Old people say the darndest things
August 8, 2009 at 3:29 am | In Dialogue, Homecoming | Leave a CommentTags: Dialogue, Public Transport, Senior Citizens, Snowboard
Snowboards, in a bag with wheels or not, are not made for public transport.
As I struggled to roll the ridiculously long, awkward black beast towards the bus I noticed the gaping gorge up to the step of the bus. I heaved the bag to stand up next to me and grabbed the handle in readiness to lift it onto the bus.
Once on I leant my friend, taller than me, on the baggage area, me standing tall adjacent to ensure the wheels didn’t propel it across the aisle, and fumbled in my pocket for the travelpass, people squeezing themselves past down into the seats.
Travelpass in, green machine digestive noise, Travelpass out.
Still keeping the bag tall I walked it into a wheelchair space, thankfully senior citizens had avoided me and kept this space for special needs travelers free.
Finally in a somewhat stable position, holding the bag hostage against the window, with an arm around it to hold onto the pole tightly, I hear a senior male voice.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes,” I answer, expecting to be berated for taking up the spot usually reserved for he and his bingo mates.
“It’s lucky you don’t play the piano.”
Sometimes when I’m writing
July 29, 2009 at 1:44 am | In Self-Expression | Leave a CommentTags: Writing
Sometimes when I’m writing, all I can feel is this overwhelming sense of dread. The feeling is not even confined to when I can’t think of a word or phrase or introduction. There are times when I am tapping away at the keyboard, with this inescapable feeling of hopelessness hugging my every circumference.
The words are going down onto the screen, but my inner conscience is already writing them off as shit. Rubbish. Garbage. Organic waste fit for compost.
It makes keeping on any sort of flow quite difficult. Your fingers are moving, creating prose, but what you really want them to do is come to your face, make a pocket with your eyelids and then slowly draw them down your face and strain your neck to the sky in this totally visceral, physical movement designed to escape the feeling. Like a seal coming out into the air, away from the cold water, that although it lives in and requires for survival, can often feel like this suppressive, dark freeze.
A letter to Tony Burke MP
July 28, 2009 at 1:34 am | In Dialogue | Leave a CommentTags: activism, letters, politics
Dear Mr Tony Burke MP,
As a young, aspiring journalist I take pride in the fact that I can and do write and speak from a neutral, unbiased perspective. I prefer to take the statements of others with a grain of salt, instead thoroughly researching issues myself, to ensure what I’m putting on the public record is indeed, substantiated fact.
I believe you have failed to do this recently. Instead of doing your own research, you have in fact used old and since discredited material from Gunns’ PR machine.
I refer specifically to your claim which you made on the 24th of June 2009 in your statement: “Preparing our forest industries for the future,” that construction of the Gunns Pulp Mill would create 8,000 direct and indirect jobs and a further 1,500 jobs during its operation. This claim appears to be a carbon copy of a Gunns’ PR statement made in September 2008.
Please set the record straight for the Australian public and potential financial investors, with regards to any creation of jobs and perceived economic benefits that may come with the creation of the Gunns Pulp Mill in Tasmania. Please do your own research. Please speak on behalf of the Australian public. Not Gunns.
Yours Sincerely
Jessica Gardner
28th July 2009
Conversation Training
July 23, 2009 at 3:35 am | In Dialogue, Homecoming, Self-Expression | Leave a CommentTags: Communication, Conversation, Public Transport
This actually happened.
“Excuse me?”
I turned to the young woman sitting next to me. She was seated next to the window, on our shared seat, on the Eastern Suburbs line train. We were sitting at Edgecliff station, hesitating, the driver waiting that extra moment for somebody to scramble down the escalators and leap into the carriage. As I removed my earphones, I put on my approachable face and replied “yes?” ready to impart information about the next stop, how to get to Bondi Beach or where did I buy this cute top I was wearing.
“What kind of foods are high in fibre?”
Okay… Not what I was expecting. As I did a quick scan through the knowledge aisle marked nutrition, my brain struggled with the surprising question and offered up not answers, but some irrational motives behind it.
“Umm, well.”
The young woman was like a mystery shopper for the Nutrition Society of Australia, pouncing on unaware public transport citizens for the Australian Attitudes and Understanding of the Importance of Fibre in Everyday Diets report.
“Umm. I think fruit and vegetables are pretty high in fibre.”
