Our Wedding Day - Part 1

Our wedding ceremony was scheduled for 6pm so we had the whole day to get ready.

First thing in the morning Vati and I went down to the laundry to check out the piglet. It was still in it's crate and when we turned up it grunted up at us happily. It was even happier when we brought it a bottle of milk and a bowl of semolina porridge. Vati and I decided it was cruel to keep it in the crate so we thought of other options. Finally we decided that we would tie it by the hind leg to the Hill's Hoist clothes line with a long piece of rope. It squealed loudly when I lifted it out of the crate but then settled down with the rope around it's leg and started to explore the backyard as far as the rope would allow.

Members of the bridal party were getting ready at their own homes and arriving at my and T's place in time for photos later in the afternoon. Mutti and I set off to 'Raymond's' to have our hair done while Vati was going to read the Saturday papers and have another cup of tea. Everything was going along nice and calmly.

Thanks to my practice sessions, my hairstyle looked fine and Mutti, who had her hair done every week, looked lovely as usual. We went home only to discover my father sitting slumped in the family room pale and dripping with sweat. We were shocked and asked what was wrong.

He had been drinking his tea and reading the paper when he heard the neighbour call out to her husband, "Arthur, there's a pig looking at me through the fence!" his reply, "don't be stupid Gwen. Where would a pig come from?". Gwen insisted that there WAS a pig looking at her when Vati realised that the pig shouldn't be able to be looking through the fence from where it had been tethered.

He went out and saw the rope with no pig attached. He then raced around the yard trying to rugby tackle an extremely fast squealing piglet. Finally he caught it, put it back in the crate and built a sturdy enclosure.

At this stage T was not one of his favourite people.

The afternoon progressed. Two German ladies who were friends but who hadn't been invited to the wedding came to our place to housesit. There had been a spate of robberies where wedding presents had been stolen while the family was at the wedding. Mutti had prepared platters of smoked salmon open sandwiches and cakes for them as well as a bottle of nicely chilled champagne. They fluttered around getting in the way and having a good time admiring all the proceedings.

The bridesmaids and flower girl, already in their finery, arrived just as the wedding bouquets, buttonholes and Mutti's corsage turned up. We oohed and aahed - they were lovely.

I suddenly thought I'd better get ready and put on a bit of makeup, my nice new undies and stockings and Mutti zipped me up in my wedding gown and helped put on my headdress. She threw on her outfit and Vati dressed in his hired dinner suit. We all thought we looked pretty good. The photographer turned up and snapped a few pictures.

The flower girl was peering out of the window excitedly waiting for the wedding cars to arrive. Three maroon Mercedes Benz cars turned up and the wedding party swept down to the cars. I was surprised at the crowd that had gathered to see us off. Getting into a car, in a long gown with a train and a long veil is not an easy thing. Luckily the chauffeur was adept and managed to seat me so that there would be minimal crushing of the outfit. People always like looking at brides so I had a wonderful time waving (like the queen) as we drove across the harbour bridge on the way to the church.

Mrs Mikalauskas had done her best to clean the church. She had thought 8 pews each side of the church would be enough. Everyone was able to be seated but it was a mighty squash. The floor was still crunchy with dirt and bits of plaster but the pews were polished to within an inch of their life and the carpet down the aisle was vacuumed clean. It gave our guests something to talk about while they waited for the ceremony to begin.

The Day Before The Wedding

What a day! Forty years later I'm still astonished that I survived without having a nervous breakdown.

My parents and I were up bright and early on the day before the wedding. Mutti and I drove to the markets and bought armfuls of flowers which we were taking to the church. We had organised to meet Frau Mikalauskas who cleaned the church and did the flower arrangements there. The door was open and in we went only to be completely horrified. Nobody had told us that the church was being renovated.

All the pews were on one big pile covered with drop cloths. There was scaffolding all around the walls where plasterers and painters were working. Everything was covered with dust and chunks of plaster. Frau Mikalauskas met us with a smile and assured us that the place would be clean and that enough pews would be set out for our guests. She warned us however that the church would still be unfinished.


