Nostaglia

I went to visit a couple, Veronica & Pista (Stephen) today who are old friends of the family. ‘Auntie’ Veronica was my mum’s best friend from the age of about 5. She’s 69 now and she and her husband have pretty much lived in the same house for the last 50 years. It’s a really nice place just across from where my grandparent’s house was. They have a large garden surrounding the house with grape vines all over and a huge field behind the house along with what used to be hundreds of chickens but is just 30 or so now.

The house was one of the first to get plumbing, so when I was little, along with my parents, I used to come across from my grandparents house so that we could have a proper bath. Otherwise it was a process of fill a bucket with cold water from a tap in the garden or from the water pump in the street, warm it up over a hot stove and use that to fill a metal tub to wash in. Plus it was nice to use a civilised toilet other than the stinky out house that my grandparents had.

They always do a lot of reminiscing and have a lot of good stories about when my mum was small and I always find out something that I didn’t know.

My mum used to help them with their annual cull of the chickens. It’s the reason that I don’t eat chicken. I saw them wringing the chickens necks and plucking them one year when we were over on holiday and haven’t been able to stomach chicken ever since!

Unfortunately they always insist that I try out a few cups of the local ‘Palinka’, this time washed down with a bottle of local red wine! I had to eat loads to keep myself sober else I’d be useless for the rest of the day.

As it was the rest of the day was ‘washed out’ literally as another huge storm moved in and we got rain and the loudest thunder that I’ve ever heard. It sounded like a massive explosion right over the house.