She was a PhD student analysing spontaneous communication between strangers. I was a lab rat in her study entitled Quality of Information Gained from Unsuspecting Strangers. Her hypothesis was that the more surprising the question, the lesser the quality of the answer. I’d show her.
“Oh, and also breads and cereals. Yeah, grainy cereals. Especially, rough cereals. You know, the boring ones, like All Bran.”
Whilst sitting next to me since Central, she’d scanned my biometric data, found out I’d done a Bachelor of Science majoring in Anatomy and Physiology and wanted to test my memory of gastric physiology (Thursday 8am lecture, PHSI 2002, August 2002: Amylase, an enzyme found in saliva, breaks starch down to maltose in the mouth. The stomach secretes mucus to protect its epithelial walls from being digested by its own acids and enzymes. Pepsin, the digestive protease, formed by the autocatalytic cleaving of the amino acid chain pepsinogen, breaks down protein in the gut. Damn. Nothing about fibre.).
“Why?” I enquired, sure I was on the money with one of my predictions.
“Oh my doctor said I needed to have more fibre in my diet. It’s really important you know. I saw a thing about it on A Current Affair. You know, you have to start taking your health seriously when you get older. I’m twenty-one now. When I was younger I could eat anything I wanted. But I just can’t do it anymore. When I was younger my Mum used to buy those 3 large pizzas, a garlic bread and a Pepsi and we would eat it, there’s three of us, you know, siblings and I could probably eat a whole pizza to myself and then start on the next one and I would just be starving. But it’s different now. But thanks for telling me that. I was too embarrassed to ask the doctor. He would think ‘don’t you know?’ And I couldn’t ask my family, they would say ‘didn’t you go to school?’ or something like that. But so now I’ll have to have more fruit and vegies and breads and cereals. It’s important. You can’t just always eat McDonalds, but I have to say I’m thinking of having some now. A friend said the other day she was thinking of having McDonalds for breakfast and I said ‘gross’ but now I’m thinking of having some. You don’t know what’s in them though. There was another thing on A Current Affair did you see it?”
“Umm. No.” (I couldn’t bring myself to say that I wouldn’t watch that sensationalist, formulaic crap presented by that holier than thou Grimshaw princess if you paid me, but that’s another blog entry.)
“Well it was saying that lots of food don’ t have the right ingredients on the label and people don’t really know what they’re eating and it’s a big thing, you know. You could be eating anything and it’s so important. But people just don’t know. There’s all sorts of chemicals and stuff. And did you hear what happened at Bankstown station?”
“Umm. No. Today?”
“No. a couple of weeks ago. Suicide apparently. I’ve been trying to find out about it. You know, I watched World News on Foxtel but nothing came up about it. I watched you know that day and the next day but nothing. I really want to know what happened. I think it was a girl… … … …”
Etc Etc Etc Etc.
Finally we pulled into Bondi Junction and it was clear to me, she wasn’t a nutrition mystery shopper, linguistics studier, biometric data and mind-reader. She just wanted to talk.
And though it may be nice to end this with some comment on the fractured nature of modern society where a simple question of food leads to my questioning of her motives I prefer to say that it was bizarre.
Yet quite refreshing.
Travel 20
July 6, 2009 at 1:08 am | In Nostalgia, South America Trip, UK/Europe | Leave a CommentTags: Europe, South America, Top Ten, Travel
TravelTwenty. It’s like a TravelTen. Only more entertaining, but less practical.
Two and a half years is a long time to be away. It’s kind of too long to say anything coherent when somebody asks “What have you been up to?”
Rather than rattle off a shopping list of countries visited or blah blah blah about the vibrancy of the culture in Europe or mourn for another day trekking in South America, I’ve tried to come up with my top 20 of things during the period. Things you might not have known or guessed. Things that were out of the ordinary. Things that were a bit spesh. They’re not really in order of importance.
- We worked on an organic farm for two weeks as WWOOF volunteers in Argentina. Huerta de Vida had no running water or electricity, but we are now well versed in transplanting tomatoes, digging irrigation ditches and building a natural construction house. I still have an irrational fear of chickens.
- I fainted for the first time in my life in Berlin, Christmas 2007. After a sauna, where, instead of relaxing I spent my time lying on the warm wood fuelling an internal conflict. You know the ones: “what am I doing with my life. I don’t know what I want to do. Have I made the right decisions. Yada yada yada.” I finished my sauna, walked upstairs and folded into a mess on the bathroom floor. After picking myself up with only my ego bruised, I had a shower and promptly burst into tears.
