A story about love in concrete piping with Allison Tait

In this episode we tell stories about first love and we're joined by Allison Tait. To find out more about Allison and her books visit her website... https://allisontait.com/

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Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic
Weekly, 5-min. podcast for kids about making and keeping friends.

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To find out more about R.A. Spratt visit raspratt.com
To find out more about Jacqueline Harvey visit jacquelineharvey.com.au
To find out more about Tim Harris visit timharrisbooks.com

Transcript

0:06

Hello and welcome to real stories with random writers. I'm Ra Sprat and I'm here with Jacqueline Harvey and Tim Harris. And today's special guest is Al Tate, or as she's known to her friends, Alison, and known to her enemies as well. Of course, she doesn't have any enemies. Alison is the author of the Mapmaker Chronicles, the Book of Secrets, the Book of answers, which are both under the Atoban Cypher series, the Fire Star and the Wolfs Howe, which are both Maven and Reeve mysteries. And her most recent book is the first summer of Kelly McGee. Welcome to the show, Alison. Thank you very much for having me. Ra, also known as Rachel. Now, you can't see her, but Alison does look fabulous today. So imagine that we're all authors, which means we're storytellers. Normally we write our stories down, but for this podcast, we're going to tell them out loud instead. And today we're going to be telling tales about first love. So let's get into it. I believe you volunteered to go first, Tim. I did volunteer to go first. I've got. It's a sweet story with a very interesting end. It's sweet because it goes right back to grade two. You know, it's funny how from childhood we kind of just remember these little snippets of things. You know, when we get to high school, we remember a lot more, but this one goes right back to grade two. And it starts with possibly, I think, one of the most annoying sounds that a teacher can have in the classroom. And that is the. I'll just try and do it here. It's the tap on the door, because when there's a tap on the door, no matter how deep the class is sort of embedded in their learning, they will always look up and go, they're like meerkats. Like meerkats, exactly, Alison. And so there was one particular morning when we were all, you know, writing or doing something, and there was that knock on the door and everyone sort of looked up at the door, you know, who is it? Is it the prime minister? Is it the principal? What's going on? Is it the Easter Bunny? And it was the deputy principal with a brand new student, a little blonde haired girl. And it was love at first sight. You gotta hate them. Oh, no, it's always the blondes, isn't it? Yeah. Trouble. And I was very fortunate because in year two I had sort of, I had the whole double trip desk to myself. And so I used to spread out all my work and everything, but now, you know, I was thinking, okay, I might pull things in and hopefully the new girl gets to come and sit next to me. Well, that's exactly what happened. Yay. So the new girl came and sat next to me. And her name, her name was Melanie. And just so you know, listeners, that. Is not Tim's wife's name. I think I might just sort of put this episode, you know, hide it in the playlist from the family over dinner and chuckle away. And anyway, a few weeks later, we were just doing some work in class, and Melanie folded a bit of paper and sort of slid it across the desk in front of me with my name on it and the I, the dot on the. I was a little love heart. That's always a really good sign, isn't it, when you have a year two with the dot in your love heart? And so I open it up and I'm going to read it to you in my very best you too, Melanie voice. It said, dear Tim, will you be my boyfriend? So I got my crayon and I wrote capital y, capital e, capital z to Melanie. And we sort of, you know, we did the little. Exchanged blinks at each other. And so the romance began. And all through you two, we were sort of, you know, all through year two, all three. I think there might have been even an incident of catch and kiss without the kiss. But then it spilled over into year three and we were now in different classes, but we still kept sort of passing notes through, you know, through friends and that sort of thing. And it was all about the eye contact. I remember Rachel hearing you speak at a school once and cracking up when you told the story about how your kids get angry at each other just for looking at each other. That's a great story. Opposite, it was all about the precious eye contact. And so we kept passing notes all through year three, and then it spilled over into year four. You're practically married by now. That's common law. Marriage territory, relationship. And so again, we're in different classes, and I discovered