Edie115

This morning the Doc was reading her book – And The Band Played On  by Randy Shilts. It’s about the emergence of the Aids epidemic in America and the terrible negligence of the Reagan administration.  So we are lying in bed, she’s reading, I’m surfing and she says “What did the Moody Blues sing? It was something to do with material, the girl in this book has just turned up her Moody Blues cassette”. “She wore blue velvet” I start singing. “NO”… “Knights in white satin” she yells! “Quite an intense song” I say. Then we discover through our continuing conversation that it’s not knights at all. It’s nights. We never put that together, for years we imagined a knight on a horse and some white satin, possibly a bit of chainmaille. But yes, a horse and a knight and none of the shenanigans going on in the song!!! We didn’t really listen to the other words as kids. It doesn’t really have anything in it about a horse, or fields, or galloping, or windy moors! But to me in England and her in Australia, it had a horse and a knight. We lolled quite a lot.

We often talk about how we had similar things in our houses on opposite sides of the world. I swear that her parents and my parents had the same cocktail cabinet. It had all the same things in it including the large tall bottle of Galliano. What was with the Galliano?

Did anyone ever drink that? We had jars of the little cocktail cherries in brandy too. How I loved them, I sneaked so many as a kid. I think we slowly drank the contents of the trolly as teenagers but Mum wouldn’t notice as she used to run the Christmas Hamper club. This was quite exciting as we would get a heap of free hampers for Christmas as commission. She would spend 3 nights out delivering them to all her friends and we would explore all the ones we had got for free. It was pretty good, there would be a drinks one, a grocery one, a chocolate one, a treat one and a meat one. The Fray Bentos pies (in the tin!) and the tins of ham are probably still in the back of my Mums cupboard. Tins of Quality street and biscuits didn’t last long and there would always be the lone biscuit left in the tin for 6 weeks. But totes exciting!

We had similar plates. My Mum got them from collecting green shield stamps at the Co-Op. It was my job to stick them in the little book. When you had collected enough you got a whole dinner service. I seem to remember that you could collect them as you go along so we often had just a random saucer waiting for the cup. Mum would be like “I haven’t got enough stamps for the whole set yet love”. It reminds me of that part in ‘Letter to Brezhnev’ where Margi Clark, who works in the chicken factory gives her mate a plastic bag and says, “tell your mother I only got her six thighs and a couple of wings, I couldn’t get her the whole bird”. I did spend a few hours with Margie once in a bar in Brighton. I was pretty messed up at the time and there was a moment where I  noticed all the self-harm scars on her arms. As I looked up she looked at me and said, “None of us are going to get out alive love”. She was one of the nicest, rawest people I’ve ever met. There’s someone who has stood on the edge. Watch “Letter to Brezhnev” because it’s a great retro film and Margi… she’s bloody great.

So a new year and new hope and new stuff. It’s kinda nice, right? I don’t mind making new plans but I don’t think you should only do it once a year. Review all the time I reckon, because you might change your mind and stuff. There are no rules so make your plans, whenever you want. I sometimes do this weekly 🙂

Happy New Year to everyone, thanks for popping by my blog, thanks for the comments, I know lots of people comment over at Edie115 on Facebook too. May you all have a great year, and if you don’t then it’s the flux and flow of life so ride that shit out, or call me up.

Be yourself, everyone else is taken. Oscar Wilde.

Lovage,

Edie xoxox