Day 20: What do you collect? March Blog Challenge

Memories and dust.

Doesn’t that sound like the start to a poem? (Googled it now, and discovered it’s the name of a song by
Josh Pyke). I love keeping little items that have sentimental value. Concert tickets or a popped
champagne cork from a special event. I also haven’t been able to throw away any of the pictures that my
eldest made at school. I’ve given some away to family members, but have stacks left.

Dust because I loathe cleaning. I think there are ten thousand better things to do than cleaning.

As a kid I used to collect many things. I once told my Dad I want to be a collector of collections. I had flags from holiday destinations, stickers, special edition Coke cans, stamps, rocks and I’m sure there were more. Most of those are packed away in boxes somewhere.

Day 4: Best childhood memory – 31 Day March Blog Challenge

I had a very happy childhood so it’s difficult to choose a specific memory. The time before I went to school (I never went to pre-school/crèche) we stayed with my Grandmother in Benoni, South Africa. That was also next door to 3 of my cousins. So it was me and my brother (the older siblings were out of the house and in the army respectively), and then 3 cousins constantly playing as soon as they got out of school. I used to wait for them to come home from school, and then we’d play until it was time to go to bed. I’m not sure how happy they were with a much younger kid hanging out with them, but I loved it. I can remember there was a gate between the houses, but we never used it, we always used a ladder to climb over the wall.

That was also the first time (and last time) I saw proper snow. That was in 1981 when I was 4 years old. I can remember building a snow man, and we build small houses. Then we had a snowball fight, and one of the cousins threw snow down the back of my shirt, which meant I was wet in the snow. My Mom then took me inside and wrapped me all warm and gave me soup to warm me up. Last year (2012) it snowed again, but where I stayed you could see the snow on your clothes, and there was a bit of snow on the grass, but not enough to cover it.

In that same time period I can also remember driving with my parents to go and look at the Christmas lights, and going to the circus. Oh, and I almost forgot, I also drove my brothers Mini in the yard. I can’t imagine letting my 4 year old drive a car.