cricket as well as another trailer. But we kept on passing notes through our friends. Again, it was all about the eye contact. In fact, there's even a photo of the whole school that I will show at my school talks. And you can see I'm looking a little bit sideways because I'm trying to make eye contact. Melanie. And then it spilled over into year five and kept on going. And then this is getting concerning now. Smouldering glances can only last so long. And we're into, like, three year territory. I know. Well, year six is now putting it up to four. Oh. And with the year six, we had like, a little graduation at the end of the year. And so, of course you could go as a date. And so Melanie and I went together as that and have a lovely photo at home of us sort of marching in. And I'm wearing my pants away too. High pants would be in the early nineties in year six. And then it spilled over in high school. She went to a completely different school, but it continued with a. Maybe a couple of post his notes, but also a trip to the movies, which inspired a little chapter in Mister Bambucle called how to take a girl on a date and all the do's and don'ts. And then it went right through to year eight. What? I'm sorry, but, like, there are marriages. That have lasted less time than this. Right? Yeah. One of Elizabeth Taylor's marriages lasted that long. Six years after it started, the phone rang. And this is back in the days where, you know, we didn't have mobile phones. It was. Every house just had that one phone in the kitchen with the massive, long spiral cord. And so you could. If you wanted a private conversation, you'd have to sit in the cupboard under the counter because you couldn't hide from your family. Anyway, the phone rang and it was Melanie. And she was saying. She was sort of explaining that her family was moving to Canberra and so we would have to call it a girl. And so after six years of note passing and eye contact and new six formals and going to the movies, it was all over. And then to top it off, in year nine, I had a crush that lasted for 6 seconds. I said to a girl, go out. And she said, yeah. Oh, well. So on average, that was three years per relationship. The average. Yeah, that's right. So I don't even want to try and work out the median. That just gets really confusing. But I want to know, Tim, have you ever had any contact with Melanie since she left for Canberra? Well, that's an awesome question, Jackie. So we actually did catch up. And we caught up. I think we were maybe in our twenties. And she actually invited me to her wedding, which was really cool. But my dad was getting remarried on that day after my mum passed away. And so of course I went to my dad. But here's the coolest thing. I was doing a book signing this year just a few months ago, and who walks past with her lovely family but Melanie? And so we got to have a big catch up and. And that was really really cool. Oh, that's awesome. So is her husband better looking than you? No, much better. No, you're supposed to say, no, Tim. Of course not. She missed out. She. Could she possibly. How could he possibly be right? Yeah. And he's not a best selling children's author, that's for sure. Oh, that's so cool. I don't think I was ever nice to boys. Like, I played catch and kiss, but it was more like. It was more like rugby league. It was like a full contact sport. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all. I remember coming home and my. My school jumper was four sizes larger because the boys had been grabbing hold of the hem and swinging off it as we played this incredibly full on game of catch and kiss. Did it get banned after that? No, no, it got banned at our school. That got banned. Red Rover got banned. What was that? Bull rush. Bull rush got banned. Bulrush is the best game. All the fun stuff got banned. And then they wonder why everyone sits around in the playground and does nothing. It's because all the fun stuff is not allowed to be. We weren't even allowed to run in our school because it was so much concrete and it was just. You can't tell kids not to run. I mean, head injuries are how you learn. Yeah. Grazed knees are just right of passage, aren't they? Skinned knees. When I was at school, we had a Bunya bunya pine in the playground. Do you know what that is? Yes. So for people at home who don't know Bunya Bunya pines are these pine trees, as this name would suggest, that the pine cones are the size and weight of watermelons. So, like about five to eight kilos and the tree was about 25, 30 metres tall. And so when the pine cones fell and they. They smash apart like hand grenades. So these huge watermelon size and wet things would drop from 30 metres in the sky. And you can do the maths at home about how fast I'd be going with 9.8 metres per second acceleration with gravity. And then. And it was just there and they would put a little fence around it, you know, when they were falling, you