Yup that’s me!
Not the hairy one with the beady eyes.
Or the one with the pigtails.
I’m the one pulling a face. I always pulled faces for photos. My inner drama queen shining through I guess. In this photo I think I’m about three and we were in Australia (hence the koala) visiting the grandparents. My family was living in Fiji at the time, and my mum had flown back to her homeland to visit her parents.
Flying in those days required nerves of steel. The rackety old DC8′s would grind through Pacific skies reluctant to allow easy passage. Tropical storms slashed across the aircraft, knife fork (and spoon!) lightning would light up the cabin, cabin crew would lurch from seat to seat and in a nod to the sophisticated drama of it all, the old Air New Zealand inflight meals always featured at least one pimento stuffed olive.
By the time this photo was taken I’d travelled a far bit in my young life. My first flight was as a six week old baby flying back to see the grandparents in Brisbane. With our home in Auckland, living in Vatakoula and grandparents in Brisbane, we got around.
The love of travelling has remained with me throughout my life. Loving home passionately, yet longing to explore.
Yet whenever I travelled with my sister, I never got to hold the koala! My sister Kim, is four and a half years older and we experienced the same sisterly rivalry that Heather in notesfromlapland talks about in her Young At Heart post. Though I’ll bet Heather didn’t bite her sister! Nor did Heather’s father take her aside and tell her she would give her sister rabies if she did it again! (I didn’t do it again. I learnt to keep my mouth shut).
On one trip to Australia we were all playing in Pop’s garden when I see something brown sliding through the grass. Curious I wandered over to investigate. My sister (always the wiser) started screaming.
‘Mum, mum, there’s a SNAKE’ She ran into the house with me in hot pursuit, and tracked our poor mother down in the loo.
Mum started screaming when she heard.
‘What colour is it? Dad! Dad!!! Vix has found a snake.’
My sister barged in on her and there was my Mum resplendent on the throne. To this day I have remained traumatised by that day’s experiences. Whether it was seeing my Mum on the loo, or indeed the snake (which was just lying there poor thing!) I’ll never be quite certain.
My Grandfather dispatched the snake (A brown. Those Down Under will understand what that means!) by cutting through it with the garden spade. I have recovered but remain terrified of anything reptilian.
I was tagged by the lovely Tiara wearing Karin at cafebebe to contribute to the Young at Heart Photo album meme which was started by the meme queen Tara at Sticky Fingers. Here’s my taggee.
This yummy looking poppet is the younger self of one of our newbie bloggers! She’s just dipping her toes into the blogosphere, and she’s already created ripples – in a great way! Can you guess who it is before clicking through to her blog here?
Young at Heart Photo Album
The rules of this meme are simple: Post your photo of yourself as a baby/child/teen (get those scanners working peeps), tell us the story behind it and ask another fellow blogger to do the same. You then post the photo of the blogger you’ve roped in and give a wee hint as to who they are along with a clickthrough link. The next day, that blogger will repeat the process. Make sure you include the name ‘Young at Heart Photo Album’ in your title and post so your entry is easy to find in Google
