AROUND THE CAMPFIRE
When I was a child one of my greatest joys was sitting with the adults and listening to them tell stories from the past. Magic…we do the same now with our grandchildren. I'm sure there are many members who have a story to tell - what might seem insignificant to you might have us in stitches; bring back memories of days gone by both good and bad; remind us of places we visited as children or give us an insight of places we’re never visited. So if there’s a yarn you’d like to spin, draw up a chair and let us have some fun.
As a starter, I have copied a few comments made today in another thread by a couple of members which I find entertaining, hope you will too!
Seeing as we're sitting around a campfire reminiscing I'll retell this little story about one of my misadventures during the war in NG. about 12 months previous while loading our transport I managed to be hit by a train on the wharf at Townsville, as it was deemed to be my fault the truck was demolished, I was to be court martialed, so in their wisdom they put me in a cooking school at the townseville showgrounds, The ist day I learned how to make mock cream, and jam tarts. I lasted two days after going ackwilly and sent back under guard to my unit, eventually the charge was dropped as we left for NG. Now we were out on a patrol and it was not a picnic, when a message came through for me to report back to base Immediately.... On return was smartly told that I was now the unit cook as I had been to a cooking school and the records showed I HAD PASSED? no notice taken of my denials, The unit cook had been killed and now it was me. I was assigned an offsider who knew less than me, Now what to do, apart from the usual M and V so decided to utilise my expertise and make 'mock cream and jam tarts, something unheard of in army cooking. Received by all in gratitude UNTIL there was no more tinned butter or sugar left,no flour I had used all the supply, now the repurcussions started and they finally accepted I had told the truth that I was no cook.It was a relief to go back to normal duties, away from the insults of grown men.
Thank you for putting that up Seth, enjoyed reading it, and guess what, even managed to lay my hands on a pic of you in the school's kitchen!
IIn 1963 I was heading up North , in my Holden Station Waggon , with wife and two kids on board. The road north of Townsville was a single strip of Tarmac , so if you had any brains you headed of the Tarmac first to avoid a broken windscreen.,
In McKay my first job was cleaning out 44 gallon drums with chains and then refilling them with petrol and stencilling on the name of different petrol companies
., My first job on the cane was stripping green cane , green cane is cane you cut green not fired and use for replanting to grow new cane. Being a new chum I didn't know the reason you fire cane is to clean out the rats and snakes . So there I was gaily stripping green cane in my shorts and thongs totally oblivious to the danger. But the money was great Five Quid a day .,, .
Sounds like you did a few hard jobs in your time Pete, wow,hat off to you. Must have been a bit risky driving on the Tarmac though, hope SD was nowhere in the vicinity!
In Lucca (Tuscany) where I spent many of my growing up years, on the 27th April each year there is a festival called Fiera di Santa Zita. Santa Zita is the patron of the city of Lucca and the 27th marks her death.
Legend has it that Saint Zita was a servant girl who worked for a wealthy and prominent family in the city. Zita was a kind person and she stole scraps of food from the family’s kitchen to feed the poor. One day she was caught and when asked to reveal what she had in her apron, she spread her arms wide and magically the food had turned into plants and flowers. This of course saved her from being punished and so in Lucca to honour Saint Zita there is held a plant and flower fair selling not only plants and flowers, but many stalls sold cakes and biscuits.
My Grandma being an excellent pastry cook made cakes and biscuits and donated the money to the church. Each year I helped her and she trusted me so much that one year she allowed me to make several batches of amaretti biscuits (my speciality). Everything went well and the biscuits turned out great. We set up the stall and started selling; the biscuits went quickly and I was riding high – then the customers started returning with them. When my Grandma tasted the biscuit, she found I had put salt instead of sugar, they were awful. To this day, I don’t know how that could have happened, so ladies, I couldn’t have made it as a biscuit millionaire in Lucca, my name was dirt! Well for a short while anyway! Fortunately no one asked for their money back since it was going to the Church anyway!
Your storyof life in Italy brought back a memory Ray of my first visit to Italy as a young Australian bride. We were staying with extended family and i was made designated cook. I decided to cook Risotto Milanese, so trundled down to the square to buy some parmesan. As i spoke not one word of Italian i was not sure how to ask for the quantity i needed, so trying to work out the price of the cheese i held up 10 fingers meaning is it 10 lira? the saleslady said " Si Signora and proceeded to grate my cheese in a machine. Me feeling well that wasn't so hard after all failed to realise that i had just ordered and was about to receive 10 kilos of grated parmesan..When the cheese was handed over imagine my shock..lol Too embarrassed to admit i had made a mistake plus Not having the language to do so anyway i paid for the cheese and headed home where the family had a field day packing and storing a couple of years supply of gran parmesan.. while trying to hide their laughter at the New Italian in their midst.. the risotto was perfect though...lol
Haha, brilliant Peanuts can just picture you trudging home with all that cheese!!
Ray had a good laugh at least your mistake was genuine. As a kid we were forced to go to Sunday school.
That was ok enjoyed being with the other kids,but we had a really nasty teacher.
His fun was giving us a clip on the ear when we got questions wrong, so we waited for a chance to get back at him.
He used to bring a flask and biscuits for his afternoon tea and one day, he left it open on the desk and went to sort out something outside. One of the boys poured epsom salts into the tea,well I better not go into detail, what carried on from there.
The poor b****r spent that afternoon and night running to the dunny.
Hehehehe, Banjo such wickedness!! Love it. You can join my club any day and any more stories would be most welcome!