know, so you wouldn't get head injuries. But in hindsight, you think that was not the safest thing to have in a primary school playground. On your research, then there's actually a website called the splat calculator, where you can put in the mass of an object and how high it's flowing from and it will tell you how long it's going to take to reach the ground. And I know about this website because a very clever young writer I was working with last year needed to know for a book he was writing. And so next thing I know, we're on splatcalculator.com dot. Let me tell you, we had a barbecue once at school, and we'd been on a big bushwalk. So it was when I worked down in Midagong, and we'd walked over sort of from the school where I worked, Rachel, which you're familiar with, and we walked up through the bush and over to barrel over the jib. Over the jib? Well, actually, it wasn't over the jib. It was sort of over where the golf course is on the other side. Oh, Centennial hill. Yeah. And afterwards, we had a barbecue, and they set up the barbecues under the pine trees, and our poor school secretary, sue, one of those pine cones fell and cracked her in the skull, and she went, like, down unconscious at the barbecue. Fortunately, didn't fall onto the barbecue, but fell backwards. She had to be carted off to hospital. It was terrible. That's a day out. All the kids remember going, oh, look, that's. Well, we better move on. Who's next? Was it me? It's me. It's Alison. Okay, you tell us your story of. True love, about my first love. Now, I'm going to set the scene for you first, because it's really important that you understand where exactly we are. And this is a moment in time. So we're in, Catherine, in the northern territory. It is either hot or it is very wet, and there's not a lot of, you know, greenery, etcetera. So I lived in Dakota street, and it had houses around what was called a park, but was actually just like this rectangle of dying grass in the middle with some big concrete pipes in it. So the pipes were left over from this was the play equipment, were these massive concrete pipes left over from roadworks or something. They were just sort of plonked in the middle of this park, and they were big enough to stand inside if you were eight, so which I was. So my street sort of continued past the park, and at the end of it was the school, so which was also the school of the air at the time, by the way, which is just an aside. It was very interesting. And so we would walk to school, you know, each day along the street, past the park, and up to the school. So I lived in a house that kind of faced the park, and we had these sort of big, sort of tropical, shady trees around our house, because you had to put some greenery in somewhere. And then over the back behind us lived my friend Angela. And she would come through the fence to play, so she'd come through the fence to play and then we'd all go over. Was Angela human or a daughter? Angela was. No, Angela was a human. She was a girl. She was in my year at school, blonde girl, very cool. Another blonde. She was one of those really cool kids. You know, they're kind of barefoot, take on anything kind of girls, you know. She was one of those sort of girls. She was great. And we'd climb the trees and do all the stuff. And now, down the road from our house, on the way to the school, lived our hero, Darren. So Darren was the blonde, sporty boy, had a little scar on his face. I have this memory, little scar on the face. He was the only eight year old boy in the neighbourhood. He was in sort of our classes at school. And he and Angela and I were like this band of three. He had older siblings, no memory whatsoever of who they were. I had us all these younger sisters, and then Angela just feels like she was this lone wolf, you know, like, she probably had eight brothers and sisters, but I just had this memory of Angela. And she had a very cool mum as well. Like, she was just one of those people, you know, those people. Anyway, so I developed this huge crush on Darren. So I'm. I'm the bookish, nerdy redhead who has read, you know, all the books. By that stage, I was already reading, you know, all the. All the sort of kid gang books and the mystery books and the girls having. So I was. I'd been introduced to the concept of the romantic crush quite early because, you know, you read a lot in. Cause you're a literate person. Yeah. Particularly when you're reading books that are way above your age. You're like. I'm like, wow, there's a whole world out there. So I also had, however, lots of freckles and I was missing a front tooth, right? So, because it was. Oh, my gosh, don't go past straight that. How did you lose that front tooth? It was knocked out. I knocked it out. I fell flat on my face when I was about 18 months old, if that. Like, maybe not even that old. So you don't know if this is a true story. This is a story you've been told. No, no, I