Memories - music and camps and childhood fun....

The parcel arrived at its destination over on the other side of the world yesterday. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago, when I said I had finished the quilt I was making? This is my ta da moment - here it is.....

For Kelli, my sweet blogging friend, who is waiting for a new kidney. Sigh. I am so glad it got there safely.

On Monday, I had to go to be re-assessed for the industrial injury payment I get each month. A pittance, but still it helps. You know, having to talk about pain and the limitations it places on me always knocks me for six, and I hate, hate, hate it. I want to focus on what I CAN do , not what I cannot. And now I wait to see if it will carry on or expire. So yesterday, I could hardly move. No sleep either. Dire. Just dire.

But today is another day.

I could talk about what has happened in the past 5 years, but to be frank, you can go back and read the blog and see it all there. Those years are indelible memories too. And they, more than anything, have shaped my "today", haven't they.

So today,. we will talk about things I did when I was at school. I taught myself to play the guitar, using a little book called "Guitar" by Dan Morgan. Good grief. I remember his name too. The very first song I learned to play was Swanee River, and it drove my parents crackers. Long pauses while I managed to find the next chord, but I learned anyway. And I loved playing. I last played a few years ago, when I was a part of the church band. I loved that.

My parents had a swimming pool built, so every weekend, the pool was full of our friends. My Mum got an extra fridge which was full of cool drinks and fruit salad and cold meat, and we could eat anything from that one, but had to leave the other one alone. Great thinking, Mum! Dad used to do BBQs for the Scripture Union events, which were usually at our place. Some of my church friends also played musical instruments, and so we used to meet at our home and practice together. I remember once having about 12 people plus guitars in a bathroom, singing away, because the acoustics were so good! We did love the echo.

Music - so much a part of my life. I went to piano lessons with Miss Maritz down the road. She tried hard, but I loved playing by ear, and improvising, and reading music was boring, so I used to watch her playing at the top of the keyboard out of the corner of my eye and copy her. To this day, I can read the right hand perfectly, but the left hand....Hmmm. I have to work it out. When I sing now, at least I can read what I am supposed to be singing, but forget finding a note and just belting it out.


So much of our out of school social life was bound up in the church we went to - badminton on Saturdays, youth club on Fridays, movie nights, fetes. And there was a great deal of singing and playing there too. We went away on camps. Once we went to Namaqualand to help build a school. That was really good, but I remember it being very cold too. In high school, I went to a series of S&V camps. Scripture Union based "Schools and Varsity". Going away on a big train with sleeper carriages was such an adventure. When I got a little older, I went to kiddies ones, as a leader, and that was wonderful. And at school, we also had camps we went to down at Froggy Pond, down the coast. Not far from home but that did not matter at all. Such beauty - the coast around the Cape peninsula is spectacular.

Froggy Pond - photo courtesy of Google Images

Froggy Pond - photo courtesy of Google images

This is also the beach where my older son, aged 11, went on a school camp and learned to dive. The entire year was taught diving by the navy people, and then they took to the water, complete with real diving knives strapped to their ankles. They knew how to use them too. This trip involved a second mortgage. Not really, but it was close. Each child needed full wetsuit, cap, goggles, knife, straps, gloves, boots, underwater watch, weight bands. I am sure there was more. He did look stunning in his kit, I remember. And he had a total ball. I went down to help one of the days he was there.

I could go on and on, you know, The mind skips and dances through the decades. More tomorrow......