Store Your Happy Memories Here:

[Croix]

Dear All~

What this place is for:
This thread is a tool, a resource, and also I guess a dash of entertainment.

I’ve found that when life is grim that sometimes thoughts of past happiness can create a chink of light in the grey overwhelming press of down. They can help occupy the mind with lighter reflections.

With that in view I invite people to set down a brief passage describing some happy event they look back to with fondness and peace.

They - and others too - can then return to it when they feel the need to glean a little warmth.

It is not a place for gloomy or dire tales, those can go elsewhere.

What to do:
Just set out, as simply as you like, your recollection of some past experience that means something good to you, something you enjoyed, something from safe times.

It can be, like my story below, anything – from an account of visiting grandparents to simply cooking and eating a melted-cheese sandwich in a favorite kitchen – you get to choose.

How to do it:
Write. Write enough so someone else can feel the mood, know what happened, find the goodness. (stop at 2,500 characters please!)

Grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation are not compulsory, just write as you can – the only important thing is the content - not literary merit. Short or long - it does not matter.


I hope you enjoy, contribute and find a little distraction here when you need it.

Croix

[Doolhof]

Hi Everyone,

For some reason I have only just stumbled across this thread, thanks to Croix for mentioning it on a thread I was reading.

Happy Memories:

Spending time at the beach with family, friends or by myself.

My childhood cat would walk along the beach with me and then sit on the jetty while I caught tommy roughs. Once the cat had a good feed, he would wander off home.

I met my life long friend on the beach. His family was holidaying in the area. They subsequently visited following summer holidays. I recall days of catching squid and cooking it in the house they were renting, having sand ball fights on the beach, running around laughing and squealing, having an excellent time.

A local man also net fished off the beach (it was legal then) if us local children helped, he let us take a fish or two home for dinner.

I also loved sitting on the rocks during storms watching the power of the ocean.

I still enjoy walking along a beach and when possible sit there and watch the sun set.

This is a lovely thread! Happy Memories everyone!

Cheers form Mrs. D.

[Guest_128]

Bit confused,but here goes!

My happy memory is how wonderful I thought life was going to be.

And now will never be.

Later

[Quercus]

Sitting on a hard wooden pew. Feet swinging. Sunlight streaming through stained glass. Colours of the rainbow. Happy. Place of peace. Tiny plaque under our window. Work and sacrifice. Given to bathe our grandchildren in all the colours and joy of God.

On my left. Small woman with a huge heart. Pearl brooch. Her favourite skirt and jacket. Dark grey wool. Rough on my fingers as I tugged on her jacket. Coolmints in her pocket. Secret stash just for me.

On my right. Tall man. Soul as beautiful as his voice. Always in blue. Telling me the page numbers. Sing with me? Goes to stand with the choir.

Hand in hand. Music swells. Small room filled with song. Hearts soaring. Deep familiar voice from the back. We mouth the words but no sound escapes. Secret smiles. She knows I can't sing. Neither can she. We bathe in light. Colours on skin. Songs in our hearts.

This is happiness.

[Doolhof]

While working on my very unprofessional quilt the other with the stitching just not going right, I had a sense of happiness that I was going to complete this project regardless.

I lay it on the floor to check out how to do the binding. Along came the cat, jumped on top of it and had a wonderful time running all over my quilt leaving me in stitches of laughter. When I use my quilt I will be sharing it with our cat and remembering all of her funny antics.

[Guest_1055]

I enjoyed reading some of your happy memories. Thankyou

And yes...A memory has come to the surface and it is one when I was much older. Yeah!

.....When visiting my sister, I use to drive this dark blue tiny car. A hatchback and it was sort of rounded in parts and quite reflective, a bit like a mirror I guess. When it was time to leave she walked out with me to see my off. Once we were standing on there driveway saying our goodbyes, well we would catch glimpses of ourselves. The glimpses were on the surface of the car. Our whole body shape was distorted. We would have very short legs with an extremely wide middles. We lost it, we giggled and giggled. And if we move backwards whilst still facing the side of the car, we might see a wide head instead. The giggles were the catching kind.....

[Doolhof]

In my early 20's I went on a camping trip with friends. We camped in the bush. I had taken along a 2 man tent, only thing, when I went to set up my tent, I had no tent pegs or poles! I managed to find some excellent sticks for tent poles and stones inside the tent acted as tent pegs.

Does anyone remember cans of baked beans exploding in the fire because you forgot to open the can first?

We would wind pastry around a clean stick toast it over the fire, carefully pull it off the stick and fill it with jam.

Toasting marshmallows is always fun.

