Kye, I think that puts LTF there as a teenager
and as for you with the ironically positive forum name, I hope as you tuck into your $8 choc-top the film appears, made in Italy with...................................







SUBTITLES !!!

[:p][:(][:p][:(]

Will there be any sex when they get home???[:p][:p][:p][:p]

I see nothing has changed.
The TIGES are still getting pumped every week.

And i must say.  Richmond station has'nt changed 1 bit.

sheesh , Kye and Chante aside, I wonder if i'm not feeding strawberries to pigs.
oh, and DA, good to see you again.never touched the stuff, Ajax still my powder of choice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmVd4RQZCo

a little self doubt starting to creep in here spoons?

To Live-and-Mope,_Can't deny it

lol Live-and-Mope. now that is funny and witty and original

“Oh, Tom, how could you…? God and his Holy Mother, what is going on in this house?



                                            7

Cissie Roberts confronted her husband with the evidence of his duplicity.

Jim told me he did not overhear the quarrel, but it must have been a bitter one.  For weeks, his mother and father spoke to each other rarely, and then only for the benefit of the children.

Tom Roberts promised to give up gambling – this time genuinely.

Neither his father nor his mother taxed Jim with his part in the episode, but the sense of guilt which followed him home from the racecourse stayed with him until the following Saturday night when he went to Confession. The priest passed over the matter lightly and as children will, Jim immediately buried it in his subconscious mind.

How long Tom Roberts could have resisted the temptation to gamble will never be known, for within nine months he was unable to afford to gamble – he was unemployed.

That was the first year of the economic depression.

When we look back on the depression we think of it as something which began suddenly and we imagine everyone knew it was an economic crisis. That is not so. The Robertses and thousands like them knew only that their breadwinner was sacked from his job, began to look for another and couldn’t find one. They didn’t call that a depression until much later. At first it was plain tragedy. Soon it was humiliation. Some of those who still had work looked down on the unemployed, the “sussos” as they were contemptuously called. And people of the respectable classes, like my own parents, looked down on them as being not unemployed, but unemployable. “They don’t want work,” it was said. But as Jim put it to me, “Where were the people who didn’t want work in 1928 and later in 1940 when not one man was unemployed in the whole country?”

Bills mounted. First the electric light, then the gas were cut off. The rent got behind and the landlady threatened through her agents to evict the family.

Tom Roberts trudged the streets looking for work, sometimes finding it for a few days or weeks. He grew vegetables on every foot of ground in the yard; he and Cissie tried to protect the children from fear and shame; he stood by Cissie in her endeavours to make ends meet.

Cissie Roberts took in washing and sewing to earn a few shillings; she kept the creditors at bay by judiciously paying a little to one and then to another; they could do without light and gas, so she allowed these to be cut off and fell back on candles for lighting and the old wood stove for heating and cooking.

Jim Roberts left school, put his age up to fourteen and got a job at the grocer’s shop where Jack Pittson was manager. The twelve shillings he earned each week was all paid in at home.

There was always something to eat for three meals a day, even if only a stew or fried bread and a home-grown vegetable. For nearly a year, Tom and Cissie resisted applying for the dole. But they often discussed the dread prospect, the shame of it. Before the end of 1930, Tom Roberts was forced to register for sustenance – at first a bag of groceries each week, later a small wage for which he had to work.

Strangely enough Tom Roberts began to gamble again – with Cissie’s tacit permission! But there was no money at stake. All the poor people gambled in those years, but rarely with money. They entered each week for one or other of the free competitions with big money prizes which the newspapers conducted in an endeavour to halt falling circulation and the consequent drop in advertising revenue. There were race tipping competitions, football score tipping competitions, tall story competitions, advertising slogan competitions and an Obstinate Artist competition.

Tom Roberts concentrated on the horse-racing competitions and, in the winter, on the football score competitions. He had to borrow the necessary entrance coupons from friends slightly further away from penury than himself. Each Thursday night he filled out his coupons, and, to save stamps, walked to and from the city to deliver them.

