Don't Quote Me.......Failing our Children: Doesn't it Enrage You?

I once turned down an invitation to have tea on The Britannia with the Queen and Monty and all;  in order to go on a first date excursion, picnicking up in the mountains.

In to-day’s Britain this factoid would bring down one of two reactions. The first would be hearty claps on the backs and “I should think so too!”. The other is “OMG! Are you insane? What were you thinking?”.

(Mind you, in my current incarnation, the average reaction would be “Havin’ a larf, are we?”

At the time I was 18 and I could legally please myself! As I was only a scant few weeks out of boarding school  this freedom was heady and still rib-ticklingly and foot tinglingly novel.

 I couldn’t be cajoled into compliance, nor ordered to obey.  No-one could ever expel me again. Or forbid certain ways of doing my hair! And no-one would, ever again, make me wear the same clothes, day after day after interminable day.

Nor make me leave a nice warm bed at 4.30 in the morning to stand around for hours in the Catholic Schools’ procession, the Corpus Christy procession, The Bishop’s Bloody Birthday or the thrice-accursed St.Patrick’s Day (a day on which every good Catholic throughout Australia, is expected to prove their undying fealty to the Holy Mother Church by getting eye-wateringly bladdered.) It’s one of the Holy Days of Obligation for every Australian Catholic over the age of 18 – except those incarcerated in convents. And, strictly speaking, those who aren’t actually Catholic, such as I.

However, they were giving me an education, so I was prepared to take one for the team in this instance. I’d gladly go and join every other person my age lolling on the grass and drinking beer in honour of an ancient legend.

 Rather than to be clomping down the main streets of Brisbane in my school shoes and stockings wearing a boater and sweat stains, in the pale blue material chosen for our summer uniforms.

It may have become poignantly obvious that to this day I harbour rancour for those long ago those parades. Which to anyone, anywhere, who has ever been a teen-ager, may give some indication of  how I was feeling at that time. I was going to milk this novelty effervescence of personal freedom for all it was worth.

The other thing which influenced me in my decision was, of course, the bloke. He was Polish  but had been taken to Australia as a baby by his mother – along with all six of his brothers. He was dark and mysterious-looking and had a moustache. He could actually dance – and even liked to do it. He was a grown man and 8 years older than I. And my mother hated him on first sight and recoiled, telling me later he looked like a gigolo.

Finally there was that whole thing of it being taken for granted that one is always going to be in attendance with one’s parents as an only child. Wither they goest so one gets dragged around to formal receptions, to dinner parties, to ‘do’s connected with my father’s work. Because I was always, apparently  “at that certain age”  where no one quite knew what to do with me. Too old for baby-sitters but, where we were all living, too female to be left, at night, in the house alone.

I was only invited to this tea anyway because my parents and godparents were going and, like an unattended parcel, no-one quite knew what to do with me. But now I was an adult.  I didn’t have to dog my parents every step.  I could choose. I was free, by god, and it was wonderful.

Looking back there was nothing more to it. I was 18. I was flexing my muscles.

I said no (Well, wrote it. By hand.) Gave it direct to an equerry, then leapt into my lime green, open topped car and took off with a Hey nonny no,  over the hills and far away.

It’s stood me in good stead that little nugget: in exercises for Drama School; once when I found myself in a rather tense situation with a group of bikies; at a Charity fund-raiser.

But it’s also stood me in good stead looking back on things I’ve done and decisions made; and trying to understand the person I was once.

 And, after time to think about it I can see what part this incident has played out to me ever since: -  it’s proof positive now that Cireena, even at 18, was a complete and utter twonk! What WAS I thinking!