Put on your dancing shoes, I'm reminiscing
They did not serve drinks at the bank in Launceston from where I got my first home loan. I only mention this because I was home on holidays in Launceston in Tasmania the other week and walked past the building that used to house that bank – and realised it had turned into a nightclub. Hmm, maybe someone had a premonition when they put bars on the tellers’ windows? Only then you never, ever got a drink when you gave them money. MORE ...
Tim Tams and Tic Tocs
I remember exactly where I was when I was given my first yummy chocolate Tim Tam biscuit.
It was one of those pivotal moments in life.
Some people can remember exactly where they were when JFK was assassinated or Prince Charles married Lady Diana.
Not me though. The only thing I remember that is really, really, really important is eating my first Tim Tam. MORE ...
Milk teeth and milk chocolates
I was born in the Queen Victoria maternity hospital in Launceston at 8am on October 6, 1958.
I should have been born on October 5, but the obstetrician had something much more important than me to attend to and gave my mum something to stop the contractions. MORE ...
Learning to say 'truck'
My parents gave me a set of army vehicles and a sanitation truck for my second birthday, according to my dutifully-kept baby book.
It does not say why.
My guess is that mum and dad were hedging their bets. MORE ...
All alone in my world
I still remember the absolute despair I felt when my family went on an outing and forgot to take me.
It was the early 1960s and I think I was four.
I was playing in a vacant allotment next to our rented house in Canning Street, Launceston, when my father John, mother Grace and sisters Therese, Kate and Sally squeezed into the family's grey Austin Healey and set off to visit Auntie Joy and Uncle Acky in Exeter 14 miles away. MORE ...
Message from an angel
One of the first hints that I was never going to be a high-achiever came when I was 3 1/2 and stuffed a bead up my nose.
Oh, I could pretend it was actually my first scientific experiment - trying to measure the velocity of a bead under its own momentum in the alien environment of a nasal passage - but I do not think people would buy it. Especially those people who have studied the habits of high effective people. As far as I know, neither Galileo, Einstein or Shakespeare ever stuck beads up their noses. MORE ...
Cowboys, friends and plovers
There were no American Indians in the vicinity of our new house in Newnham when I was six in 1964.
I know this because I had a large Indian identification wall-chart hanging in my new bedroom.
It had pictures of all kinds of Indians - including Sioux, Apache, Cherokee and Cheyenne - which came in very handy for a five-year-old with keen eyesight and a fertile imagination. MORE ...
Sister Bernadette, the high-flying nun
One of the first things my parents did when we moved to Newnham was place me in a new school.
Thus, I started at a Catholic school, Our Lady Help of Christians, in November 1964, near the end of grade one.
The name of the school did not worry me. I was six and assumed that anyone who was not a Catholic probably did not believe in God. The word 'Christian' seemed to me to be synonymous with the word 'Catholic', and I cannot remember being told anything different. Not that I asked. I rarely asked questions. I just looked and listened and tried to work things out. MORE ...
Getting the finger from Santa Claus
Every Christmas when I was a child in Launceston, a giant model of Santa Claus used to be put up on the outside wall of Cox Brothers store on the corner of Brisbane and St John streets.
He had a mechanically moving finger.
When I was five or six, I was pretty sure this was meant to be a beckoning finger. "Come inside, boys and girls, and see what interesting things there are here for your parents to buy you."
Now I am older, I have to accept the possibility that he was actually being rude and anti-social. MORE ...
Why I handed in my woggle
When Lord Baden-Powell founded the boy scout movement early last century, I am not sure he had boys like me in mind.
I was cub for some years but never graduated to the ranks of scouts.
This must have been a great relief to the boy scout hierarchy. I never received anything official, but I have a sneaking suspicion they were not too unhappy to see me hand in my woggle. MORE ...
Where's there's a wheel, there's a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
I learnt to ride a bicycle when I was six. No, perhaps I was seven.
Apparently you never forget how to ride a bike, but recalling the exact date you learnt to ride it in the first place is entirely another matter.
I ought to have carved the date into the base of a pine tree near to where my historic first ride came to an end. Something along the lines of "John Martin learnt to ride a bike on this date. Unfortunately, he did not know yet how to put on the brakes and landed in the blackberry bushes to the right." MORE ...
The day I had an asthma attack and solemnly swore
Much is made of the Hippocratic oath, inspired by the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, who was born on the Greek island of Kos in 460BC.
Hippocrates inspired me, too, on a trip to the island in 1980.
I recall quite clearly that I uttered an oath of my own - "%$%^%^ &#$@$"- as a burly nurse jabbed a needle into my backside at the local hospital where I had sought help with a sudden bout of asthma. MORE ...
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