Feline fear

Naturally I used to sleep over at Cilla and Cinny very often, but they never slept at me. Ma declared it a nuisance. We used to have 'midnight feasts' and chatter late into the nights.They had a menagerie of animals, cats, dogs, chickens, hamster, birds, and a rabbit. I was never fond of cats, just didn't trust them. I used to share a bed with one of my friends, sleeping head to feet, and one night their favourite cat came into the room and plonked herself at the end of our bed, staring at me in the dark. I started feeling quite anxious, and tried to turn over to avoid her luminescent green eyes. Just then she shrieked and dug her sharp claws into me. The worst part about the whole episode is that the girls just carried on sleeping, oblivious to my mounting terror. I spent the rest of the night watching her, curled up on the end of the bed, sleeping peacefully of course. Since that night, I am terrified of cats, and find them spiteful, malevolent and nasty. A bit like some women I know!

Sunny side up

Priscilla and Cynthia (Cilla and Cinny to me) lived round the corner from us and we were always at each other's houses, or walking each other home, and then walking the other one home again, till Ma eventually yelled at me to come indoors. It was the early sixties and life in a small 'dorp' (town) was very free and easy, no problems for kids to be out in the neighbourhood, no faces of missing children on the sides of milk cartons. When we baked together, they used to fetch me (of course) and we would take all my ingredients round to their place, as they had a bigger kitchen. One day, in mid -Summer, we were going back as usual carrying our stuff, when an egg fell out of my hands, and landed on the sandy path, where it immediately started sizzling in the extreme heat. Two local boys arrived on the scene and asked us what we were doing. I immediately replied 'frying eggs, what does it look like?'. They scuttled off shaking their heads in mixed awe and disbelief. We walked on, leaving the egg where it was (almost cooked by then) giggling all the way. No wonder the cake didn't come out properly, it was missing an egg. It still tasted yummy.

Elvis Presley

When we reached our teens, my best friend, Priscilla, was absolutely nuts about Elvis. She got a monthly subscription to a movie magazine which came all the way from America ( we had no TV in those days). We used to read it over and over and again and again till the next one arrived. When she found out that Elvis was going to the Army, she cried a lot. But when we first saw him in his sexy uniform, she cheered up considerably. But when the news came that he had met Priscilla, she was inconsolable. Fair, enough, he had chosen well, another Priscilla, but she was gorgeous, cute, young and over there!!! When they married I thought she was going to die. She mourned for weeks and that's all she talked about ad nauseum. I of course was just as much a fan of Elvis,I had to be to remain her friend, but secretly I preferred Pat Boone!!

Meet the neighbours

When I was about 5, we moved to a bigger house, not much better, but bigger. It had a huge yard (one couldn't call it a garden, as it was just an overgrown entanglement of weeds and wild flowers). The first day Ian and I went off to explore the terrain, and at the furthest reaches behind the house, we saw a scrappy fence and heard giggling. There, peering at us were two little girls with what looked like dozens of dogs, cats and chickens weaving between their legs, all scrabbling in the dirt it seemed ( the animals not the kids).
As children do, we made friends immediately and discovered that they were almost exactly the same ages as us andeven, as luck would have it, went to the same school. Wow, our first real friends. Priscilla and I have remained friends ever since that day(55 years).
I'm not sure what fascinated us more,these two girls and their wondrous back yard with bird aviaries, animl kennels and huge fruit trees dripping with produce, or the animals, They had everything that would make any child envious. About 4 dogs, at least the same amount of cats, loads of hens and chicks, a rabbit in a hutch, a hamster, and birds in and out of cages. It was a veritable zoo, and we loved it.
What wonderful days and years were to follow, times I often think of and grin with pleasure.