Young Jim Roberts took an excited, grave interest in these coupons and, at work, succeeded in borrowing newspapers containing free coupons for his father. Cissie and Tom Roberts were vaguely aware that they should not encourage Jim in any form of gambling. But they had bigger and more immediate worries, so he was permitted to help his father with the coupons each week.

Indeed, he was permitted to fill in one racing coupon under his own name.

A coupon, a kind of ticket in a lottery……………

"Bills mounted....." I knew there'd be sex spooner or later.[:D][:D][:D][:p][:p]

cant wait until Pharlap comes to the rescue.

A coupon, a kind of ticket in a lottery……………
                                                                             

                                                 8


Tom Roberts squatted in the wintry gloom on the back verandah, mending boots. His hair had turned perceptibly greyer, but his bushy eyebrows were still jet black. His graceful head contrasted with his general appearance. He was in stockinged feet and wore a tattered jumper and dungaree trousers. There was a hole in the heel of one of his black socks.

One of his own boots was on the last, and lined up beside it were boots and shoes of varied shapes and sizes. These were in bad repair – down at heels and barked at the toes. He had no new leather and was using the dilapidated soles and uppers of discarded footwear for patches. He had placed a rough patch over a hole in the boot on the last; taking tacks from his mouth one by one, hammered them home skilfully. One of the three legs of the last was broken off. He had to hold it with one hand as he drove the tacks with the other.

Presently, Cissie Roberts came out of the tiny kitchen at the end of the verandah carrying a large blackened saucepan. She was shabbily dressed, her appearance more drab and careworn than in former years. Her greying hair was tied in a bun at the back of her head. She stepped over the row of shoes and filled the saucepan from the water tap off the verandah.

The area around the door was built up with ashes covered with bags to keep the entrance firm in spite of frequent rains. In the yard Tom Roberts had built a small sleep-out for Meg with materials supplied grudgingly by the landlady.

Presently, Tom Roberts arose, stretched his legs and followed Cissie into the kitchen. She was kneading dough on a board at the table that half-filled the room.

“”How’s your clock, Cissie?” he asked

“It was ten minutes fast this morning.”

“Probably be faster now,” he said, standing in front of the stove rubbing his hands. “ One thing about this old kitchen, it’s warm in the winter.”

He walked out again and went to the living-room door. The house seemed to be buckled; the door was jammed tight. He pushed the door open and slammed it behind him. He walked gropingly through the dark room and raised the window-blind a little. The room was clean and tidy, though the remains of the midday meal were still on the table. The bricks of the open fireplace were raddled a dull red, and the wallpaper was repaired here and there with patches of an unmatching pattern.

He sat on a chair near the sewing machine in the corner, put on a pair of headphones and began juggling the cat’s whisker of the old crystal wireless set. He squinted close to the celluloid cone. The fragile, curled wire scraped on the crystal.
He twirled the cat’s whisker stem, seeking to place it on the elusive pin-point that would bring reception.

Jim Roberts’s sister, Margaret, entered from the children’s bedroom. She was tall and inclined to be gawky, neither a child nor a woman, self-conscious, aware of her developing beauty and the new world growing in her. She began gathering up dishes, scraping the plates noisily.

Her father raised his hand distractedly. “Order, Meg! Order! Can’t yousee I’m trying to get the first race?

“I’ve got to gather up,” she replied, without looking at him.

“You always wait till I’m tryin’ to get the earphones goin’!

Wait till I’m finished; I won’t be a minute.”

Margaret put down the plates and returned to the bedroom muttering: “…can’t even get the gathering up done in this house.”
He twiddled with the cat’s whisker for a few more minutes, then relaxed in the chair. He took a small black notebook from his pocket and opened it. Names of race horses were listed in it, neatly in sixes; and the names of League Football Clubs in pairs with scores beside them.

Outside in the kitchen Cissie was making scones. She moved about in the cramped space plaintively humming a tune.
In a few minutes Tom came out on the verandah again with the notebook in his hand. He made a few pencil markings in it, put it in his pocket, then knelt again to his boot repairing.

Margaret walked between living-room and kitchen, carrying the dishes.

