Find a Man we would shout and laugh like drains!

I can’t decide whether this shot is utilitarian or beautiful.  I love the lines of colour as the corn comes out. 

When we were kids we had a babysitter. Her name was Pat.  And she was perfect. She was a 60’s girl.  Once my parents had gone out and before bedtime, she would take my sisters and I and probably my brothers for all I knew, one by one, set us on the stool in middle of  the old kitchen,  with its floor of blue and green lino and make up our faces. We were very little. Perfect canvasses for her to experiment on.

For us girls (there were three of us) it was the opportinuty to gaze close up into the most stunningly decorated eyes circled in the longest false eye lashes in the western world. Three shades of smudged blue from her eyelashes to her perfectly pencilled eyebrows, black eyeliner that swooped like a dark gull under her eyes and flicked up perfectly at the edge of her bright green eyes with such casual perfection.  The boots, the short skirt and the tight little cardigan. Oh and that lipstick. Piles of hair. She was beautiful. Beeootiful.

Much later when I was a young teenager she came back from her travels overseas. She had travelled the world with her boots and her short skirt,her long long jacket and a friend.

She showed us goggle eyed girls pictures of her travels. The slide show was in vogue then so we would crowd into her parents lounge with the curtains closed, Dad would set up the projector, and she would click us through her travels and talk about what she saw.

The best story was that she and her friend liked to have photos taken of themselves in front of interesting sites, so they would scout about for a man to take a photo of them with their camera. Find a Man they would giggle. Girls! One of them would find a man, give him the camera and mime for him to take a shot of them together. I am quite sure no man would say no thank you to these two gorgeous Kiwi girls.  One man, who was terribly handsome she said,  nodded and took the camera in it’s protective leather cover as the girls positioned themselves in front of the monument, and prepared to smile. The man said walk back a bit, back further, looking at them through the view finder, to the right, to the left, using hand signals to help with the lack of English, then when they were just right he turned and ran away with their camera.   Just ran away, she said. At this point in the story us girls gasped, quite shocked. Our Dad was a photographer. To steal a camera was like stealing a horse.

But our beautiful babysitter would laugh.  Because it goes without saying that this pair of stunning, tall, leggy NZ girls shouted, grabbed their bags and chased him down,  long hair and eyelashes flying out behind them, right down the road and tackled him, (we are a rugby country after all), one of them sat on him and smacked him on the shoulders with her handbag and the other ripped the camera out of his crestfallen hands, told him to promise  Never to be Bad Again (an admonishment that is easily understood in any language),  and sent him on his way.

After Pat told us this story it became our family joke,  every time we needed  to borrow someone’s hand, we would call Find a Man! Followed, naturally, by gales of laughter. 

Yesterday I found a man. A very clever handsome man whose mother is Italian from Sicily and used to win prizes for her tomato sauce. (Yes, he is going to send me the recipe.) There are rumours of a cheesecake too. Anyway he fixes computers, bless him. The post mistress gave me his number. So I called him over. He carefully navigated about my machine for a while, grimaced slightly, then took it away! Just popped my computer under his arm and took it home. 

So this will explain my unannounced absence yesterday.  I got a lot of baking done in the absence of Computer.

It came back yesterday evening and was returned amidst stern warnings to keep up to date with my housekeeping, defrag every month, and here are the short cuts, don’t go wandering about in this bit and you know that new facebook chatline you downloaded, I took it off as it is still being trialed and lets bugs in.   Just use the regular one.  He eradicated all the bugs and so now I will be good.

Just wonderful. I am going to keep him, I said to John.  The vet came yesterday to take some blood from Daisy and we will know whether she is pregnant or not within the week.  I do hope she is.

You all have a lovely day. Eldest Son is coming tonight!

celi

What I was doing on this day a year ago.  Butternut and Chickpea Curry.