When I were a lad, me and me mates would go to the footy every weekend. No matter which ground we were at, sooner or later the peanut man would show up. He sold unshelled nuts in plastic bags for 2 shillings.

His trademark was his call, in an Italian accent, "Vair-ry Nice! Vair-ry Fresh"; the middle dipthong sometimes stretching for some seconds and audible all round the ground.

Two bob pieces would whistle through the air - often covering 50 metres or more - and if they came within catching reach, he never dropped one. A hand would go up somewhere in the crowd and he'd hurl a bag of nuts straight into its palm. The man had a genius for throwing and catching.

I remember one day on the Hill at the SCG - the old, thronging, dusty hill, not that modern monstrosity with seats - we were wondering why he hadn't yet arrived when suddenly his cry went up, "Vair-ry Nice!" The whole Hill erupted in unison with, "Vair-ry Fresh!" The day was complete.

He'd be dead now, that old Italian man. I imagine when St. Peter saw him approaching he put down his ledger and simply called out, "Vair-ry Nice!"

<smile> Thanks Sir robert - a lovely story.

I wish I could post a piece of nostalgia from my life, but I fear I am too young and have a much too good forgetory to have any stories to share.

Nostalgia. It's a funny word, isn't it. I wonder what sort of different meanings we could devise for it. I reckon it sounds like a tiny aquatic plant that grows up your nose.

---

'Who looks after the animals?'

Good story Robert! Here's mine...

Recently at my sister's wedding, she and some cousins were trying to remember the origin of a seemingly silly childhood game. When we were growing up, the cousins lived on the next street to the north. The lawn of the corner house was a great sweeping arc that followed the sidewalk. Any time any of the girls walked around that corner, the proper procedure was to jump and fall as artistically as possible onto said lawn.

None of them could remember how or why this game began, but they figured it was just something they had invented and then (as 6-10 yr old girls will do) elevated to high art.

Nope. I was able to enlighten them. As the oldest, I spent a heck of a lot of time escorting children back and forth until they were old enough to go by themselves. Unfortunately, the (nasty!) boys who lived then in the corner house also spent a lot of time whizzing around it on skateboards, injuring small pedestrians.

So for their own safety, I took that group of girls and trained them up into a little lawn jumping platoon. If I said "jump!" the last one onto that grass was a rotten egg! As time passed, the survival aspect was forgotten, and what was left is now forever known as "The Falling Game."

Done some thinking on this one and growing up where I did with my family and the other animals, looking back with rose tinted glasses isn't a good idea.

Being sat outside the Red Lion pub, near Christies in Manchester watching the old men play bowls, sucking my pop through a straw and eating a bag of crisps, waiting for Grandad Walter and Grandma Margaret to have their drinks before going back to Willow Way in Didsbury for sunday lunch.

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Blood! Death! War! Rumpy pumpy! Triumph!

My childhood was spent a scant few hundred yards from Battersea Park and the Ffestival gardens, Sarf Larndon. Those were the days when there were remnants of the Festival of Britain in residence - the Guinness clock (wonder what happened to that?) the wonderful fairy grotto (with an incredibly realistic - to a 6 year old - 'lava pool'. Very Ffairyland!) An outdoor theatre showing kids productions like 'Toad of Toad Hall' and 'Tales of Beatrix Potter'. Then there were the adrenaline junkie attractions - the deadly dangerous Tree Walk with its scary giant garden gnomes, and the delights of the all-year-round Battersea ffunffair (sorry, couldn't resist that one) It was all so innocent, and colourful. Things you could really stash away in your memory, rather than the eagerly forgotten, and seemingly endless, groups of heavily sweating professionals with their personal trainers, taking up every spare corner of the park with their physical jerks and boring the pants off people like me. What's wrong with a good walk I ask myself? Anyhow, one of the things the park had in the sixties was a little train that ran on tiny tracks, joining up various equally miniscule 'stations'. It was a lovely ride through woodland gardens, and it even had bridges, a railway crossing, terminus buildings and a tunnel! It cost just a few bob for the full route, and became a standard way of parting with my pocket money - that, and a ride on the water slide in the fair (too much of a coward to go on the Big Dipper!)

I left the area in the seventies, and was glad to. Battersea was being 'tarted up' for the Chelsea crowd, and it was becoming depressing. By this time the fair had dropped one too many teenage girls from considerable heights (see 'Big Dipper', above) and was no more. Ditto the Tree Walk, Guinness Clock (the first to go) and various other childhood attractions. It was only recently I returned, and it was even more depressing - apart from the numerous Physical Jerks with their £75 ph PT's, the grotto had been reduced to a few lumps of rock in the ground, the fountains are now a swimming lido (the only thing that looks like it might actually be fun) and - worst of all - the little train, its tracks and all the buildings had been ripped up and long since disposed of.

I spent a winsome hour walking the walk, talking the talk by making sad little 'choo choo' noises, and trying to ignore my three kids tapping numbers into their mobiles for the nearest men with white suits.