know what happened. I know I do. It's, it's, it's. It's family law and I did not get that tooth back until about grade three, like, I was gone. So every single early school photo of me is me with this weird smile showing no tooth. Like, I was just like, no hand on my mouth or just like, weird little smile trying to hide my teeth. And I still hate my teeth as a by the by, they. I do have all my teeth now, but I still don't like them. But anyway, so we lived in this street for grades two and three. Um, and then towards the end of grade three came the devastating news that we were moving all the way to Alice Springs. Now, this, by my calculation, was about. So I'm eight. I reckon it was about my fourth move. By then, I'd come. I'd gone Papua New guinea twice. We come to Catherine, and then we were on our way to Alice Springs. So I'm eight. We've already. Your parents didn't like cold weather at all? No, my parents. My father was a civil engineer, and so we were, you know, we were building roads and bridges in places where there were no roads and bridges. So I had a lot of remote in my childhood. And so we're moving to Alice Springs, and of course, you know, I'm devastated. My little group of friends, a little band of three, were all devastated. And then, just before we left, Darren and I were over in the park one day playing in one of those pipes you can stand in. And somewhere along the line, and I do not remember how this occurred, Darren gave me this kiss, a little peck on the lips. And I was, you know, because I had this massive crash, and I was just beside myself because I'd been reading all these, you know, older kid books. And clearly he was in love with me because he had given me a kiss, and I was, you know, I was full of the joy, you know, the exhilarating rush of it all. And of course, I ran all the way home and over the back fence and immediately told Angela, who was a bit miffed, the whole conversation. So the next morning, we're walking to school, and we run into Darren in the drive, in the driveway of his house. All right? So we're about four houses from the end of the street. The school is across the road, we're in the driveway is his house. Angela, being Angela, marches up to him and says that because he kissed me, he had to kiss her because I was leaving and she was staying. And he looked at her and went. Okay, I kissed her. So I'm standing in that driveway as he. And I'm watching. I'm right there, and he's pecked her on the lips, turned, you know, strolled away. Because just like, here's the kiss and off I go sort of thing. And leaving me standing in the driveway with this broken heart like you could pretty much hear, you know, all by myself playing in the background. And then punch on with Angela. No. Then we just walked to school like nothing had happened. But I didn't. It's like a jew. I did not fit. It is absolutely. This is. Where do you think this all comes from? This. It's little women with Jo and her younger sister who stole Laurie. Yes. Well, that's true. It was a lesson is what it was. And so for the rest of my schooling life. But for the rest of. My schooling life, I just stuck to unrequited love. And that's a whole different story. I can tell you about my high school crush, but we would be here for days and I feel really sad for him. We do. You know what happened with my high school crash when we had our 20 year school reunion? We did a yearbook sort of thing and I had to write in it, you know, to. I'm very sorry to, and I won't say his name, but I'm very sorry to blah, blah, who suffered my. My ardour for the whole of high school. And he really did, I reckon. I reckon these days I would have been arrested for stalking, but this is the time before mobile phones. But, yeah. Anyway, let's leave me in the driveway with my heartbreak. It's probably a better story. There you are. Oh, well done, Alison. I guess I better get into my story. Well, this one's hard for me because I'm a strange person and I'm dead on the inside. I usually don't recognise my emotions until two or three years after I've had them. Like, if someone dies, I don't get upset about it and then one day I'll be in the supermarket and I'll just get really upset. And it's the same with love and everything. So I think, what is my first love? And I just have no memories of particularly liking people when I was that sort of age. So I was thinking, I really did like lollies, particularly whiz fizz, and I was very excited that you could get five packs at Franklin's for fifty five cents. I was very passionate about those, but I did. I mean, I am married, so I should tell you the story of how I met my husband, because that's a pretty good one. So what happened was I was working at a television show called Good News Week, where we wrote jokes about the news. And so I started there when I was 22, and I'd been there for a couple of years, and, you know, I was pretty senior at that stage. I was a third