Looking Back
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2007
1
15
27
Trip End
??? ??, 2008
Adelaide,
Australia
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Anyway then this morning/noon, in need of doing a wash, I thought of Vietnam as I dressed head to toe in Nam purchases - my 'Good Morning Vietnam' t-shirt and 'fisherman pants' (which when trying to get the Viet. name, got a totally different one everytime so its 'fisherman pants' as the shop assistant exclaimed, almost surprised that i wanted to actually go out in them [refer back to Nha Trang entries]). Granny thought the ensemble was quite fetching! In Nam = norm, in city dressed Adelaide...maybe not!
Then with Granny's blood pressure monitor, she was doctor and me her patient as she took my blood pressure...this time i had to think back to the numerous measurements I've had over the past year or two (possibly abnormally so for my age - the joys of running down the immune system) ...yeah my perfect memory couldn't tell me anything. Hence I'm trying to fill in the general details of my travels before they are gone forever!
Then working my way back in time, (theme of the day i think), I ended up reading Granny's diary (she is very good on this) of her visit to us on St.Helena in 1989. Living on an island in the middle of the South Pacific, no tv and little brother being born there, I have so many memories - more so than some later years in secondary school. I tend to think of the years we lived there (as Dad worked for the UK gov. out there) as some of the most influential years of my life, and i could rave on about them for ages...so it was interesting to read someone's recorded views at the time and not just memories that i sadly suspect can be tainted by time without correction. I spent some time reading through entries on how Granny and Grand Pa had to deal with Daniel and I running in and out of the house during thier 2month stay (dictated by the few passages to elsewhere). Needless to say, she notes some instances I don't quite remember and some that i do...its the ones i don't that amazed me the most. For instance, Daniel has always (in my mind) been the more studious one yet i read observations such as "doing her homework in an important way while Daniel played with his football" - what??! I was only 4/5years old! After a luncheon with a couple of friends, at which we "talked away on all manners of subjects", Dan and Imogen played the computer whilst Bella and me 'played' having school lesson with Granny as teacher!?! I suddenly felt like Jeckle and Hyde! Feeling like i had been deluded, Granny came to my rescue, recalling how I actually spent most of my time running around, swimming and generally what i remember! I guess she may have just noted the nice respectable features of her grand-daughter ...although I then went on to read that one day "Lucy spent some time telling me why she wanted to be a boy instead of a girl, underlining the fact that she didn't want to have 'these [tapping her falt chest] getting bigger'. It was hard to suggest good reasons for being a girl".... so, i did blush at this moment...it seems Granny was actually representing a selection of my prescence - from helping cook for hours, performing brain surgery on GrandPa (who could have his tea after I'd finished fixing his head and he'd had a shower) to no suffering in silence and crying before settling with daniel's face wetting and some hugs!? Anyway was lovely to have little details refreshed i my mind.
Granny and I then proceeded to look even further back, looking at all the family history surrounding us as she recalled the stories that went with them!
Yep looking back was definatly todays theme.