Mutti and I left The Goulburn St premises quite distressed. Next we headed up to the reception venue where we were delivering the wedding cake, place cards, the seating plan and the vast number of boxes of beverages. Before unloading the bounty we popped in to check on the room and to borrow a trolley to make our task easier. Horror of horrors! The wallpaper was hanging off the walls in strips and the carpet was being pulled up. The place was crawling with workmen. We just about collapsed when we saw the disaster. The functions manager assured us that everything would be perfect 'on the day'.

Mutti and I came home distressed and absolutely exhausted. We had lunch and a bit of a rest before T rang, said he had arrived from Canberra, had something to show me at his house and could he pick me up.

Nick, T's best friend, was sitting on the gutter behind his combi van outside T's house. He was wearing ancient shorts with the fly buttons missing, no undies and his goolies hanging out. At the time he had long hair way past his shoulders. This apparition was going to be our best man the following day!

T's surprise came next. He took me around to the backyard where his sister was feeding a bottle of milk to a piglet!!! I freaked and was pretty sure my parents would too. The piglet was really cute though.

T had turned up at the piggery on his way from Canberra to Sydney and the farmer had forgotten all about keeping a piglet for him. All he had were breeding piglets which were much more expensive. T said that after giving it to my parents as a joke we would take it to a butcher and then eat it. The farmer agreed the original price as long as there was not going to be any breeding, put the squealing piglet in a sack which then got dumped in the car. Luckily it stayed quiet except for once when T took a corner sharply and the sack slid to the other side of the car.

We couldn't keep the pig in the sack, that's where Nick came in. T got a big wooden crate which had been his dog's kennel, put it on its side and put the pig in. The two boys loaded the crate into Nick's combi van and drove over to my parents' house, deposited the box at the foot of the stairs and rang the doorbell.

"Here is the deposit on the bride price," T announced when my parents turned up. My mother started a sort of hysterical giggle but my father had obviously forgotten what he said at our engagement a year earlier and looked confused. What do you do with a pig in the suburbs of Sydney? We decided to put the crate in the laundry, which was in a separate building from the house, feed the pig and decide what to do later.

Nick, in his ancient shorts, and T were invited to stay for dinner. We had finished the meal and had gone into the lounge room when we heard an almighty smashing noise. We rushed back to the kitchen to see what had happened to be greeted by some laughing family friends who had sneaked down the side of the house and were smashing crockery in the German tradition of 'Polterabend'. This is a tradition where crockery is smashed for good luck and the couple about to be wed sweeps the shards up together.

What sounded like yet another disaster wasn't. We all had a jolly evening filled with much laughter. Finally everyone went home and I went to bed excited that by this time the next day I would be married.

Getting serious - Part 1

We really had to start thinking about the wedding after we were engaged. We decided that 1st September 1973 was a good date as it came right in the middle is the school holidays and I would be teaching by then.

September seemed a long time away. I had Uni exams, T had changed jobs and was still studying at night. I had my teaching and cleaning jobs and we were busy as bees.

T had applied for a couple of jobs including with the Commonwealth. In those days the public service was very forward thinking and was introducing computers to all government departments. They were seeking the best in the new field of computing and were even importing staff from various European countries. T had however not heard anything about his public service application so accepted a position with the 'Association of Employers of Waterside Labour' (AEWL).

T's new job kept him busy with lots of overtime but also with a very generous pay packet. He was enjoying his new work place and was surprised to receive a call, after we had been away for one of our little breaks, from Customs and Excise in Canberra asking where he was. He had been expected to be working in Canberra but hadn't even been informed that he had the job!

A period of soul searching followed and Canberra won out. With regret T had to inform his new workplace who were really sorry to lose him but were also amazingly supportive. It was all a big rush. T had to move to Canberra almost immediately and I was devastated.