- We went to Paris for a one night only culture binge. We arrived off the Eurostar, around 4pm in the afternoon for Nuit Blanche, an annual evening of Parisienne brilliance, where museums, galleries and other spaces are open all night. Basically the entire city turns into a psuedo art installation. Highlight of the evening was sitting on the marble floor of an enormous cathedral gazing up at a black and white short film, documenting a group of blind people touching an elephant. Quite breathtaking. Hearing a chamber choir in Notre Dame was pretty spectacular too. We stumbled back to Gare du Nord station at 8am for our return train to London.
- I did a two week internship at a BBC science magazine in Bristol. And wrote things like this.
- I woke up in the dark FOUR times to climb steep things. 1) Final day of the W trek, Patagonia, Chile, to see sunrise onto “los torres”. Okay this was quite amazing, helped by the fact that we took our sleeping bags up there. It was ‘effing cold. 2) To climb up a volcano in the Reservo Eduardo Avaroa, Bolivia. This sucked. I made life hell for everyone else and our guide thought I had altitude sickness because I kept stopping to harrumph and complain. 3) To get out of the Colca Canyon, Peru. Mike walked ahead so I considered breaking up with him. 4) Final approach to Machu Picchu, Peru. This was fine but I grumbled anyway.
- On a work jolly in London, I was at a fab restaurant and Sienna Miller was sitting at the table next to us. For all you trashy mag readers out there.
- For my birthday in 2008, Mike organised a surprise trip to Barcelona for a long weekend. We got all Gaudi inspired, ate tapas, drank red wine and very nearly missed our plane home.
- For Mike’s birthday in 2008, I booked us in for a dinner at Dans le Noir. This restaurant is completely pitch black, your waiters are blind (sans guide dogs), your food is a total surprise and you eat fine French cuisine with your hands. What a trip.
- We studied Spanish in Buenos Aires. For three weeks, we were back to school. For the record, I scored higher in the test.
- We went to an ATP music festival in the UK at a family holiday park. Not as weird as it sounds. Being able to play ten-pin bowling, mini-golf or those carnie basketball games when there are no bands is rad. Also, your own cabin at a festival… fricken cool.
- Mike broke his nose by accidently punching himself in the face. Sorry babe.
- We stayed on Sipan, a Croatian island that has a population of 600. In the granny flat of an older couple who spoke no english, instead communicating with us with “da’s” and pointing.
- I became buddies with Jake White, coach of the Springboks, while I was following his team around Marseille, reporting on the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup 2007 (writing things like this). Okay well maybe not buddies, but he said G’day at the pub one day and also waved while I was at the beach with Jez. Buddies enough!
- We played ping pong in a club in Berlin. As you walk in the door, you swap your ID for a bat. Entertainment sorted for the entire evening.
- We took hallucinogenic vine during a Shaman ceremony, in Cusco. No hallucinations but at least the cleansing effect took place. I spewed like a waterfall.
- I got the: boys have a penis, girls have a vagina talk from a three year old Bolivian boy whilst volunteering with Proyecto Horizonte. It’s even cuter in Spanish.
- I stayed overnight in an internet cafe (Manga Kissa) in Japan. Twice. Once in Osaka. The second time in Tokyo so I could be at the Tsukiji fish market super early. This was such a chaotic yet strangely functional, fascinating place. I had uber-fresh tuna sashimi for brekky. Yum!
- We crashed our hire car in New Zealand. When I say we, it was Mike. Nobody was hurt, but it was a wee bit scary.
- We had a very East London evening. A house-party in Hackney, followed by some bar-hopping and topped off with an underground carpark rave in Shoreditch. Boy did we think we were cool.
- We fit 8 people (plus the driver) in a taxi. A slightly crazy evening with some other backpackers in Bogota, Colombia.
- We came home. At the moment, this is feeling just as massive as the previous twenty.
Shit at Admin
June 29, 2009 at 12:49 am | In Childhood, Nostalgia | Leave a CommentTags: Admin, Penpals
For somebody who portrays herself as relatively on top of things, it may surprise you to find that I am rubbish at admin. I leave bills until they’re due tomorrow, or more often than not, have an extra late payment fee added to them. I left for South America, having not confirmed the PIN number on my new credit card, (despite having 3 months from when it was sent to me). I never claimed on my travel insurance after losing my camera in Japan, despite spending a good hour in a Sapporo police station using mime and facial expressions to get a police report.
