The Tuck Shop

the tuck shop lady's son had a bit of a crush on me. I managed to score a fair few icy poles a week out of that situation!

That sounds vaguely obscene to this American.

From the good old Fount of all knowledge:
>In the United States and Canada frozen ice on a stick generically referred to as a popsicle due to the early popularity of the Popsicle brand, and the word has become a genericized trademark to mean any ice pop, regardless of brand or format. In Ireland the product is also referred to as an ice pop. Ice block is used in parts of Australia and New Zealand, as well as icy pole, after a brand of the same name.

Thanks, Nutrax. I wondered what an icy pole was.

Icy pole sounds dirty

A girl with a swinging ponytail and a perky bow would collect the basket and take it down to the tuck shop.(She was invariably also the girl who got to ring the bell before playlunch and lunch ) a typical order would be for a devon & salad roll and a cream bun .

True, and she was also teacher's pet and the biggest bitch to grace my personal space to boot. Her name was Lyndall, she wore glasses, sat up the front and never, ever, ever got into strife. Just a proper cow.

So doggy .. have I taken you on a nostalgia trip????

Absolutely, and in a wonderfully descriptive fashion as well.

I have a reasonably good memory hut it cant remember what our school tuck shop sold. I do know there werent any queues so it was elbows to the ready.

"I was considered a bit of a gourmet because I liked lettuce on my vegemite sandwich."

Ah .. tony ... thankyou again for your compliment ... but perhaps there is a cultural divide ... in my day ... in the eyes of the Great Demon Sister Virgillius R.S.M . ..it went more like this ( I have changed my name for protection from the devil .. even though I am , these days , a confirmed and devout atheish )...

" Geraldine O'Brien.... your are a bit of a goooormet I see .... askin fur some "lettuce" with yer vegemoit sandwich"

She would be fiddling with her rosary beads and fixing me with a single raised eyebrow and a one sided smile that silently screamed

"Yuere a pretentious, precocious little miss aerun't yer.... I can see roight now that yer booooldness will lead you in the devils path... and yull die in a gutter .. drunk on the way to hell!!!! 'Ts written aloveryer "

Be assured though ... fifty years and some therapy later ... I have my fine catholic upringing in a healthy perspective .... really .

My relationship with vegemite & lettuce sandwiches on doorstop thick, buttered , soft , white bread ... remains a daily challenge.

I have a reasonably good memory hut it cant remember what our school tuck shop sold.

Take yer memory out of that hut and put it back where it belongs: in yer brain, Westwood.

I like your writing style, philistine.

Be assured though ... fifty years and some therapy later ... I have my fine catholic upringing in a healthy perspective .... really .

They tell me: once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

I haven't seen most of my relatives for 34 years; not since, aged 14, I forsook Catholicism for, in truth, a void. The experience was far from pleasant - when one abandons a religion others think ye are abandoning them (as ye may know). Also, one effectively abandons a way of life - but I found it a refreshing experience and would recommend born-again atheism.

I wasn't abandoning any person - I was just dismissing religious nonsense, such as the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Virgin Mary (though it's interesting to note the cruelty that some nuns, not least in Ireland, inflicted in her name) and the Ressurection.

The cruelty the nuns 'enjoyed' is, of course, hardly surprising, the word 'clitoris' not being in the Catholic lexicon. I am, of course, suggesting that if nuns were allowed to play with themselves, or each other, or with the priests, then they might not have been so fearful - and, being less fearful, might have been more happy. But happiness is not what the Catholic Church promotes.

I rather suspect that today's Pope might have a heart attack if he (and he's always a he) was told that women masturbate.

18 years ago I introduced my then and current partner to my Catholic sister and brother-in-law. My sister - still a practising Catholic, albeit without the nausea-inducing moralising - genuinely didn't give two hoots what religion, if any, my partner was. But my brother-in-law (who years later described his own Irish Catholic mother, at her funeral, as an evil bastard ) asked me about my partner.

The conversation was as follows:

bil: what is she?
me: a woman
bil: ye know whit a mean!
me: she's like me
bil: A Catholic?
me: no, an atheist
bil: so, she's not a Protestant?
me: no
bil: Are ye sure?
me: Aye
bil: good!

Tony ... no wonder we like each other ....

Sister Virgillius would have apoplexy and order an exorcism if she read your post . I can't say i disagree with anything you say ... but I prefer to keep some things ...well... to myself :-))

There may not be a clitoris in the catholic lexicon but there are some astoundingly sexual tags among those saints whose names were borrowed by the nuns and brothers....I have been inculcated by the holy sisters .... sister mediatrix ... and sister Concepta ( we know what was goin on at the concepta moment ) and sister Annunciata ( she was announcing to her fiance that she was pregnant ... but hadn't been near a man !!! honestly!!!! ... and don't forget Brother Cletus.... who "spawned " a whole lexicon of sniggers that we didn't understand .

You will be pleased to know that I have married a heathen Mason who was expelled from Suunday School for educating the girls. He says he noticed a secret word in your writing ..

Now Anthony .... you know that someone is going to come along and admonish us ... prolly do the whole "mission " thing ...don't you .... we can swap some more impure thoughts before we do our pennance sistermatically

I dimly recall that Mockchoc got her start in the culinary profession working as a volunteer in a tuck shop. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Edited by: Anonimo- spellng