One fateful Sunday in early February 1973 my parents drove me over to T's house and we had afternoon tea with T and his family. He then got into his beige Hillman Hunter station wagon, backed down the driveway and headed off to Canberra. I stood in the driveway and sobbed my heart out. I thought he would find someone he liked much more than me and that I wouldn't see him again. My parents took me home but I couldn't be consoled. T rang when he arrived safely but that didn't make much of a difference.

I mooched about at home and was generally so morose that my parents bought a TV so that I could at least be slightly distracted during the week. I guess it did help a bit, particularly when the bold new show 'Number 96' was on.

I shouldn't have worried. T drove the mainly one-lane-each-way Hume 'Highway' to Sydney EVERY weekend apart from the two weekends I went to Canberra.

Courting continued

I turned 20 in December 1970. We had been going out for about 7 months. T gave me a bottle of 'Le Dix' perfume by Balenciaga (I still have the lid of the bottle in my undies drawer) and a gold Oreton coin purse which I use in evening bags when we go out.

T had Christmas at my place on 24th December and I spent the day with his family on 25th. I wore my dirndl (national costume) which impressed his parents. Both families had lavish meals and we enjoyed ourselves.

I had just finished my 2nd year at Uni and had another 2 years to go. We didn't even consider living together because it just wasn't the done thing but we did start talking about getting married once I had finished Uni and was working.

T's mother went to Austria to work. Life became easier because my parents had accepted T. Fred started coming to our place regularly. He and my parents started going to concerts together. I had Uni and my jobs and T had work and study at night so we were busy but were still able to spend plenty of time together. We used to drive our families crazy because if we weren't together we would be on the phone - no mobiles in those days, just one phone per household set in a public area in the house.

T had started bringing me flowers every week - huge luscious red carnations with white stripes, or white with red stripes.

In 1971 I turned 21 and T gave me a beautiful teardrop shaped amethyst pendant which I still love. His parents gave me a leather covered jewellery box and my parents threw me a party which was catered.

That year Fred was invited to my parents' house for Christmas Eve. We followed our usual traditions where the lounge room was off limits until after dinner. Vati went into the lounge room and lit the candles on the Christmas tree and on all the ornaments, put on the Christmas record and turned off the electric lights before we were allowed into the room. Fred had tears in his eyes when he came into the festive setting. He hadn't experienced anything like that for many years since he had been in Europe and he was exceedingly touched.

T turned 21 in the February of the following year. He is 10 weeks younger than me ( it was one of my mother's objections. She said that husbands should be older than their wives). I bought him a silver pocket watch and my parents got him a beautiful leather bound and gold monogrammed book in which he was to write his poetry (T is a very skilful poet). The book is still pristine and completely empty! This is not to say that T hasn't continued writing poetry. He believes his indecipherable handwriting would ruin the book.

Now that we were both 21 we decided that it was time to become engaged. My parents no longer objected, Fred was very much in favour and T's mother was overseas and didn't have any say. T very traditionally asked my father for my hand. Mutti and I knew what was happening in the lounge room and got the celebratory champagne ready. It was super exciting. Vati agreed that T could have my hand as well as the rest of me.......but jokingly said that I was such a good daughter that I was worth at least 25 pigs a la New Guinea bride price. We finished the evening jovially and the official engagement announcement duly appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on the following Saturday morning which was 26th August 1972. That morning T asked Fred if he had looked at the 'births, deaths and marriages' as we had not told him that the announcement would be in the paper. His immediate panicked reaction, 'who's died?'

We didn't have any money for a diamond ring and decided on the German tradition of buying wedding rings and wearing them on our right hands and then putting them on the left hand when we actually married.

T's mother came back from Vienna not long after our engagement to see if she and Fred could get on better. She didn't like the fact that I didn't have what she considered a 'proper' engagement ring so gave me a lovely amethyst ring that she didn't often wear. I was chuffed and wore the ring proudly. T's parents still didn't get on so after a few months his mother went back to Vienna.