But I suppose the clincher is that I’m completely hopeless at replying to emails immediately. I prefer to read them, think about them, walk away from the computer for a while, maybe get a drink and then swiftly erase them from my short-term memory. Only for an image of them to flash across my brain 5 minutes before knock off time or an hour before a deadline approaches. Ditto Facebook correspondence, Twitter @’s, even text messages! I just can’t bring myself to respond straight off the mark.
And it’s always been the case. And now for the historical evidence.
When I was 9 years old, my preferred monthly reading material was TV Hits. I’d probably only just decided that Smash Hits wasn’t competing… not enough stickers, no song lyrics cards and nowhere near as glossy.
My wall was adorned with TV Hits shiny posters, as were my schoolbooks, lunchbox and bedroom door. Oh, how I loved that magazine. I pored over every word, gazed at every picture and had grand intentions of entering the competitions every month (although never did). Now, God knows how I organised an envelope, postage stamp and coordinating the act of getting it all into a post box, but I actually sent in an ad to the Penpal section. It appeared in the July 1992 issue and the rest they say, is history.
I wish I could remember my ad, it was probably something like “90210 is rad but Saved by the Bell is radder. My favourite book series is Friends 4 Ever and I think Madonna is cool. Write to me dudes and dudettes.”
I’d almost forgotten about my ad until one fine Moruya morning a big brown envelope with my name on it arrived at the front door. Inside were two hand-written letters. One from a girl named Sam who had big, round, colourful handwriting and decorated the corners of her paper with flowers. I can’t remember the name of the other pal, their handwriting from a bland grey HB, but I decided it was my responsibility write to both of them. They’d made the effort and I was so buzzed to get something in the mail.
About a week passed, I hadn’t gotten anything down, but boy did I have some ideas up in that brain of mine. Suddenly, a fat-to-bursting A4 brown envelope arrived on the doorstep with a thump. Fifty-two, count them, further replies to my Penpal ad. I was stoked. I organised them into piles of definitely, maybe, no way. One of them included lollies, he was definitely a definitely. I felt a weird sense of betrayal to my first two pals, despite having never written to them, so I put them into my definitely pile as well. One letter was from a four year old, how pathetic, straight to the no way pile.
I spent a whole day reading them, organising them, prioritising them, then I walked away from the computer piles, got a drink… yep, I NEVER wrote back to any of them. My best intentions never touched a pen to paper and 54 TV Hits readers were left wondering if they were too needy, not cool enough, if Australia post had dropped their letter down the back of the shelf and they had missed their chance at becoming friends with a Saved the Bell fan. All because I’m shit at admin. Always have been.
A visit to Bath Spa
June 26, 2009 at 3:11 am | In UK/Europe | Leave a CommentTags: Bath, communal bathing, Travel, UK
I found this recently re-organising computer files (not as therapeutic as I had hoped). An unfinished travel review… aren’t they all.
I had hoped for a day of calmness, relaxation and maybe some quiet. Instead I was smacked in the face with just how serious the international obesity epidemic is.
A visit to Britain’s only thermal pools in Bath couldn’t have been less Zen. I must admit, my experience (my now longed for experience) of thermal pools is Japan, where still and quiet are not just prerequisites for the culture, but rules of law in the confines of a communal pool. The British, I am coming to realise more and more each day, are not fussed by matters such as these. They just don’t get the ideals of the communal bathing experience.
My fellow bathers were predominantly old ladies, fat ladies or fat, old ladies. This would have been fine had they been lovely fat old ladies… but they weren’t! They were nattering, whiny, heavy breathing fat old ladies. And to make matters worse, if they weren’t ladies of this ilk, they were groups of shrieking, hysterical hens parties. Worse in my opinion. The only males around were obviously uncomfortable around so many ‘powerful’ (and by powerful I mean could squash you in one sitting) women and inwardly bemoaning their newly wed (let’s say 1-2 years tops) wives… although at the same time tallying up the brownie points this was earning them – at least a football trip with the boys… strippers included.
