The Salad Dressing and Other Disasters

That's when good Neighbors...

 

When I say growing up, I'm roughly referring to the period between the ages of 5 and err, 22, I would watch the soap opera Neighbours for half an hour per day. And if you do the math, which I'm not going to, that's a lot of time. ' Have you seen Neighbours' was the question we constantly asked each other.

It started at my Granny's where my cousins said they were hooked because 'Scott was gorgeous' but unfortunately he was marrying Charlene which they were not happy about.  

While other children were running around outside or developing their social skills, playing in the sand pit, doing a jigsaw, playing educational games, learning the art of polite conversation, reading an educational book or two with their educational parents, I was swept up in the melodramatic lives of Scott and Charlene's third break up, Madge and Harold, Henry and Danni and Mrs Mangle, Helen Daniels and Hannah, (pronounced 'Henna') Jim, Paul Robinson and Lou Carpenter and Bouncer.  Paul Robinson was evil and owned Lassators in Erinsborough. It's worth pointing out here that I  didn't know what Lassitors was. To be honest, I thought it was a secret swimming pool with nice hedges around it. 

Things developed when I got to secondary school and Karl, Susan, Libby, Mal and Billy moved into the street. Billy, who had floppy hair and wet red lips, started going out with Anne who looked like a mouse.  Then they left and were never seen again. 

There was Mal who also left, and Libby was the academic - I wanted to be Libby and was sort of fascinated by her because I was always trying to work out whether she was pretty or not due to her teeth. 

Then quite a bit later there was Jo, Lynne, Steph, Flick and Michele. The only likeable one was Steph, who was straightforward and rode a motorbike. Flick was clearly too pretty for the family and very obviously only there until her pop career took off. 

When I came out of my Art History A level having done two questions in the same section, I was comforted by the terrible time Libby was having with her husband Drew having died or perhaps he had set his arm on fire, or perhaps she was in the middle of a bitter dispute with Cody who came back as a different actor. And when Karl had the affair with Izzy, and Susan confronted him on the street - I blame that on the melodramatic way I have approached every relationship breakup since. I mixed up one breakup between that scene and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves when the Sherriff tells one of his men he should 'cut his heart out with a spoon' it's blunt you twit, it'll hurt more.'  So I told my boyfriend, who had announced that he wanted to be my ex boyfriend, that he had just 'cut my heart out with a spoon'