Courting and holidays 'in sin'

We had been going out for quite a while when we decided that we would like to go away for a little holiday. WELL!!!! My parents were absolutely outraged. My reputation would be ruined. They would be so ashamed of me. How could I ever think of something so disgusting - we weren't even engaged. Everyone would know and think lesser of me.........on and on it went. I cried. They cried. It was horrible.

Eventually I was allowed to go simply because Fred, T's father, said he would go with us. He was able to borrow a holiday cottage from a friend at Pebbly Beach on the NSW south coast. Fred had a very generous nature and remembered what it was like to be young and in love and thought it was stupid of my parents to be so autocratic. He didn't mind us disappearing for 'alone time' at all and was happy to sit and read and then chat with us when we did reappear.

I don't know what sort of chaperone my parents thought Fred would be, but it cleared their consciences and they even thought it was funny when I told them that T snored! Fred must have said something to them because they grudgingly allowed me to go away after that when we needed a break.

Hilariously one of my mother's friends sheepishly admitted that her daughter had gone away for a weekend with her boyfriend and Mutti, outstanding example of one-upmanship, said that Gabi had been going away for AGES.

We had all sorts of lovely little holidays away. In those days if a motel or hotel proprietor suspected that you weren't married, they could refuse to accommodate you, so I bought a $2 wedding ring which I wore whenever we had one of our sinful getaways.

One holiday which I shall never forget was when we decided to explore the Myall Lakes. T had a beige Hillman Hunter station wagon, a very ordinary little vehicle, but it managed to get us into serious 4 wheel drive territory. If we discovered a dried up creek bed, we would follow it and no bush track would stop that car. We found some beautiful spots which by now are probably covered in expensive houses.

On one occasion we followed a creek bed and ended on a spit of land that projected into the main lake. We got out of the car and were overwhelmed by the beauty of the place. The sun was shining, the water sparkling and you couldn't hear a sound apart from a gentle whistling. It took quite a while to discover that the whistling came from a hawk that was hovering above us. It was adjusting the feathers in its wings and the wind which was higher up than we were was whistling through the feathers. So beautiful.

We went camping and stayed in a leaking tent which was not pleasant. On another occasion we went camping and got so sunburnt that we ditched the tent and stayed at a motel which had airconditioning. We lay bright red and glowing, spread eagled on the bed and didn't even feel a tiny bit romantic.

Apart from the sunburn episode we had great times and felt it harder and harder to go back to our separate homes after a break away.

Courting

We were 19 when we met - kids still, although we felt very grown up. It is only with hindsight that you realise you weren't.

We enjoyed ourselves going out, meeting friends and looking at the world through rose coloured glasses when planning our future together. I had jokingly proposed on our first date and there was some sort of agreement locked there in the back of our brains. We can't remember any sort of official proposal, we just assumed that we would be together forever.

We did a few crazy things that were great fun. In fact we still laugh about the prank we played quite early on in our relationship. We were at T's house, his parents were at a concert and we were sitting idly chatting with his sister Cathy who was waiting to be picked up to go to a party with a new boyfriend. Talk became silly. We decided that a new boyfriend should meet at least one of the parents and that I should pretend to be 'mother'.

This was all spur-of-the-moment and so we had to use what we could find to transform me from a slim, young looking 19 year old into a 'traditionally built' (to use an Alexander McCall Smith expression) middle aged woman.

T's mother used to wear shapeless house dresses which were coveralls when she was doing any type of housework or cooking. One of these 'delectable' garments was hanging on a hook so I put it on and stuffed a pillow down the front and did up the belt to hold the pillow in place. She also used to wear white socks rolled down with scuffs so I found the appropriate items and put them on. The scuffs were too small, but never mind. I powdered my face and hair and applied bright red lipstick.

T and his sister were in the dining room when I came in modelling the new look. We were all screaming with laughter when the doorbell rang. 'Go on, go on, answer the door, do it!!!' they gasped between gales of laughter, so I did.

T's house had a long corridor right down the middle. Sitting room, dining room and kitchen to the left and the bedrooms and bathroom were to the right. There was a large music room which was the width of the house at the end away from the front door. The front door was clear glass with a decorative security screen.

