Well.. I think it is prize time.. as it’s been a little while.. Here is the question..
You are Ten Years Old.. and you are with your favourite cousin.. and you are playing your own sweet lovely cousiny sort of game during the longest ever Summertime… And you are wishing your cousin was really your sibling.. because your cousin is so nice… Tell your very own story…
Here is my answer/story….
My besty cousin was Natalie.. and she was lovely and much blonder and paler and prettier than I was! We used to put on concerts.. at our shack by the beach overlooking the bay and Bruny Island…. We made all our mums and dads and aunties and uncles and cousins and siblings and grandparents watch our incredible routines.. and they ALWAYS clapped and laughed. We sometimes pretended to be Betty and Veronica.. and I always made her be Betty.. because I wanted to be Veronica… and i even wanted to walk like Veronica did.. which meant walking with strangely pointed outstretched toes.. My relatives did look at me funny.
All contributors will have their names drawn from a hat.. and they will win… a really good prize.. which will be… a bundle of 5 1/2m pieces of gorgeous vintage fabric, 3 vintage Little Golden Books, a Miss Woolly Cross-stitch kit and a Sublime Stitching Embroidery Transfer!
Join in!
Win!
xx mikes
15 Comments
One summer when we were all around 10 years old, my favourite cousins Matt and Luke and I got up really early, left the caravan park where we were camped and caught a bucketful of tommy ruffs off the Coffin Bay jetty. Our parents were impressed but also dismayed at the prospect of scaling, gutting and eating so many little fish.
My besty cousin was a boy nicknamed Dodge. He was only a week older than me. My parents would send my sister and I to our auntie’s place for a week (to take a break from us). We used to tell ghost stories at night in the dark and when we can round up other kids in the neighbourhood, play in a dark room with all the lights out, play “ghosts and ghouls” and really scare ourselves shitless. During the day, we’d just get on the bikes and race….yes, I was a bit of a tomboy. But then I’d always go home to my dolls again. They were great days!
My bestest favourite cousin is Jacqui. She would constantly remind me of the fact that she is 17 days older than me, and it was the reason she was always in charge of what we were going to play (which was perfectly fine with me -I have never been good with important decisions). I was always jealous of the cool things she had including her collection of 5 cabbage patch dolls, a pinball machine in their garage and 2 pet mexican walking fish. We still hang out all the time and she is still in charge of what we are going to play, which is just how I like it.
Megan
Kelly was my favourite cousin (I have 33 to choose from). She was a bit older and a city girl who spent holidays on our farm. She was so sophisticated and clever and had new clothes (not hand -me-downs) and loads of cool stuff. She knew everything and we (3 sisters) hung on her every word.
her explanation of kissing boys was intriguing…. when she started talking about tongues i decided she was a big fat liar – no-one would do that ! How gross !
she taught me heaps
Rose emailed us this one..
We lived that summer in the liquid amber tree in the back yard. We spent our entire days up in the tree, laying along its wide branches, pinching apples from next doors orchard to munch, warm from the sun.
Sometimes mum would bring out home made icy poles, the ones made in the tupperware thingy that made them taste of plastic.
We made plans to travel, at least as far as the hill we could see over the house from the top of the tree. We were convinced that we could travel from farm to farm and sleep in stables and subsist on Allens Strawberries and Cream lollies and stories.
We stockpiled out treasures to sell along the way… plastic sparkly rings from the 20cent machine, a small Japanese bird figurine with a chipped wing, a letter opener for protection.
That was all until a little bird told my aunty what we were planning, and the leaves started to fall.
Thanks Rose!
Well not MY cousin exactly… but my foster sister’s cousin. We spent a very long summer holiday at Apollo Bay caravan park and together the tree of us and some other Apollo Bay grommets would adventure up behind the park and along the river. We found blackberry bushes and came home purple, and small little cliff face in the bush with rock sticking out that we fearlessly used as a rock climbing wall. One day we found a fishing line complete with sinker and hook and all that jazz, so we tied it to a big stick and sat on the pier. A lot of old men laughed at us. We didn’t catch anything.
