everything and really knew nothing at all.  Fortunately for me at half time, everyone around me had already had a few and found it highly amusing.  Although thinking about this now, I can't help but still cringe just a little bit.

If it was a big win or loss we left early to avoid the crowds, but if it was a close one we stayed until the end.  We were going a fair bit and I thought I should buy a jersey to really show my support.  I scrimped and saved for it and the first game of the first season the following year, I purchased it.  They only had one in my size and it was last years so he gave me a discount.  I was so happy.  Dad and I continued going to several games throughout the year, but the game was in trouble, it split in two and became a complete mess and in the end the Balmain Tigers ceased to exist, merging with the enemy, Wests Magpies.  That was it for me, I was done, I couldn't support the team anymore, because in my mind, it didn't exist.  Even the physical location of the game was moved with only a couple of matches to be play at Leichhardt.  I folded up my jersey and stashed it away, the football phase was over.

I am thankful I kept the jersey, I have it hanging up in the wardrobe of the spare room.  Not too sure what I will do with it, but perhaps one day when I have children of my own, I will wear it underneath a jacket on a cold wintery Saturday as we head off to a football game, creating new memories.

Occupation: Fashion Designer

What do you want to be when you grow up?  As a side note I have only just found the answer to that and I am in my early 30’s.  Lately I have been thinking about all the things I thought I wanted to be when I was growing up.  I never seemed to want the stock standard things everyone else wanted.  The girls all wanted to be teachers, nurses and mums but not me.  I had other plans. 

In Year 7 I was determined that I was going to be a fashion designer.  Of course I had no interest in fashion or clothes and spent all my time outside of school in jeans and t-shirts,  but in my mind, I wanted to be a fashion designer.  I vividly remember during a Religious class sketching away my collection.  I cannot draw, but with a purple pen and my yellow pad (does anyone else who went to high school in the 90’s remember the coloured writing pad craze?) I drew a singlet, shirt, skirt, dress and pants all with some silly flower design on it (again, hello 90’s).  The teacher busted me.  He asked me to put the pen down, came over and held up the pad.  I don’t remember what he said, but I remember he showed the entire class and they all laughed at me.  For the rest of the week I was picked on for wanting to be fashion designer.  

I wasn’t de-railed.  In Year 8 when we could chose our electives I choose Textiles and Design.  I wanted to be the best in the whole grade.  While I did well in the theory of it, the actually design part, not so great.  Sure I showed great skill in sewing, sewing is quite analytical and I am good at things like that.  But I also showed a total lack of imagination and zero creative design.  I stuck with the basics and what was safe.  My Year 8 work was a simple red skirt.  Year 9 was a tracksuit; black pants, plain red top.  Year 10 was an Asian inspired dress, again it was the 90’s, it was also the same pattern at least 10 other girls had chosen. 

The second half of Year 10 was when my creative talent really emerged.  We were all given a white shirt to design and show case just how talented we were.  I tie-dyed mine emerald green and using the fancy sewing machine with built-in patterns, covered the whole thing in metallic green embroidered leaves (perhaps this was an early indication of my inner hippy).  I had no idea what I was thinking.  I thought I was talented and creative but it looked like something poorly made out of Nimbin.  It was crap.  And it was then that I looked around at all the wonderfully designed shirts from other students, and then at my horrible green and white mess that wouldn’t even make it on a worst dressed list, and then I realised I shouldn’t continue on with my Textiles and Design course.  Fashion designer I just wasn’t meant to be.

I can laugh at all this now.  I still enjoying sewing when I have the time, but I like to stick with the basics and keep it simple.  Just make classics and leave it at that.  I could never have been a fashion designer, I think to be one requires the opposite personality to what I have.  I am very creative, but not visually, and after 3 solid years I still couldn’t draw the silhouette of the female form on which to sketch my “designs”.  Fortunately I learnt this lesson early on and didn’t bother pursuing it any further after Year 10, and I am sure my teachers equally breathed a sign of relief with that knowledge.

Teddy Love

It all began with "Pinky (I)".  My first Teddy was given to me on the day I was born.  It was love at first sight.  I took Pinky with me everywhere, and in most of the photos of me as a baby and then as a toddler, there was Pinky.  My family told me of a story of when I was very young, (as I do not recall it),  that once we went on a boat ride, and as usual, I had Pinky with me.  And on that fateful day the boat crashed.  It must have been a minor one, but it was enough for Pinky to fly out of my hands and sink into the water.  I couldn't stop crying and my parents assured me they would do everything possible to get Pinky back.  Sure enough my parents presented me with my 'rescued' Pinky, and I was a happy girl once again.  Although I didn't realise it then, what they had actually given me was Pinky II.  Many years later when they assumed I was out of the soft toy phase, they told me that they couldn't rescue Pinky from the water, and my beloved Pinky was actually a new Teddy.  I was crushed.

As I ventured along the path to adulthood and my tastes slowly matured, the one thing that didn't change was my love of bears.  When I was studying for the HSC, Pinky II sat proudly on my desk, watching with pride as "mum" threw herself into her studies.  By this stage my love affair with Teddy's, which was now referred to as a Hobby, the adult way of allowing yourself to continue indulging in childhood, was known to all and on my 18th birthday they appeared in numerous presents.  

It was then I thought it might be time to take this a little further and I looked into collectable bears, and I worked and saved to buy a few.  As the years passed, my collection grew, and then I met Hubby.  Whilst Hubby and I settled into our second home together, and as I began to unpack my bears, I had a sudden realisation that a bear collection in our home may look childish. Also as I flipped through my home lifestyle magazines, as I often did, no Teddy's were ever to be seen.  When the call came to move up to The Coast all of my bears, remaining packed in their boxes, were placed in storage.