I quickly put on a pair of T's mother's glasses which were a la Edna Everidge and went to open the door. It wasn't so easy. The glasses were so strong that I couldn't see and the scuffs were so small they fell off, so I had to feel my way down the corridor shuffling to keep the scuffs on. The poor boy could see this lurching apparition through the glass. When I opened the door he looked fairly gobsmacked as far as I could tell. I established that he was 'Cathy's young man' and asked him to follow me into the dining room.

I could hear T and Cathy crying with laughter and then much to my surprise saw their blurred bodies hurtle across the corridor into the bathroom so I shuffled up the small hallway to the right which led to the bathroom with the new boyfriend following.

The poor young man. He thought he was going into a dining room and ended up in a bathroom where his date was sitting in the bath red faced and hysterical with tears streaming down her cheeks and her brother was doubled up with laughter on the toilet. He stood there absolutely confused until we could gather ourselves enough to explain the prank. Not surprisingly it was a once only date for Cathy.

Another time we were hosting a dinner party with our friends at my parents' house (my parents were out). In those days everyone smoked a lot and drank like fish. We had feasted to excess and had lots to drink when someone realised they had some marijuana but couldn't smoke it because they didn't have any cigarette papers. No problem. I got my father's pipe and we all puffed away, just finishing and putting the pipe back in the drawer before my parents got home. My parents were pleased that everyone seemed so happy and my father especially enjoyed his next smoke.

Ah those were the days. We didn't have any real responsibilities and certainly enjoyed our lives.

Courting and meeting T's parents

T was a bit nervous about my meeting his parents as he had never brought a girlfriend home before. Any girls who had been at his place were simply friends.

It was during the day that I first went to T's place. Only his father was at home as his mother was out at a concert with friends. T told me that I would know pretty soon if his father liked me or not because he would go off to his study to work if it was thumbs down.

Fred was very charming and in his old fashioned way kissed my hand when we met. He used to do this to all women and it was interesting to watch how reasonably stern women would end up giggling and blushing like schoolgirls. I don't think I giggled but I probably blushed - it was the bane of my life.

T had told him that I spoke German so he tested that out. I spoke good German in those days and got his jokes, even those with double meanings, so he was pleased. We chatted for ages, had a cup of tea and finally T had to drag me away because we were meeting up with some friends. Fred liked me and I liked him. In fact I grew to really love him and am pleased to say the feeling was mutual.

T's mother was pretty unnerving when we met for the first time. She got my upper arms in a vice-like grip and stared at me and said, 'you are a very pretty girl' and didn't let go for ages. I broke out in a sweat, squirmed and blushed furiously. After that she was very pleasant and seemed pleased that I spoke German, had reasonable manners and wasn't a complete cretin.

T's sister Cathy was 16 and also still lived at home so I met her and we got on very well.

Within a few weeks I was invited to Sunday night dinner. We had grilled T-bone steak, rice, some sort of vegetable and bread and butter cucumbers. I had never eaten as much meat as is in a T-bone and it didn't agree with me but I loved the bread and butter cucumbers. Afterwards there was cake for dessert. T's mother baked very well.

T's parents, unlike mine, didn't get on. T and his sister were used to the snide comments and tense undertones around the dinner table but I never felt completely comfortable so when the doctor put me on Valium for the stress I was experiencing at home, it helped there too.

T's parents often had family members over for afternoon tea on weekends so I was introduced to T's married older sister, his brother-in-law and their new baby boy all of whom were lovely. I also met his rather dotty uncle and aunt who had never had children.

We eventually got our parents together at my place. My mother was T's mother's equal at cake baking and the first meeting went well. The table was set with a hand embroidered tablecloth, afternoon tea sized linen napkins, fine bone china and silver cake service. Things T's family was familiar with. Strong coffee, whipped cream etc along with delicious cakes and lively discussions made an extremely pleasant afternoon much to T and my relief. These get togethers became more frequent at each other's houses. T and I often wouldn't stay but might come back hours later and afternoon tea would have spilled over into the evening with open sandwiches and cognac. It was marvellous that the parents got on. T's mother particularly liked my father, recognised that my mother was a good cook but didn't like her very much. Luckily Mutti didn't ever realise. Everyone (except T's mother) really liked Fred, T's father.

