The Sausage Tree Read Online Free PDF

on cold winter evenings, our hands were always busy. Before electricity came we would be warm and cosy with a big fire blazing away in the fireplace helping to light the room. We would sit around the big table in the soft light of the kerosene lamps and play games. We played Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and Chinese Checkers. We also played simple card games. These games were banned on Sundays as was knitting or sewing. We were told that the devil would get us if we played cards on a Sunday and if we knitted or sewed, we would have to undo all the stitches with our nose when we got to heaven. Because we were also listening to the wireless while playing our games at night, we didn’t argue over the board games or cards. This only happened when we played in the daytime in winter.
    Although we cannot recall the story-lines we still remember we listened to a serial called “The Search for the Golden Boomerang”, after which came the regional news followed by the world news at 7 o’clock when we hurried to thekitchen to wash the dishes before “Martin’s Corner” came on.
    To save on electricity the wireless was never turned on during the daytime, but this didn’t worry we children because for amusement during daylight hours we used our imaginations. During the summer months we kids didn’t listen to the wireless as we always went straight outside after doing the dishes. We stayed outside playing until it was too dark to see. Unfortunately, more often than not, our imaginations got us into terrible trouble and the crime did not always merit the punishments that we received.
    After tea, we girls would quickly clear the table and stack the dirty dishes onto the kitchen table and put the saucepans on the hearth in front of the stove because there was no room on the table, before we listened to our serial. If we hadn’t finished the dishes by then we weren’t allowed to listen to the other serials. Sometimes we mucked around a bit and ran out of time, so to keep up with what was happening on the wireless, the one drying the dishes would take the wet tea towel into the dining room and stand in front of the fire holding the towel to dry while listening to the serial. Then out to the kitchen again to report to the washer-up who by now had a great pile of washed dishes on the tray. Now it was her turn to go inside and listen for a while until the wiper-up called out that she’d caught up. You guessed it! The tea towel was too wet again and so back to the fire we went. Of course we couldn’t get another towel, there’d be no excuse to go inside! For these escapades we missed out on the games because we were sent to bed early for taking so long to do the dishes. We never seemed to be able to even please ourselves.
    With the brighter electric light to see by, we spent our evenings knitting and sewing. As each one of us turned seven we were taught to knit and when we were eight were taught to do simple embroidery that we called fancywork.We were expected to always have busy hands and we knitted small singlets and jumpers for the younger ones because we tired of the project very quickly when attempting to knit for ourselves. The fancywork we started on was small doilies, then we moved onto larger ones from where we progressed to the more ambitious working of aprons. The aprons usually had a flower garden pattern, complete with the tracing of an old-fashioned lady on them and they took a lot of time and patience to complete. Mum was a hard taskmaster and so our work had to be just so, but how proud we were when they were completed. In those days everyone wore an apron and we wore our pride and joy everywhere we could so that everyone could see and comment on our work. Our best work was entered in the school show in early December; sometimes we were lucky enough to receive a prize and then we really were puffed up with pride.
    Mum and Dad had a very strict rule that to save on costs, no more than