Cousiny love huh? Well, Ellen and I wished we were brothers! We were obsessed by the Famous Five – but specifically by the character Georgina – aka George. We had our own tomboy club of two. To be a member you had to have read all the Famous Five books (I had the original red hardback bound editions), own our own pocketknife and be prepared to CAMP OUT. In the summer we made our own “wine” from grapes from Ellen’s vine and fought about who would be George and who would be Julian. It was all about imagining we were having long summer campout with the Famous Five – and dreamt about the day we would have our own Timmy the Dog.
Yay for rolled up jeans, pocket knives, bandannas and black tank tops… (www.myspace.com/painter_girl)
My Favourite Cousin is Renae – who become my sister at 10 when her Mum past away and she came to live with us. We have always been close/ We look very similar, We are a month apart in age and we were married within 12 months of each other. What blew everyone away was we announced that we were pregnant with our first borns (both little girls) on the same day! And Amelia and Jaimie have there birthdays four days apart. Although she still lives in our home town and I move around with my loving DH we are still close.
Jas emailed me this story.. aww…
In the summer time we went to our lovely little holiday house on Waiheke Island in NZ. My cousin Paul and I use to spend the days on the beach building castles with beautiful moats. The tide was our friend aswell as it would come in and make the beach fresh for the next day to start all over again.
One very happy summer back in 1986-1987 we were so happy as to find a porcupine walking along in our garden. We named him Fred and he was a happy little chap. We found that he must have lived near us as there were a few spottings in the garden particularly when we left veggies on the lawn near the bush.
Fred, Paul and I had a wonderful summer in 1986-1987, expecially having tea parties with my strawberry shortcake friends!!!
Hope you have a lovely night rugged up!!!
Many Thanks,
Jas
My fun cousin Wendy and I used to imagine that if we had large quantities of strawberry flavoured Hubba Bubba that we could blow the biggest bubble imaginable and fly away!
I still believe this could be done. Has anyone tried it?
I never had any girl cousins my own age, so I was one of the boys on dad’s side of the family – This mainly involved various dares, adventuring, fart jokes, skateboarding and nicking off down to the beach when the grown ups weren’t watching.
Time with mum’s family was different – My cousins Jacqui and Cath are 10 and 8 years older than me. They knew how to rollerskate, knit and they were super-clever. They had those cardboard dolls that you pop the paper clothes on, like models, and we would line then up on the table and admire them before starting all over again. They had lovely old dolls, and a bunny called Biggles, and a duck called Pepper, who I was a bit scared of. Jac and Cath were my idols when I was a little girl – they passed on Little Golden Books and dolls and played games with me endlessly (when I was very young and they were teenagers) without ever complaining. Ah… family.
My favourite cousin summer holiday story was when Natasha and I got our first and only pair of “Redstone roller skates”. It was the year Xanadu was at the movies. My cousins family and my family spent our summers together at Portarlington so we spent all day at the beach and then all evening roller skating singing the songs from the movie and wishing we were Olivia Newton-john.At that stage probably thinking we would have liked Andy Gibb as our boyfriend aswell.
Rachael was my best favourite cousin growing up. We were in the same class at school. She was blonder and more athletic then me. She’d always win and I’d come 2nd in the cross country and athletics carnivals. Id say to her “let me win just once…I want to take the trophy home..you have too many” she never did let me win…and It made me try even harder.
Our summers were spent at our Nan’s where we’d get into her scrap material box. My Nan was a seamstress and had the BEST collection of material. We’d dress up as Princesses or Nurses or Witches and put on shows and there is plenty of pics framed at my nan’s to remind us.
Rachel sent me this via email…
My cousin and I would always play in our imaginary world where the sky was purple and the water tasted of pink lemonade, it was always magic where ever we went, and until this day she is still my most treasured and valued friend.
Thanks Rachel!
Tricia was my favourite cousin growing up. She was two years older than me, had much nicer clothes, lots of great music and new stuff. And she wanted to play with ME! One Christmas holidays I stayed with Tricia and my auntie took us to see ‘Grease’ at the movies. I knew my mum wouldn’t have let me go, so already it was a cool experience. But then my cousin also had the ‘Grease’ soundtrack on tape. We spent the rest of the holidays transcribing the lyrics of every song. Stop, start, stop, start. And there were so many words we didn’t understand too! An education and a great holiday!