Once upon a summer holiday (when my boys were still young) I rented a holiday house at Inverloch on the south east coast of Victoria for a week. It would just my sons H and J, and their (girl) cousin T and of course ...me. My DH was probably travelling overseas with work at the time (to be honest I don't remember!).
Prospects of long summer days and swimming at the calm beach filled my imagination.
We encountered our first problem before we had even left home. My youngest son, J, kept mice (I'll save the story of the Church Picnic Day Mouse Massacre for another post). The present residents were two female mice...Hunca Munca the mouse with Post Traumatic Stress (survivor of the aforemention CPDMM) and her companion the fat and slothful Chestnut. The cats could be sent off to the cattery but no one was around to look after the mice so we decided we had no choice-- the mice had to come on holiday with us. The kids thought this was a fantastic idea. Cousin T (who is exactly between my boys in age and a kind of sister-they-never-had) flew in from interstate, we packed the mice in their travelling cage and headed off to Inverloch.
Victorian weather is notoriously fickle and after two glorious warm, sunny days the inevitable mid-January cool change blew in. The beach was out so we amused ourselves with playing board games, rockpooling, visiting the dinosaur beach, and going for long walks. On one of these walks we invented a story of two mice who went on holidays to the beach...The Mouslies.
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| Chestnut and Max leave for their holiday |
The story evolved over the next few days. They weren't exactly OUR mice...after all one was called Max and appeared to be male but they looked a little bit like Hunca Munca and Chestnut. The Mouslies visited the Dinosaur Beach, went surfing and even went snorkelling (in fact had more fun than us!). T and J (with some help from me) did the illustrations and at the end of the holiday we had a marvellous little story complete with mentions of the movie Titanic (which was big that year). I love the fact Chestnut was drawn as being slightly rotund.
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| Chestnut goes rockpooling |
When we got home, I wrote the story up and in the days before self publishing, printed and bound several copies for the family. I was only reminded of it the other day when T (now a gorgeous young woman) mentioned it in conversation with the added suggestion we should dig it out and publish it.
I don't think so... but it did bring back memories of a happy week with three gorgeous kids and two mice.
Alison
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| J, T and H with Hunca Munca and Chestnut on holiday in Inverloch |