in command, which meant that when the second person wasn't there, I got to run the morning meetings if the head writer was in a bad mood, which actually happened a fair bit. So anyway, one weekend I went over to Hong Kong because my brother was graduating from university. So I went to Hong Kong, and I wasn't there on the Monday. And when I came in on the Tuesday, on the Monday, two new writers had started, and I hadn't met them yet, but everyone else had been in the office the day before without me. So I come in and the head writer's in a bad mood. The second guy's not there, so I'm running the morning meeting. So you have to, like, cut what the. Cause this is back before the Internet and or stuff like that. So you had to cut the articles out of the paper and photocopy them for everyone if you were running the meeting and then hand them out to people so they'd have their job for the day. So we run the meeting and we decide what we're going to do. I'm at the photocopier, photocopying, and you've got to understand, I'm at this stage, 24 years old, and all the other writers are men, and they're, like, 15 to 20 years older than me, so. But I'm in charge because they have no social skills. I know you three know me. I think I have no social skills. These people are on these comedy writers, and because they're men, they haven't had to, like, try and be normal the way I actually sincerely do try to be normal. This is my best effort they make. No way. You do a pretty good job most of the time. Most of the time, yeah. You don't see me most of the time. But anyway, so I'm standing there photocopied, and this guy comes up to me and he's shaking with, I don't know whether it's rage or anxiety, probably both. And he's shaking. And this is a man who is 20 years older than me, and he's, like, shaking. He's like, rachel? And I'm like, what is it, Steve? And he's like, rachel. The two new writers are talking in the writer's room because it's good news. This was the only writing job I'd ever had at that stage, and I'd been there for two and a half years. We didn't talk when we were writing, so we had five of us in one room, which just was not good. I could go and there were no windows, and we had desks around the four walls, and we all faced away from each other and we had our news articles and we would just sit and write jokes. So on each topic, I would sit for an hour and a half and just go, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke for an hour and a half, stop and have a coffee break, come back to another topic. So that's what we would do. And we had been doing that together for years. I didn't realise it was weird because it was the only writing job I'd ever had. So anyway, Steve is shaking, and I'm on the inside laughing at him because he hasn't got the courage to speak to. He's a man and he can't speak to two other men. And I was like, don't worry, Steve, I'm in charge. I'll handle it. So I go into the writers room, and I'd sort of met these writers, but I just couldn't care less. We had new writers come and go all the time, and you just. It's like when you have temps in the office, you don't get emotionally attached because you don't know how long they're going to be there because it's hard to write jokes. They usually don't last very long. So I haven't really paid any attention. I just noticed that one of them was old and one of them was big. So I went, I said, I'll handle it. So I went in and we sat down, we worked, and I waited for them to stop talking, start talking. And they started talking. And I just turned to them. I said, guys, we don't talk in the writer's room. If you're going to talk, you have to leave. And they looked at me like. And I'm like, that's what I meant saying, and I'm in charge. And so they're like. And they're like. And I'm like, get out. So they left. And the big one was, was my husband. That's how I met him. That was the first conversation I had with him, was throwing him out of the writer's room at good news week. I can see why it worked out so well for you. How long did it take for him to ask you to go on a. Date to win you over? Yes. Well, I just was not interested. But it became apparent at some point, several weeks later, he actually did stick around till the end of the year, but after just a few weeks, he apparently really likes grumpy women. I've discovered subsequently because I was 24 then, I'm 48 now. We've been together this whole time. It worked out. But he likes women that are rude to him, so it's a match made in heaven. So for him, that was like, like Tim and the girl. It was just like love at first sight. There's this fantastically gorgeous 24 year old woman who just kicked me out, like, rudely. And he thought that was fantastic. So he became instantly obsessed with me. And I wasn't really noticing. I was writing my jokes. And after a couple of weeks, I'm like, who's this guy trying to make eye contact? And then I'm like, what the