VINTAGE (WONDER?) POD



One of the best moments about being home was finding an old diary that I thought I had lost forever. I had thought lots about where it could be, but had resigned myself to the fact it gone forever. I didn't really know exactly what was in the diary, but I just wanted it. I'm such a nostalgic and silly old Pod you see. So when I pulled out an old suitcase from the bowels of one of my dad's sheds (yes he has more than one...posh eh?), and midst other 'things' found the diary, well, as they say here in Oz, I was stoked. Or as they say back home "ee, i wa made up".

There were so many funny entries, and some that were quite telling (see Saturday January 10 for example), and of course memories came flooding back. And Pod loves memories. He would pay for them. In January 1981, I would have been three months away from my 10th birthday.

Monday 5th - I remember the lost library books, because I remember finding them. They were in what we called 'the bogey hole', which was a small cupboard under the stairs. The bogey hole, amongst other things, housed Mrs Toe, our hamster. Not only was Mrs Toe extraordinarily good at death defying acts of escapism and agility, she was possibly the world's strongest hamster. In the dead of one night, she was caught in the spotlight of a torch (we were investigating what we thought was a possible burglary), wheeling a crumpet (pikelet to some) across the terrible 70's carpet, toward her cage. She was literally wheeling it along with her tiny front paws, like a man would wheel along a massive tyre. I could go on about Mrs Toe (I may tell you at some point about the time when we thought she was dead and almost buried her alive), but for the purposes of this story, the point I am trying to get across is that she was most determined. And so the library books had been used to keep the lid to her cage firmly down....hence me remembering losing them.

Tuesday 6th - you will see at the bottom of that day 'missed cubs'. That is because the first time I ever went, I was blindfolded and shoved into a dark cupboard and made to feel and identify various objects hanging from the ceiling. The first was a rasher of streaky bacon, the second was a plastic bat. I didn't make it to the third. The only time I ever went back to cubs was when I heard they were teaching us how to make cream horns......

Saturday 10 - 'played Wonder Woman'. Mum had a gold rope belt (the lasso of truth), she had thick gold bangles (bullet deflecting bracelets made from impenetrable Amazonian metal), she had knee high yellow PVC Mary Quant platform boots.....she didn't have an invisible plane, but the outfit was almost complete. What was I to do? I loved Wonder Woman as well as Diana Prince, who was always so wise. I recently got hold of the DVDs, and I have to say, they are better than I imagined. I still wish I could twirl and change into a superhero, though perhaps not Wonder Woman anymore.

I love the fact that I know now, that on Saturday January 10, 1981, the most important thing I did on that day was playing Wonder Woman.

Ah the memories.

Be playful folk, and remember: