Yesterday when I was young
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame
The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned...

In the 1960s when I was in primary school, my friends and I would pop over to the milk bar at the village shopping centre that was right next door to our school. This was in the good old days when a kid could buy a decent-sized bag of mixed lollies with around twenty cents. Looking back, I don't really know how the owner of the store stayed sane, with a gaggle of little children standing at his counter for what seemed like ages, eyes wide, umming and ahing, and doing their best to choose a good selection of sweeties. I do know that my dentist was a happy man, that I can tell you for certain.

As the cool of our autumn mornings nips at my bare toes, I find myself thinking back to the bitter winter that Peter and I spent living in a rented house in Campbell. It was one of the coldest winters I can recall, both in terms of actual temperatures (i.e. minus 7 degrees C or more) and also in just how much my body and I felt that chill.