One boy always brought along Bush biscuits on school camps.

Another boy came on a school camp with his clothes in a cardboard box. He placed it outside the tent. In the morning part of the box had been eaten by kangaroos. His clothes were still there in a neat pile.

My husband and I camped out one weekend. We didn't expect it to get so cold, so we went to an Uncle's house and asked if we could borrow some blankets.

Anyone else have some happy camping memories?

Cheers all from Mrs. D.

[monkey_magic]

A man I came to know lived on a yaught. Together we sailed for about 12 hrs to paradise. On the way to paradise was the glistening navy blue water and other boats coming past. All were happily waving to us and we waved back.

The fish tracker showed us the sizes of the fish underneath us. The sunrays hitting our skin while we both played captain.

We were surrounded by the big blue sea. I spotted a large sea turtle.

As we slept inside the yaught at night which felt like a soothing waterbed in the sea the billions of stars were surrounding us, it was a warm night.

The next day was spent snorkeling feeling beyond amazed at the colours presented before me, I had discover fish in colours I had never layed eyed on before. It was a pretty world in the sea.

After snorkeling I was presented with a cooked salmon & veg in hollandaise sauce...A completey new feeling swept over me as I was on an island on a yaught, & I had just come back from swimming in the sea staring at an exotic underworld.

The dolphin show that night presented me with even baby dolphins. We watched as each of them came from their day to perform for us on time. They showed off their moves for bucket loads of fish. On very full stomachs they swam back out to sea glistening in the moonlight.

[Doolhof]

Hey Croix,

I have a couple of stories about kangaroos for you. Friends of ours had a pet female kangaroo. When we visited them, we used to play with the female kangaroo and put things in her pouch like on the T.V. show "Skippy".

Visiting a park once as a family, we found the kangaroos were extremely friendly and very used to humans. As we were having afternoon tea, one kangaroo came over, picked up the biscuit tin and handed it around to the other 'roos like a right English Gentleman.

Dad had to go and get our biscuit tin back off the kangaroo butler.

While looking after a child with various health issues on a school trip, he decided to grab a wallaby by the ears. As the wallaby jumped around with the boy hanging onto its ears, it looked like they were dancing. After a good laugh I requested the boy let go of the wallaby which he thankfully did.

A couple of the other children thought the deer lying on the ground were actually kangaroos. Their heads do look a little similar, the rest of the body is a bit of a dead give away though.

Cheers all from Mrs. D.

[Just Sara]

You gave me my first smile of the day Mrs D! Sigh... Thankyou...

* * *

Growing up as the oldest child, gaining attention was a bit of a trial. I probably craved for a long time to be 'seen' by people smiling back.

My sister and I were having an ice-cream soda (creaming soda of course) in the café section of Coles Variety Store one Saturday afternoon. The hoards of people from the morning rush had gone home and the café was empty except for us. I was nine and my sister was seven.

Two little girls in town without our mum; what an exciting adventure! We giggled, enjoying our freedom and youthful banter. Meanwhile, a rock band appeared, set up their gear and begun to play. We watched on squealing, laughing and clumsily dancing in our chairs. My sister commented how sad it was nobody but us were there to listen.

She got up without warning, walked over to where the band were and started to dance. There was a smile on each of the band members faces as she wriggled and swayed awkwardly to their music.

The attention she was getting from on-lookers was more than I could take, so I joined her excitedly shouting a high pitched "Yeah!".

We both laughed and threw our hands and bodies around showing off to the crowd that had gathered. I felt a rush of energy flow through my body; I closed my eyes and pretended I was on stage in front of a thousand screaming teenagers urging me on.

When I opened my eyes, I looked at the singer who returned my gaze with a beautiful big smile as he encouraged me to keep going. I watched my sister happily dancing and singing along, grabbed her hands and swung her around in a frenzy of squeals and laughter.

When the song ended, staff, old ladies, little children and their mums cheered and clapped yelling for us to take a bow. The band members clapped and cheered along with them. We bowed and curtsied a few times, red faced and pumped with little girl joy seemingly floating back to our seats.

What a beautiful and crazy day! Memorable indeed...

[Croix]

Dear All~

This talk of kangaroos remained me of a time years ago when I visited an enclosure containing orphaned wallabies, from small to large.

I sat at the table, it was morning, and enjoyed my then usual breakfast of black coffee and cigarettes. Sitting there I heard a thump. A grown specimen had jumped on the table and pushed its nose into the ashtray, taking a couple of quick licks, then it turned its attention to the dregs in my coffee cup.

Suitably fortified it sprung off and went to boss the littler ones around.

Croix (who later changed his breakfast menu)