Banjo ,i have a younger sister who married a rather bullying German man, he was a very strict man who was very domineering., often putting her down in public. I remember visiting my sister in Perth one year and being rather upset at my new BIL's treatment of my sister.When i questioned my sister as to why she tolerated this behaviour she answered me that, " When her husband would start his bad behaviour he would always say "You give me the shits" .. finally she decided to deal with his behaviour in her way, every time this man bullied her he received epson salts in his meal drink whatever way she could adminster it.She said she got great satisfaction and joy laying in bed listening to this man trundle backwards and forwards to the toilet. Eventually she divorced him and on the day her divorce was finalised , her parting words to this man was " Yes I did give you the shits ,and it felt good.Did you enjoy your Epsom salts?" She went on to marry a wonderful man , they have been together 30 years now with lovely kids who all enjoy the epsom salts story.. in fact every time my sister gets cross the kids yell out " Quick Dad hide the salts"
Can't stop laughing Peanuts, he got the s***s all right! Just thrown out our bottle of epsom salts!
Reading the above post of Seth's brings a real lump to my throat, many years ago i was a member in this site and during that time i was lucky enough to have a very real friendship with Seth. My father was also a cook in the army in NG at the time Seth was deployed there , and yes i shared with Seth many of the stories my father had shared with me. After leaving this site Seth became a F/b friend outside of this place for a long time and as such he will be sorely missed. Seths biggest asset was his humour and his unlimited imagination often bringing me and others to tears of laughter..at the moment i suspect Seth is probably selling shoddy concrete to the angels then making good his escape on a stolen bike.. one thing for sure is Seth is definately with the angels..as he truly earned his place in heaven.
Lovely post peanuts. I agree with you........
Another top post from you Peanuts, you are a born story teller, thank you! BTW who's got Seth's stolen bike now?
Ray Thats called taking out insurance.. good thinking my friend...lol
In the old days we always blamed a guy called Fwed...AKKA Gerry...it's possible Fwed has claimed it ..i hope so as it was Fwed's bike in the first place.
One summer when I was thirteen, I went with a group to stay on a kibbutz in Israel for a month. It was wonderful, being out in the open all day and away from parents for a while. We were looked after by kibbutz leaders, usually, the older teenagers.
One of the main things on a kibbutz was to try and keep everyone healthy, and to our camp leaders that meant a daily dose of castor oil to keep us regular. The dose was usually only one teaspoon, but, one day our castor oil dispenser took ill and someone else took over. Instead of the usual teaspoon, she gave us all a dessert spoon. During that day there was a mad rush for the toilets, of which there were few, so many literally headed for the hill behind the kibbutz. I still keep in touch with some of the people from that camp and to this day we have a good laugh about it!
Hilarious Mari..that reminds me of another story, from my long distant past.. which i will keep for another day...It would have been so interesting working on a kibbutz..i met a young couple in Darwin years ago where they were camping on a beach while working to save their fares to Israel to join a kibbutz. Most of these kids were fresh out of uni in Melbourne and Sydney where after leaving Darwin they took what was known then as the hippy trail through India..some of course never got past India while others had amazing experiences.
Talking about hippie groups Peanuts.... one day when a lad was walking along the street minding my own business when out of nowhere came one of those Hare Krishna groups. One of the girls in the group grabbed me and before I knew it I was singing and dancing with them. I was enjoying myself so much, oblivious of the stares from passersby. Later I was invited to join them for a meal, and I did. I don’t think I enjoyed a vegetable curry and roti as much as I did that day made by some lovely Indian ladies. They even showed me how to make lassi. Kept in touch with them for a couple of months, then I left town to go to pursue my studies.
That's a great story Banjo, thanks for putting it up. I don't see the hare khrishna groups anymore in the city, wonder what happened to them?
Peanuts: Looking forward to hearing your story about the hippies on the beach!
Just been rummaging around and found this thread.
Seems to have stopped in mid air which is a shame - I've had such a laugh reading
the comments!!
Great reading. Thank you Reagan.
Our special mate Seth passed away last year, so it was wonderful to see some of his posts which were uplifting. Remember this one SO well lol.
PHYL, it seems like only yesterday that we were having a laugh with SETH, over the G,D, and zapot and the mangos, he is truly missed,
Shaggy Dog
One thing I can remember from my smoking days of long ago is reading the old RIZLA packet when sitting on a thunderbox that was not thoughtful enough to provide any reading material.
Cannot function without a read, the RIZLA packet whilst limited in plot and story structure usually saved me from extended constipation and no the papers therein were confined to rolling a durry.
Take it easy.
SD
seth
31st Jul 2015
3:34pm
SD remember the good old days of 'roll your own' before the spoilt brats of today grew up with 'tailor made' cigarettes, how one particular brand of cig' paper burned black and tasted as bad, up in the islands smoking a bit of bamboo was preferable.
Shaggy Dog
31st Jul 2015
3:45pm
Seth,
I used to know a one handed bloke who was ace at rolling a durry single handed.
I can recall buying cigarettes of dubious quality in some less than salubrious places. First drag and you eyes would bloody near pop out of your head , your sphincter would pucker up and you would be looking for something to hang on to before you fainted.
I used to smoke whilst flying and discovered when your fag was having trouble staying alight it was a good idea to put it out and go looking for the O2 bottle.
It is many a year since I smoked, did not find it hard to give it up. Did it hundreds of times.
Take it easy.
SD
seth
31st Jul 2015
3:59pm
SD I remember back in the thirties when money was short, you could go to your local corner shop and buy two cigs for a penny or the whole pack of 14 for 3d or 6d. no cork tips then, One day I decided to stop, It took a few decisions to stop until my body got the message, Now I just condemn and call smokers weakminded, why can't they be strong minded like us, it is so easy to keep stopping.