heck? All right, I'll go with it. And, you know, 24 years later, we're still together. Did he learn from Tim about the absolute importance of the lingering smouldering glance across the room? He must have. Oh, no, he was really hopeless. He went to, like, an all boys school from the age of three. He had no idea how to talk to women. It was just like, I'm a practical person, you know, when it comes to gardening, like cleaning the dog or something. And, you know, once I realised, oh, this is. This is what he thinks, you know, he's interested. And I thought, what the heck? All right, why not? You know? So I was too busy with work to, you know, trawl the bars, so why not? It sounds like he and Tim could have taken a few lessons from Darren, who apparently was all over it from the age of eight. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Player. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm almost exactly contemporaneous with, um, princess, now Queen Mary of Denmark, in terms of, I met my husband almost exactly the same time as she met her husband. So I'd like to think my story's even more romantic than her just bumping into him at the pub. Yeah, slip in. All right, Jackie, do you want to hit us with your story? Oh, yes. Well, I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic and was from a very young age. You know, my 1st, 1st crush was a boy called Douglas in probably kindergarten, actually, and a bit like Tim, you know, we were kind of very sweet on each other for a while. And then a new school opened and he left to go to the new school, and that was the end of Douglass, so. And then I went to a new school, and on my first day at my new school, so we had the world's most the world's naughtiest labrador, a dog called Susie. And why have you written that picture book? Well, maybe one day I can. So, Susie, the Labrador, we bought a house that didn't have any gates. It had a fence, but it didn't have any gates. And so our dog had two. She did have two distinct skills. She was an escapologist and a garbologist. So she loved escaping and she loved bringing garbage home. And on garbage night, this dog would. We would know that she'd been out because our dad would get up in the morning, put the blinds up in his mum's room, and he would go, oh, you rotten dog. And our whole front yard would be covered in garbage because it was back in the day when they were the little round bins, you know, and knock it over. And then she would drag the bag home and she would literally, like, tear the bag open on the front lawn and there would be things like, you know, there was a lot of young kids in our neighbourhood, so there were nappies and they were. It was disgusting. And so it was always my sisters and. And my job to go and clean it all up. So anyway, this dog with these very good skills of garbology and escapology, mum ties her up to the only thing that's concreted into our backyard at our new house in Camden. And it's the hills hoist. So, you know, the dog, we leave and the dog's like, you know, and we. We head off to school first day. And so there's me, my mum, my. My second sister Sarah, and my little sister Nat was, you know, still in the stroller. And so we go up to the. To the new school, drop Sarah off in the infants at her year one classroom, and then we go to year four and we get up to the year four classroom and, you know, it's got this giant set of steps and up to, like, a locker room area. And we get to the locker room area, I meet one new teacher who I have been terrified about meeting because I had just come from school where I had the scariest teacher in Australia, who used to like to cane the kids on a pretty much daily basis. So, I mean, did he cane you? No, I never got the cane, but I did get the rule across my bottom. But that's a whole other story we'll tell another time. So, anyway, I get to my new classroom. I meet my teacher, who is the reason I became a teacher. She is the most wonderful woman and she, you know, we're in the locker room and all of a sudden I feel something wet on the back of my leg and I hear this. I turn around and our dog has escaped from home and turned into a tracker dog. And, you know, she's standing there now in the locker room like wang in her tail, like, look at me. I found you. I found you. I'm a sniffer dog and I'm mortified. Sorry. There's a Hills hoist blocking the corridor. Exactly. Dragging along the line. Anyway, so I'm absolutely horrified because, you know, it's bad enough that there's already this kid inside the room who has come to the door and told everybody, buddy, that there's a new girl coming into the classroom. And then he goes, comes back and he goes, oh, cheque out the new girl. The new girl brought a dog to school. It's not even the pet day. That's so dumb. And so, you know, as a nine year old, you are dying at this point. So anyway, my make you the coolest kid ever. No, not when you're nine. Yeah, I was nine. I