During the time my mother was being dreadful T's mother was very supportive. I even brought her a big bouquet of flowers because I was so grateful that she was being nice. Things, however, did not stay the same.

When she got back from Germany Mutti's attitude to T changed completely. As she got used to him she liked him more and more. T's mother on the other hand finally realised that I was going to be around on a permanent basis and liked me less and less. Her son, the apple of her eye, was, she thought, being dragged away from her. She put such stress on T that he would have dreadful migraines.

T's parents' relationship became ever more tense and after T and I had been going out for about a year, his mother decided to move and work in Vienna where her mother and two sisters still lived. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

'Courting' and T meeting my parents

Probably before I was even aware, my parents realised that this new relationship was different from others I had had. My mother was particularly unhappy. T wasn't anything like the German boys she had probably decided were 'right' for me. T got a frosty reception when he turned up at our place, which was fairly often as he would bring me home from Uni if I finished late. Also we spent most of our weekends together.

The frosty reception was nothing compared to what happened a few weeks later. I always rang the doorbell when I came home even though I had a key and Mutti would open the door with a smile, if T was there with me the smile would immediately turn to tears. She wouldn't sob but would have tears running down her face and there would be much blowing of the nose. Certainly not welcoming behaviour. It made things really awful and I was pretty unhappy at home. My father was a bit more supportive although also not enamoured of the situation.

Mutti felt obliged to invite T to dinner every so often as I was having Sunday night dinner at his place from early on. We would be sitting around the table trying to have a civilised conversation but there were long silences with the only sound being the cutlery on the china, swallowing and my mother's nose blowing. Uncomfortable to say the least. Certainly not good for the digestion. My stomach was in such a turmoil that my doctor prescribed 'Valium' to deal with the situation.

My father was associated with various organisations, the airline Lufthansa being one. After T and I had been going out for several months somehow Vati was given a first class return trip to Germany. He couldn't go due to work commitments but my mother was able to go in his stead. It was decided she should go for 8 weeks so that she could manage to visit all her relatives and friends and spend a decent chunk of time with her mother who she hadn't seen for nearly 20 years.

I had never run a household or cooked on any regular basis so I was a bit nervous. Mutti bought me 'The Sun-Herald Australian And New Zealand Complete Book Of Cookery' which had just been published, wrote a few instructions and escaped the stressful situation of her daughter's unsuitable relationship by flying to Germany.

That was the best thing that could have happened. T spent a lot of time at our place and spoke with my father about politics, religion, current affairs, life in general and listened to stories of my father's incredible life. We included Vati when we went out on weekends, took him to the movies and generally had a good time free from the pressure Mutti had exerted.

Vati and I wrote letters to Mutti regularly and it was interesting to see how she was influenced by my father over that time. Originally her letters to us started 'Dear Walter, Gabi and Soda Bubbles (our cat)'. After about 4 weeks the letter started 'Dear Walter, Gabi, Soda Bubbles and T' and just before she came home it was 'Dear Walter, Gabi, T and Soda Bubbles'. T had surpassed the cat!!!!

Things had changed by the time Mutti came back from Germany. She brought a suitcase full of gifts and even had something for T although we can't exactly remember what it was, perhaps a beer stein.

She really tried hard to be civil and pretty much succeeded. By now T and I realised that we had a special relationship and so we brought both sets of parents together. T's parents were from Austria so they spoke German and had lots in common with mine, so that made things easier too.

Years later my mother apologised for her behaviour at the beginning of our relationship and I really appreciated her gesture.

