(03:41:00) [mish] : My Jo has a 6 year old daughter.. who was playing down on the beach when my Jo yelled for her to come up it was time to leave..

(03:42:09) [mish] : in the end.. Boo (daughters name) comes huffing and puffing up the sand bank, what took you so long down there Boo? asked Jo.

(03:42:39) [mish] : Boo is all excited.. mum, I found a coke bottle.. it was so cool!

(03:43:35) [mish] : Jo said, that's nice dear but thought, a coke bottle? why is she so excited about a coke bottle on the beach, they're like everywhere hardly exciting.. and Boo carried on... yeh.. this coke bottle was so cool.. it had tenticles and i poked it with a stick

(03:44:18) [mish] : in New Zealand we have small jelly fish that wash up on the beaches all the time.. they're called Blue Bottles.

Our first airline trip. My brother, offered coffee or tea by the Hostess... coffee... he replies... black or white she inquires... he looks at her with a perplexed look... erm.. brown please.

My sister is a surfing chick. She is short.. and her arms don't reach all the way over the board when she carries it.. and she can't surf.. but she is a surfie chick none the less. Once she actually managed to get into the water.. paddle out to a wave.. crawl on the board on all fours.. and hey she was surfing...right up until the fin of the board hit the sandbar she was doing great.

My sister on all fours still moving forward.. the board stopping suddenly.. her knees scraping over the sand skinning her knees then falling forward into an inch or so of surf.

So gone are the days of getting wet as a surfer..now she drags her board along the beach.. slaps suntan lotion on... lies back with her board in the sand and attracts surferdudes. *g* my sister is a surfie chick.

Beautiful sunny day. Feeling happy with a spring in my step. Soft breeze in my hair. Walking down the Main Street, confident, smiling. Didn't even mind, actually quite liked, when the guys hanging off the Farmer's Building scaffolding started whistling and yelling at me. Soft breeze on my legs. Reaching down to move the fabric of my wrap around skirt back over my legs thinking it hadd blown open again. Looking down to see.. no skirt.. just legs. Turning to realise my skirt was lying on the ground ten feet back and I was standing in the Main Street in my small white top and panties.

I don't know if that was bad enough .. or having to go back and pick up my skirt and reattach it

My mother had a Health Food Shop. That in itself is hilarious if you ever meet my mother you will understand. People came in all the time with questions looking for alternative answers. One day.. a woman, married to a man i know well, came into the shop. My sister and my Aunt and myself were minding the shop while mum was out.. watching soap operas or whatever she did between 1pm and 2pm...

woman: "hello... i am wondering about a way to treat a yeast infection."
aunt: "oh yes.. now acidophilus yogurt is extremely effective in treating yeast infections."
woman: "really? just eat it and that will work?"
aunt: "no.. dip a tampon in the yogurt and insert the tampon... that's how it works."
woman: "oh... well... its for my husband... he has a yeast infection of the nose."

okay.. so now.. at this point.. the magizine which mysister is reading is suddenly up covering her face and shaking violently as is her body.. trying desperately to stifle giggles.. my aunt's face has taken on a strained..'i will not laugh' look.. and I promptly fall to my knees, which suddenly give way beneath me in fits of hysterics behind the bulk bin stand.

needless to say.. everytime I see John or his name is mentioned.. i have this image of yogurt dripping white strings hanging out his nostrils.

Because of the Health Food Shop.. or maybe she always was deep down.. my mum has been on a search for something.. god only knows what but she's been looking everywhere. Latent Hippy Syndrome. She has been on, and read about, every diet ever written in the last 30 years.. some more than once.. but my favourite diet fad of hers was the Transcendent Meditation Diet... i like that one best cos you got to eat dessert first. So she rocks up to her first Transcendental Meditation night.. wearing all white, as she was told to do, taking a white handkerchief and all her hopes in one basket. She comes home and is all peaceful and happy and full of the ways of Meditation. Fine, good, she's in a good mood for a couple of days.

A couple of weeks later, I phone her and ask how's the diet going and is she finding the Meditation works... well, er, she says, I haven't been back actually. OH, why not? i ask .. well, she said, I forgot my mantra... and I don't know whether mine was a special one or one he just gives everybody and I am too embarrassed to ask. Didn't you write it down mum? well no.. i had a white hanky but no pen.

How clean should one's chakhras be anyway?

I lived across the road from a golf course in my late teens, and at the time was running every morning... my mum decided to try exercise as a weightloss technique (perish the thought - what a novel idea) and started running in the morning around the golf course. I watched her one day.. coming across the green misty course.. about to take the gentle bend to cross the little bridge over the creek on her last few metres before home. I swear.. she actually got the speed wobbles and drifted sideways... sideways.. til plop... she fell into the knee deep water of the creek beside the little bridge.. on all fours huffing and puffing in the water. Of course.. being the sensitive, sweet daughter that I am.. I burst out laughing.. screaming with laughter looking through the window at my poor bedraggled mum. She gave up running shortly after that and tried the Bread Diet yet again.