Upon moving into our new home, Hubby and I have slowly been working our way through the last handful of unpacked boxes.  Stashed in a spare room's closet sat the huge boxes of my bears.  We have been working on building a 'mini' library with some new bookshelves, and as I stacked the shelves I felt it looked a little too impersonal.  It was then I remembered the bears and thought it was the perfect time to pull them out.  I decided I would only put a few out on display just to add a bit of personality to the library.  I starting working through one box.  Each bear was lovingly wrapped in tissue paper having been packed away with utmost of care.  And as I looked at the bears, I asked myself how could I choose?  I thought, no, I must be strong, I have so many that they must go. But as I picked up one bear and then another and then another, I realised that they each had a story to tell.  Every bear I had reminded me of a place, a time, a beautiful memory.  How could I toss that away?

I pulled Hubby over to the bears and showed him, and with my best effort at 'Puppy dog eyes' asked "Can we keep them?".  He smiled and said what I wanted to hear.  "Yes".  But we both agreed that we would make a feature of them and show them off in a display cabinet, neat and tidy, and in a very mature way.  That way when people come to visit I can show them off, tell them a story, and for those very special people I can point out the lovely gift they gave me and just how special it is.

Young Love

I remember when Hubby and I first moved in together.  We were both living with our parents at the time.  I had moved out (and back) several times so I was able to contribute a little to the enormous list of "Things you need when you get your own place".  Hubby was living in a little flat at his parents, so he had a few things to.  Like the bed.  I was back in my single, childhood bed, so it was his Queen that made the journey down.  It was hideous and I hated it.  That first night, it was getting dark and he had just finished setting up the entertainment unit (priorities, priorities) so it was time to move onto the bed.  But there was a piece missing.  A crucial piece which meant we spent that first night sleeping on the mattress on the floor.  I woke up with an asthma attack because apparently that place had never met a Dyson before.  I wonder if Hubby was questioning what he had signed up for.  The bed went up the next day.  It was low to the ground and had this awful aqua blue felt thing that went around the entire bed.  It looked so...... bachelor.  I understand Hubby was, and that at the time many many years ago it was probably quite fashionable, but still.

We went up the road to the Supermarket to do a big shop.  You know the one where you easily spend over $200 just getting everything; food, cleaning products and those random items you think, yes we need that, like a washing up brush.  We discovered they sold bedding.  We picked out a blue sheet set, $19.95, what a bargain.  Back then I didn't care that it was a cotton/polyester blend.  It was affordable, cheap and would do the job, and that was the goal back then.

We didn't have a table and chairs.  His parents came down about a week later with a surprise.  It was an outdoor 4 seater setting.  I set it up inside the house.  It became our dining table for about 6 months.  Everything was so innocent.  We didn't really watch TV.  We would cook in the cockroach infested kitchen.  Simple meals; fry some meat, cook some rice, open a bottle of sauce, voila, dinner.  I would set the outdoor table, we would sit down to dinner, say Grace and turn on Love Song Dedications (radio).  We would eat, and then lean back in our chairs sipping Apple Cider, talking, learning more about each other every day.

That was all our life was, getting to learn about each other and learning to live together.  As soon as we walked in the door all our problems vanished and it was just the two of us and nothing else mattered.  It was all new and exciting and there was this sense that this was it, we had found each other.  I would look across at him during dinner and have this feeling that in 50 years time, I would be sitting down to dinner and looking into the eyes of this man in front of me.  This was love.

Mix Tape

I had the sudden urge on the weekend to get stuck into the 'junk room' of the house.  The one room with all the remaining boxes.  We are down to the really old stuff now, the stuff that was boxed up in the back of our wardrobes before we even met.  I found at least 50 cassette tapes.  Remember those?? I also found an old portable tape player (not a Walkman, this was a tape Dictaphone), and yes it still worked.  I was in early 90's pre teen HEAVEN!!

So many memories, I remember the Top 40 Countdown on Sunday nights and I would sit in my room listening with a tape in the tape deck and my finger just above the record button (tape, deck, button, I am so old) just waiting for the DJ to stop so I could record the song.  And you had to be ready for the end, so you could press stop just as the ad came on.  I would sit happily for a few hours doing my own thing recording the songs I wanted.  Then on the Monday when I came home from school I would put my mix tape on and listen to the songs, and there was always at the start and end of each song the last few words of the DJ or the first few words of an ad, and then the next song would start.  If you really liked a song you would have to rewind it and stop and start and stop and start to find the start of the song.  Tough, but on the weekend I longed for those days.

Then there was uni.  My uni was really up on technology.  They recorded the lectures.  So if you weren't big on attending the lectures (like me), it was wonderful.  On Friday morning you would go to the library and enter through the special door into the Reserve and walk up to the shelves covered in cassette tapes.  You would pick up the tapes from all your lectures that week and walk into a special room that had a very special machine.  You would empty your bag and pull out the 10 cassette tapes you brought with you and into the machine goes your tape and the lecture tape and in less than 5 minutes you had copied that lecture onto your tape.  Then at home I would listen to my lecture, stop, start, rewind, fast forward and then do it all again the following week. In my third year I discovered I could enrol myself in the subject externally and the Distance Education Department would just post me the tapes.  Those were the days.

Finally, not long after uni, inspired by those early reality TV shows, I felt I needed to learn to sing.  My singing teacher asked me to bring in tapes and would record our lessons so I could go home, listen and practice.  I found those tapes on the weekend.  It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn't.  I remember how much I enjoyed singing and I found myself smiling at all the silly things she had me sing.  It was a time I had forgotten about until now and it has stuck.  I didn't care back then what I did, I did whatever it was that made me happy, and I need to inject a little of that back into my life each day.  Now please tell me I am not the only one that remembers cassette tapes!