Jump forward a further two months, and I decided to celebrate the end of my marriage with a camping trip to Eastbourne, in Sussex, with the kids. There's a nice park there, called Hotton or something, that in some ways is eerily similar to Battersea in its heyday. Right down to a board advertising 'Miniature train Rides.' I finally found the 'terminus', a strangely familiar little station set along equally familiar tracks and woodland. With a strange feeling of deja vu, I waited with my young uns, clutching my ticket in my hot little hand, until ...

Yep, there she came! 'My' train, fully restored and in all her familiar glory, chuff chuffing up the track! I had a very happy half hour, revisiting old 'haunts' and realising the 'steam train' was actually a diesel truck in disguise. The driver couldn't tell me where the train had come from, only that it had been there for 'some years' - as had he - and was a very successful source of revenue for himself and the park. I am convinced this is none other than the original Battersea Park railway; transported, hook line and sinker, to the seaside environs where such innocent pleasures are still welcomed.

It is now my life's work to discover the whereabouts of the Tree Walk, the Big Dipper, and the mortal remains of those three teenage girls ... (the bottom of the Water Slide pool would seem to be a safe bet)

Sorry for this prolonged preamble. It's just that, at my age, it's only stuff old enough to count as history, that I can remember.

N'other good story!

Not a wonderful story, but shameless wallowing in nostalgia;

Late at night, in the tiny house in the bush, where there are no neighbours to complain about the noise, Pink Ffloyd on so loudly that the speakers are shaking, and all the grownups are drunk and dancing in the kitchen. And everyone in the crowded little house stops to sing the chorus "Shine on you crazy diamond..."
And my brother and I sitting in the corner, next to the fire, just watching.

Good times.

Feeding Uncle Ian's 'chooks'. 1 litre tub of ice cream now filled with kitchen scraps, a walk across the road to Petone foreshore, clamber up onto the wall, about 2 foot high I think, hold out tub of scraps at at arms lenght and shoulder high and get mobed by 'chooks'. For 'chooks' read seagulls and i was never once bitten or shat on. It's why I love seagulls, you really can hand feed them although I recommend big bits.

Just been reading Jasper's blog page, where he enthuses about Whitby. Another one of my old haunts, for many childhood years!!! It's where Dracula landed, apparently. Also once the centre for British whaling - there's an arch made from a pair of whelsh jawbones that I and my brother used to run through. And as for FFortunes kippers - yum yum!

Wait a minute--Jasper's got a blog page?

I'm sure I could come up with a nostalgiac story, but it's going to take me a bit.

Sitting in a tiny caravan in Clacton, with a "Games compendium" (anyone remember those) and my entire family forced to play with me because it was raining.

Pitter patter on the metal roof, endless cups of tea and then fish and chips out of the paper in the evening :)

Is it just me, or is nostalgia not what it used to be?

Bonzai Kitten,

I have one of those sorts of nostalgic memories.

Kingaroy, mid 1950's Christmas time. Inch ants walking across the floor, snakes eating the chooks, and parents preparing some part of a movable feast which traversed the Kingaroy valley with entrees, breakfast and early drinks at some place in the slopes of the south of the town and wending its inebriated happy way across the town to end up at our place on the slopes to the north west of town for supper and last drinks after sunset. Last drinks meant that it was all gone. afdter sunset usually meant some time the next day. (It must be remembered that most of the men, and many of the women, had war sevice in WW2 or Korea, or both, so, in the absence of post-combat debriefing and counselling as is available today, alcohol was the prime method of maintaining sanity.)

I was told later that the reasons it ended up at our house were (1) plenty of space to let sleeping chiuldren lie, of if not lie, then fight without disturbing the adults), and (2) that should anything seriously not fatally damaging occur the Vet surgery of dad's could treat anything that arose. The fact that two of the three doctors, and most of the nurses, in town were among the crowd meant that more help was available there than at the hospital, and also more importantly, we lived on a dead end road and the neighbours had a timber haulage business so all the cars could be parked there. It also meant that 'home' for nearly everbody 'was down the hill and good luck'.

I was too young to know in those days, but like most country towns in those days, it was 'pants down, skirts up, and away we go.' I am told this is common in nearly every country on earth, so its not particularly Australian.



Nostalgia: like neuralgia, but brought on by memory.

Quite similar, except with the possibility of medical attention, lol.

Apparently I used to sit under the Christams table with my younger cousin Daniel and drain the dregs of my Uncles beer cans. Aussie enough!?

I also used to hide the eggs that our chooks laid when it was my brother's turn to collect them- I always loved collecting the eggs as a little girl and my bro didn't really get excited about collecting eggs- I'd just collect them the next day when it was my turn...

I'm still like this you know! Except for sitting in the chook house on the perch with the birds bit. ^_^

It's all about the birds!

Warnie says the same thing.

I remember back when BibwitHart told us about hiding eggs. Those were the days.

'Vair-ry fresh!'

xmorpheus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sitting in a tiny caravan in Clacton, with a
> "Games compendium" (anyone remember those) and my
> entire family forced to play with me because it
> was raining.
>
> Pitter patter on the metal roof, endless cups of
> tea and then fish and chips out of the paper in
> the evening :)


**Shudder**

I do remember, even after all the therapy, caravaning holidays when I wer' bt knee 'igh t'grass 'opper.

We had a big hard back book with lots of games that got taken with us in the caravan.