They feed Hippos loaves of bread at the zoo.. have you seen how big hippos are? I don't think the Bread Diet is a good choice.

My first school dance. Fourth Form at an all girls school. Once a week, for six weeks, we would take a bus to St Joseph's Hall in town and have dancing lessons with Francis Douglas Boys College.. or FungDung as we called it. We would foxtrot and waltz and gay gordens for two hours and then take the bus back to boarding school. Of course the nuns wanted us to learn to dance.. but we just wanted to meet guys and get a date for the upcoming dance. Finally, on the last night, I was asked..yipee. Cute little red headed boy, Terry, and I was on my way to my first date. Cool Bananas.

Now, somewhere along the lines of communication, I got lost.. with help from my directionless mother. Of course, I had NO idea what to wear to such a function, and being from a family with little or no means, I was having a difficult time, as the date drew closer, thinking what I would wear. Seeing my distress, Mum decided to take me shopping and buy me something NEW. wow. excellent. but heres where the wires got crossed. She bought me something she would wear.. and for some unknown reason, to this day, I don't know why I let her. Close your eyes and imagine this. Long, white, polyester Aline dress, patterned v-like stripes down the front in orange and brown and yellow, little silver purse with a silver chain, and a girdle.. yes.. she bought me a girdle.. tho i didnt need one myself, she did, it didnt seem to matter. This is me going to my dance. Needless to say, everyone else there wore jeans. Of course they did. I looked like a total drongo. But hey, I come from a family where this feeling was instilled at an early age so I coped.

Terry thought I looked lovely. *chuckles* well, he said it bless him.

He sat me down at a table.. I was sitting there all by myself waiting for him to bring drinks back... I picked the toothpick from my rolled up luncheon sausage on my plate of nibbles... and the entire table collapsed sending thunderous echoes reverberating around the hall. So all those who had not yet noticed me in all my finery, now couldn't miss me thanks to the fabulous sound effects. The night was still young and I just managed to avoid any further embarrassing situations. We had a good time and danced and laughed and then it was over and time to leave and time for.. the goodnight kiss. Nervous? hell yes. This wasn't my first kiss, I had been snogging boys since i was about four years old.. but this was my first date and I had dive bombing butterflies in my stomach. We were all standing in the foyer, seemed as if everyone was kissing except Terry and me. He had to make the first move, cos I'm a girl *g* right? so we are looking around, watching all my friends pashing up left right and centre.. and he leans forward to kiss me... okay... here we go... but just then, Diane Ford stops snogging and said something like, "go for it Midge" and I turned my face to tell her to shut up.. and Terry's kiss got me on the ear. The noise was a strange sort of noise, kinda amplified by the shape of my ear I suppose.. Diane laughed.. so did others who heard it.. Terry and I blushed and fumbled.

The perfect end to a perfect night.

He wrote to me for a couple of years after that.. and the other dances weren't as traumatic as that first one. Trouble is, because I liked him and he me, his sister used to lock me in the broom closet all the time for having such poor taste in boys.

Joanne, my sister, after seeing the Man in the Iron Mask : "so sad... so very sad.. so very sad that people are allowed to make movies like that."

After my father died, we went to live on 25 acres of land in Taranaki. So I grew my early teenage self living in a house with Grandad, Nana, two Aunts, two Uncles, 6 cousins and two siblings. Did we have fun? well yes we did.. squashed (two of us were sent to boarding school) but great.

About halfway down the property was a stable.. then a little valley. At the bottom of the valley was an electric fence which kept the horses in. My Uncle was working near the stable one day when he spied my brother approaching the electric fence. It had been raining and the ground was wet and suddenly, my brother lost his footing and fell.. he looked as if he was almost going to miss the wire, but as he stumbled, his nose caught it and he got shocked through his nose. My Uncle just about died laughing. He whooped and yelled and told everyone when he got back to the house.

My brother didn't see the funny side at all.

The next day.. my Uncle needed to be down in the little valley and had to cross over to the horses paddock. He remembered the day before, and decided he wasn't wanting to get anywhere near the wire. He had a long metal spike with him, so in typical Uncle fashion.. decided the best way to get over the wire was to pole vault *rolls my eyes*.

A little run up and he was away.. planting the spike in front of the wire and about to leap over. The ground was soft from the rain the day before. The spike sunk. My Uncle fell. The wire right between his legs. He lept straight back up in the air again. Zapped. My brother was the one, this time, able to laugh and point and retell the tale.