My first girlfriend

Her name was Elizabeth, though I can't, for the life of me, remember her surname. Hardly surprising given that the year was 1961 and I was 7. I fancy she was about the same age. Strangely enough, I can remember the house she lived in, on Dongola Road, Footscray.

This was the grand passion of my life :-) Or so it seemed at the time. Of course I've had a few 'grand passions' in the years since then.

I remember playing with her in her backyard and gravely assuring her mother that I was going to marry her as soon as I was 'growed up'. Her mother pegged the washing onto the clothesline, nodding sagely, barely able to conceal her amusement.

For the brief few days it lasted we canoodled at lunch time. Canoodling, to a 7 year old, meant kissing. That's all we'd ever seen in the movies. Of course, a 7 year old doesn't really know what kissing entails; a meeting of lips is what it looks like and that's what it was for us, along with copious amounts of saliva spread indiscriminately across the kissee's face.

My first romance ran it's course in a very few days and I returned to my male friends. We linked arms and marched across the school ground singing 'We won the war, in 1954'. Historically innacurate but it rhymed.