Half an hour later, Tom Roberts again tuned in the crystal set with difficulty, and listened for a few minutes. As he came out again Cissie went to the tap, this time to fill a tin dipper with water.

On the way back, she stopped at the kitchen door. “You’ll have to talk to Jim,” she said in a listless voice.

“Why? What’s he done now?” Tom answered, squatting down.

“He’s gone and taken Gerald to the football. He’s got no money. Sneaking in, that’s what thet’re doing. You’ll have to talk to him, Tom. He takes no notice of me.”

“He told me he was goin’ , Cissie. I never tried to stop him. Better than having him hanging around here listening to the races. Let ‘em have their bit of fun, Cissie. They get no pleasure. Can’t afford for ‘em to be goin’ to the pitchers or anything.  Let him have his football; poor kid pays in all his money.”

She hesitated, then retired to the kitchen, in tacit agreement.

As the afternoon wore on, Tom Roberts spent less time at his work and more listening on the earphones. He was twiddling with the wire and crystal when Margaret came out of the bedroom, spread an old blanket on the table and began pressing a dress with a flat iron.

“Order, Meg. Just a minute, till I get her right.”

“Cut it out, Dad. We can’t stop everything just cause’ you’re trying to get the races and football.”

“I’ve got the first three winners in two of me coupons, and the fourth race is about to start,” he said impatiently.

“I’ve heard the tale before,” she replied, but obediently stopped ironing and returned to the bedroom.

A few minutes later he came into the kitchen. “How about a cuppa tea, Cissie?” he said. He was cheerful and clearly excited.

“The kettle’s boiling,” she said, not noticing his agitation “and the scones are just about ready.”

“I’ll make the tea,” he said, taking a large teapot with a chipped spout off the paper-covered mantelpiece.

She opened the oven and took out a tray of steaming brown scones. He poured the tea and they sat at the table. He spread some home-made jam on a scone.

“How would some butter go on these hot scones, Cissie?” he asked brightly.

“You know we can’t afford butter now, Tom,” she answered reproachfully.

“Might be able to next week,” he relied, taking the notebook from his pocket and munching excitedly.

She looked up sharply: “Why?”

She looked up sharply: “Why?”

“ ‘Cause I’ve got the first four winners in on two of me coupons.”

“Oh’” she said doubtfully.

“There’s only six races,” he protested, “and only two favourites have won. I’ve got agood chance of sharing the big prize.”

She showed little interest: “Even if you did, it would only pay off the bills; wouldn’t get us off the dole.”

“If we pay off the bills we can get more credit. And p’raps I can get a job.”

“Perhaps you can, Tom. You’ve tried hard enough, God knows.”

“Well, we gotta pay them bills, especially the rent. Old Mother Plant won’t let us stay much longer if we don’t. Things’ll  get better, pretty soon. Met a bloke down the street this morning, that’s what he said: things’ll get better pretty soon. If we can pay them bills we’re right. Might pick the card, Cissie. Then we’ll pay them. And have a bit to spare.”

“That’s if you get the hundred pounds prize,” she said, still in the same listless tone.

“Must have a chance , Cissie.” He pushed the notebook towards her. “Look! First four in, in those two there. Got the same horse in both for the second last. And if it wins I’ve got two runnin’ for me in the last race.”

“You must stand a chance, all right, Tom. Especially if that horse wins the second last race,” she said, studying the lists and, for the first time, appearing to take some interest in his coupons. He looked at her inquiringly, as though trying to gauge whether the interest was genuine or feigned.

He gulped the last of his tea and went again to the living-room. As he passed Margaret, who was still ironing, he said: “There’s tea and scones in the kitchen, Meg, if you want ‘em.”

The girl departed and he again juggled patiently with the recalcitrant crystal set.

Cissie Roberts and her daughter partook of the afternoon tea in silence, until he burst through the living-room door waving the notebook feverishly. “It romped home, Cissie. Won by four lengths!” he shouted, entering the kitchen.

better still, get layed

She showed little interest: “Even if you did, it would only pay off the bills; wouldn’t get us off the dole.”


how much did this silly b itch think it should pay?