1970 - meeting my future husband

I hadn't had many situations where I could go out with boys while I was at school. It was a single sex school that didn't have any sort of reciprocal agreement with a boys' school for dances as some of my friends' schools had. I did know quite a few boys through a German Lutheran church fellowship group, German Saturday school and other German social situations. I found out years later that some of these boys fancied me but were too shy to make some sort of approach. If they were so wishy washy I wouldn't have liked them anyway.

It was when I finished high school that I really got to meet boys. I went out with several I met when I was working during the holidays after high school and then had a whole series of boyfriends during my first year of Uni. They were a great distraction and did not help with good marks at exam time!

One fellow broke my heart when he dropped me. I was inconsolable for at least a couple of weeks until I decided I'd had enough with boys. I'd go out, have fun and not commit my heart to anyone EVER again.

I had a friend who was at Uni with me. We had been friends for as long as we could remember as our parents had known each other for years. Tricia's parents were going away during the holidays with Tricia's brothers and sister and asked if I could stay at their place to keep her company. We thought it was a good idea and were looking forward to staying up all hours watching TV, gossiping and doing whatever it was that we liked doing. It was the May Uni holidays so we didn't have any pressing assignments.

Tricia had been going out with a fellow who was at Uni with us called Graham and she was getting tired of him and was thinking of breaking up. He knew of the parents' absence and that I was staying with Tricia so asked his friend (who had a car) to drive him over to visit.

Tricia and I were just sitting talking when there was a knock and these two fellows turned up. Both Tricia and I were hospitable and brought out tea and cake and chatted. Graham's friend T complained that he had really sore legs because he had been playing soccer all morning, so I being innocent (stupidly naive really) told him to lie on the floor and that I would massage his legs! He obligingly lay down and I started working on one of his legs while Tricia decided to do the other.

After a while the boys had to go but Graham suggested we go on a double date which would be a picnic and horse riding. We all liked riding so it was agreed.

Later in the car T told Graham that he was happy to go as long as 'the little dark one' could be his partner as I was better at massaging!

It was probably a week later that we went for the horse riding date. Nobody had bothered to book and when we turned up all the horses were out. Things became rather uncomfortable as Tricia and Graham really weren't getting on, so fairly soon they asked to be taken home. T and I were alone. I guess we probably had fish and chips and a milkshake. We talked and talked and then had a bit of a snog in his car at the back of Lindfield oval where I jokingly proposed before he drove me home.

Apparently T was smitten. According to his sister he couldn't stop talking about me and that had never happened before, so her ears really pricked up. I on the other hand certainly liked T but had made the decision to never give my heart to anyone though was happy to go out and have a good time.

The first date T invited me to go on was a theatre production of 'The Canterbury Tales' which I just happened to be studying at the time - perfect! It was a terrific show which we both really enjoyed. Afterwards he took me to Double Bay for strawberry pancakes.

T had gone to work straight from school after he had shown an extraordinary aptitude for computing which was a new science in those days. He was excelling at his tertiary qualifications at tech at night. Because he was working T actually had money to spend in contrast to most of my friends. I was fortunate to have a scholarship, a university living allowance and money from cleaning Uncle Harry's flat and teaching German on Saturdays so I was relatively quite well off. T, however, never let me pay for anything and kept inviting me to irresistible venues.

We went to the exclusive 'Captain Cook's Floating Restaurant' on one date and on another occasion to 'Attilio's Cellar' in Elizabeth St in Sydney which was hugely expensive. Going there taught me to eat oysters. I had always resisted the visually unappealing molluscs as I thought they would be slimy and taste like phlegm, but at 'Attilio's Cellar' the seafood cocktail cost $3.50 which was outrageous considering an equivalent anywhere else was $1.95 so I just couldn't NOT eat them as there were 4 prawns and 3 oysters in the bowl. I discovered they were delicious and have loved them ever since.

We kept going out and much to my surprise realised we had been going out for about 15 weeks. I usually got tired of my male companions after 12 and would part ways. Whenever T and I were together the time would fly. We would talk and laugh a lot and on parting would look forward to being together again.