Friends Direct
June 23, 2009 at 11:50 pm | In Dialogue, Homecoming, Self-Expression | Leave a CommentTags: Friends, Sales
I know I’ve been away for two and a half years, but can we still be friends?
“Hi. I’m from Friends Direct, we’ve been reuniting friends for decades and I have a great opportunity for your client.”
“I’m offering the highest quality exposure for your client, in the company of other trusted brands.”
“You are guaranteed to increase your friend count by one immediately, with the possibility for future gains within our excellent network.”
“Let me tell you a little bit about the company I’m representing today. Jess Gardner Inc is a young company, with a global perspective. The company has recently returned to their home market to experiment with newfound international techniques.”
“Oh you have worked with them before? How was your experience with Jess Gardner Inc?”
“Great, great. I’m glad you enjoyed your previous experience with Jess Gardner Inc. Do you mind my asking why you didn’t renew your contract?”
“I’m sure that wasn’t the case. They have a proven track record of excellent client communications.”
“Two and half years you haven’t heard from them you say? Goodness. Let me look at your account. Ah yes. It does seem that there were some problems with the ability for face-to-faces within that period.”
“No phone or email contact either? Oh well goodness. Look I can only apologise for the omission. Rest assured any renewal of a contract now will come with a guarantee that this oversight will be rectified. The company is committing itself to stability, growth and yoga three times a week, all in the Sydney market.”
“I can’t convince you?”
“Look how about this special offer. If you buy now you can take advantage of an extra friend for a minimal cost with our Newly Returned Couple Special. So that is two friends for an unbelievably low cost with unlimited possible future gains.”
“How about if we include a payment plan? You are only committing on a week to week basis with the ability to cancel your contract at any time if you are unhappy with the service.”
“You will. Excellent choice. Yes, the Newly Returned Couple Special does represent good value doesn’t it? Wonderful, your contract will be in the mail.”
“Thanks for doing business with Friends Direct. Reuniting friends for decades.”
Three folders
June 16, 2009 at 12:57 am | In Homecoming, Nostalgia, Self-Expression | Leave a CommentTags: Anatomy, Physiology, University
I’m at my parents. Cleaning out the shed. Sorting out all of the worldly possessions that I’d left behind. Here’s something I found:
Three folders of handwritten notes. Complete with deliberately drawn pencil diagrams of your insides. Not sparing colour. Arrows pointing to osteoblasts, local differences in vertebrae, epithelium, cAMP, troponin, myelin. Evolution from ape to Australopithecus to modern homosapien. Flows representing intracellular signaling pathways, enzyme reactions in the gut, stages of development. A guide to cutting open a body, more or less. Assignments with cover-sheets. Most of them were a couple of days late. “Please adhere to guidelines on spacing.” “A good finish to a poor start.” “A very well written piece with excellent research. Well done.”
Three folders of handwritten notes. I can’t bear to throw them out. The complete course of Microbiology and Genetics, the majority of which I copied from Katie. The report completed with Scott after two weeks of feeling our way blind around the Children’s Medical Research Institute at Westmead. Not just knowing the names of the bones, but every tubercle, spine, groove or process. An entire STUVAC re-writing second-year physiology notes on fluoro yellow paper. The haematocrit. Obesity as cause or correlation with NIDDM. Electrophysiology of the nerve. Discussions on vitamin D resistant rickets, covered in notes for the GAMSAT exam that I was more worried about.
Three folders of handwritten notes. That doesn’t even include a thesis. But represents three and a half years of knowledge accrued. Not on a weekly basis, more often in a concentrated month block before exams. But not disliked. Actually enjoyed. Found interest in. But decided not to pursue. And will forever wonder if that was the right decision. I was happy to spout sentences I’d heard elsewhere. “Your undergrad is for learning to learn.” “Science communication is a niche market in demand.” “I might go back to it one day in the future.” I might, but it’s feeling less likely. It felt like the right desicion at the time. And really it probably still does now. Despite the three folders of handwritten notes.
Jessi Gardner ha ha ha
February 28, 2009 at 5:57 pm | In Childhood, Self-Expression | Leave a CommentTags: Booker Prize, Childhood, Fiction, Roddy Doyle, Writing
We’re recovering in Chiloe at the moment. An archipelago off the coast of Chilé. The past three days have shon glorious sunshine as we wander the little fishing village of Castro (20,000 people – it calls itself a city… it is the capital after all). Sometimes it’s okay to do “not much really” while you’re traveling. It has taken me a really long time to accept this.