was the new kid. You know, it's just like Mary had a little lamb that, you know, doesn't the lamb follow her to school one day? It was the slobbering Labrador. Jackie had a slobber lab. They followed her to school. So anyway, misses Hogan says she's not phased by this dog. And so she says to my mum, well, let's just go inside the classroom. We'll leave Susie in the locker room and, you know, she can just hang out here until you take her home. Back in the day, you know, we didn't have fancy lunchboxes like they have now. There was no smiggles for us. There were brown paper bags for our lunches, basically. And, you know, everybody's lunch is neatly lined up in their little locker. And we go inside and. And my teacher, you know, helps me unpack my stuff and, and I see this boy in the classroom, apart from the one who's already told everyone I was an idiot for bringing my dog to school. And I think, oh, like, he's so handsome. Like the cutest looking kid I've ever seen in my life. So charming. Very, very gorgeous. Anyway, so I, um, I'm sort of looking at this kid and he's, he's a bit of the old lingering eye, lingering glasses. I tell you, it's a winner. It's a winning technique. The winning technique. Anyway, so, you know, I've noticed this kid already and I think he's noticed me. And, and then I unpack my stuff and mum's chatting to my teacher and my little sister's just hanging around and misses Hogan says, well, go and say goodbye to mummy. And. And, you know, you can. And mum can take the dog home. And we walk back out into the locker room and my teacher goes, oh, Susie. And I'm like, no, Susie. And my mom's like, Susie. And my dog had demolished half the lunches of the kids in the class. You can't leave a Labrador, like, within a sniff of food. What were they thinking? I. What were they thinking? So anyway, so, of course, the kid's lunch that was hanging out of her mouth was the boy that I had to fall in instantly. So you have to create tension in the relationship early. Well, mum had to go and spend every cent she had in a wallet buying new lunches. And. And I can tell you that, that, that, you know, first lingering eye contact. I was madly in love with this boy for all of primary school, right into high school. Finally, in high school, he. I asked him, would he be my partner at. You know, I lived in the country, so debutante balls was still a big thing for deb ball and he was my partner for the dead ball. And anyway, I thought this was it. And then, you know, stupidly, I ended up with a different boyfriend and then found out later on that he was about to ask me out. So it was, you know, never exciting. You should focus on Wiz. Visit that age. Yeah. Is the best choice. Yeah. I should have stuck to wizarding in that time when, you know, when kids used to say, will you go with me? Or. And then they'd go, no, no, they would. No, they won't. They won't say it to you. They'll get their friend to ask you if you'll go with them, and then the next day you'll get. No, you dropped. The friend has to ask your friend. Yeah. So I found out the back of my house in the. So we lived on the edge of the floodplain with all paddocks. And I had a horse in the sort of. In our. In our yard, we had a big backyard and then there was the paddocks beyond. And one day I found this tin can out the back gate and I looked inside the tin can and it had a piece of paper in it and it said, will you go with me? I was like, I'm so stupid. I was like, where. Where do they want me to go with. Oh, you're a natural. Yeah. Well, that story. My takeaway from that is we should do an episode about hills hoists, things that have been tied to hills hoists in our lifetimes. Yeah. Remember fireworks? The number that have. The number that have broken because kids swing on them and pretend that they're. A, you know, not just. There are circus saying, yeah, not just kids. I got in trouble about five years ago for breaking the hills horses. It doesn't surprise me at all. All right, that's a future episode. I think that's definitely now. Future. All right, so do you want to wrap it up, Jackie? Is that what I'm hearing? Okay. Yes. Well, that's it for now. I'm still in Western Australia. I'm still, you know, I'm still on much earlier time than you guys, and I've, I've got to get breakfast before I go to school. I understand. What's awesome about that comment for Jackie is the person who's, like, listening to the two Perth episodes eight years apart. What? Still in Perth. Still in Perth. My gosh. Never going home. All right, so let's wrap it up. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find out more about any of us. Alison Tate, what's your website? It's alisontate.com. Okay. And I'm rasprat.com. And Tim, where can we find out about you? Timharrisbooks.com. And Jackie. Jacqueline harvey.com. Dot au or I think just.com as well. Okay, well, that's for now. Yes. And do. That's it for now. Until next time. Goodbye. Bye.