Today it is pouring with rain and we’ve done not much really. Although I just finished reading ‘Paddy Clarke ha ha ha‘ by Irish author Roddy Doyle. It’s a rolling narrative perfectly poised from the perspective of a young boy. It won the Booker Prize in 2003. Mike got a bit inspired after finishing the book and now today I think I have too. It must be the rain. It has a nostalgic feel to it.
Jessi Gardner ha ha ha
Sometimes it’s really annoying when it rains. It means that sport gets called off and the steps to the classroom get slippery. The area where all the bags sit gets wet and your shoes make squeaking noises on it and it looks real muddy. You have to eat your lunch in the classroom and sometimes if your teacher doesn’t want to get wet walking to the staffroom you could probably stay in the classroom all lunchtime as well. That’s okay I suppose.
But other days it’s nice for it to rain. Especially on Sundays it feels right for it to rain. Especially in winter. You can sit in front of the heater with warm trackies and a jumper until your back gets too hot. Then you have to turn around, but your face gets hotter quicker. Or then you have to move away from the heater if Paul tells you to stop hogging the heater.
One time it rained so much in Moruya that there was a flood. We didn’t have to go to school for two days. I remember being able to watch videos next to the heater all day. Paul still had to go to work.
The other kids said the river was all the way up to the big rock in the park and you couldn’t cross the bridge because it was flooded as well. I didn’t see it, but it must have been really flooded because our bridge is high. There is a sign that says “Jumping from the bridge is Prohibited”. One day I read it out loud for the first time when we were driving in the car.
- That sign says Jumping from the bridge is Prohibited.
- Good girl, said my Dad.
I’d waited until I’d known for sure how to say prohibited, before I said the sign out loud. Way back in Kindergarten Mrs F made us come up to her desk one at a time and count for as much as we could to her. I stopped at forty-nine because I didn’t want to get fifty wrong. I thought I might’ve confused it with thirty and it was better to stop than to get it wrong.
- Is that all Jess?
-Yes, I lied.
Anyway, that was ages ago. I knew loads more now. I knew about rain. It was made of vapour in the clouds and when there was too much the clouds dropped the rain. If there was acid in the air then you had acid rain and that was bad and it was made from bad factories. We learnt that at Earthkeepers.
Mr L tried to get us really excited about saying that he was going to make it rain inside the classroom. I knew that it wouldn’t really be able to rain inside the classroom, so it was going to be a trick, but other kids got interested. That’s what teachers needed to do though. Make tricks so kids would be interested. I liked school though. But it wasn’t very hard. Most of the stuff we learned I kind of knew anyway somehow. Most things I understood.
Mr L boiled the jug and held a baking tray over the jug. One like Mum used to make roasts. Little bits of condensation came out of the tray. I’d seen it before anyway on our cupboards above the jug at home when I was making cups of coffee. Mum showed me the best way to make coffee. You had to put the milk in with the coffee and sugar before the water. And you needed to stir it a lot until it was a bit bubbly. Then add the water. It made it more like one from a cafe then. I didn’t drink coffee. Only adults did.
I was the oldest and all of the other kids were small so sometimes it was okay for me to sit with the adults. One day I was sitting with the Mums on the front verandah. They were having coffees but I didn’t have anything. They were talking about other ladies from the town.
- I don’t know what her problem is
- Aah, she’s just a bitch, said my Mum
One of the other Mums looked over to me and to my Mum and raised her eyebrows which meant she was saying to my Mum ‘can you say that in front of Jess’.
- Oh it’s fine, said my Mum. She’s heard worse than that. She understands.
I smiled. That made me feel good. I could understand lots of adult things anyway. Like my parents smoked joints and it was fine even though it was against the law. And I couldn’t do every sport I wanted because it cost too much money. And to fill Josie’s baby bath you needed three milk bottles of hot water and two milk bottles of cold and that made it just right. And if you were cooking mashed potatoes and steamed vegies you should put the potatoes on for half an hour and start the vegies when there was fifteen minutes to go.
Somethings I didn’t understand. Sometimes there were other people at my Dad’s house when I went to stay for the weekend. And every time I came back home I had to tell Paul who else was there. I didn’t like telling Paul because it made me feel like I was telling on my Dad even though I didn’t know if he’d done something wrong or not.
But most things I understood.
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