Maggie has given me a Sound of Music earworm with this week’s prompt which is all about our favourite things.

This week’s prompt is: Favorite Things

Pick any period of your adolescence and think back to all your favorite things. Feel free to elaborate as much as you want.

Most of my answers are based my favourite things from the age of about ten to fifteen.

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Who was your favorite relative? Not to play favorites, but who was the person you connected with more than others? Aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent, or parent? Why were you closest to them?

I was always closer to mum than any other relative.

What was your favorite TV show? Share a clipmifmyou can find one.

I would say that my favourite show by far was “Star Trek”, the original version. I first saw it when I was around 10 years old I think. I imagine that we were quite behind the USA in getting it so I am not sure exactly what season I saw first. We kids were lucky that the adults allowed us to watch it after which we had to go to bed. I can remember many a walk to school with my friends discussing the previous night’s episode. Of course original “Star Trek” looks a bit dated today but it gave us Mr Spock and some of those early stories were very good. The other thing that I liked about it was that there was always a bit of humour which a kid could enjoy.

What was your favorite book or favorite family story?

As a child and teenager I was reading a wide variety of books and I don’t know if I could nominate a favourite. I loved “Little Women” and its sequels but I was also reading girls school stories, series like Donna Parker and Trixie Belden and abridged editions of the classics, “Villette” was a favourite, “Vanity Fair” I read several times and “The Woman in White”. I also read my way through two sets of encyclopedias that we had.

What was your favorite, song, record, or album. Feel free to share a YouTube video of it.

When I was around fourteen I was listening to The Beatles a lot even though they had already broken up but as I went into my mid teens I started listening to a lot of other bands. I loved Paul McCartney and Wings. “Band on The Run” was a favourite album. Other favourites at that time were Slade, Lindisfarne, Status Quo, The Guess Who, Rod Stewart and Elton John. It was also around that time that I discovered that we had a lot of good bands in Australia and even locally in Adelaide. I remember Moonshine, a favourite local band, they were actually the nucleus of The Angels but at that time they were a jug band. They recorded a song called “Keep You On The Move” and when I was about 16 that was probably my favourite song. More well known bands that I liked in the early seventies were Daddy Cool, Spectrum, Sherbet and after the initial shock, Skyhooks.

The Adelaide Festival Theatre was opened in 1973, just before the Sydney Opera House, and we used to go to free concerts in the Ampitheatre outside as well as in the concert hall.

Who was your favorite teacher? What grade were you in and what subject did they teach?

I’ve often mentioned that I disliked school but there were some teachers that I liked a lot. In Grade 6 we had Mr Scott who was a very good artist. He used to draw amazing pictures in chalk on the blackboard. This was primary school so we had him for all subjects. I often wonder what happened to Mr Scott. In high school there was Mr McCall who taught us English and Social Studies. He was a young man and he always made lessons interesting but kept order in the classroom pretty well.

What was your favorite subject (not teacher) in school?

It would be a toss up between English, which I liked because I liked reading and writing and History. The Vietnam war was happening while I was at high school and we studied what led up to it. We also studied The American Civil War, our teacher that year was an American, Mr Sidford, who had emigrated to Australia. He was of the opinion that the Civil War was more about economics than emancipation. That was a new idea to me. I think that Mr Sidford may have been the first American I’d ever met.

I enjoyed Social Studies too. I don’t know what they would call that subject now. In Primary school we learned about agriculture, industry, politics, a bit of history and geography. I found all of that interesting as a relative newcomer to Australia. It was a lot more relevant than learning about the Romans invading Britain or Kings and Queens of England, although that was interesting too.

Who was your favorite (aka best) friend? What things did you do together?

My friends at high school were Penny and Gillian who I’d made friends with in Primary school. We used to walk to school together, sometimes Penny rode a bike but she’d meet us and walk the rest of the way. We all loved “Star Trek” so we spent a lot of time talking about that. We also were all readers so we talked about books. I have to say we didn’t spend a lot of time together outside of school but I do remember a day we spent in Adelaide going to the Museum and State Library. Gillian and I are still friends today. Penny sadly passed away at a young age.

What was your favorite way to pass the time?

At home reading and listening to records or going out to explore the neighbourhood. I used to go to fete’s, fairs, whatever I heard about that I could walk to. I also liked going to Adelaide on Saturday mornings to look around the shops and after they closed at lunchtime to the museum or down to one of Adelaide’s many parks. This was when I was starting to carry a camera.

What was your favorite holiday? How did you celebrate?

I always get a little bit confused by the term holiday which I tend to use the way Americans say vacation. I think this is actually referring to holidays such as Christmas, Easter etc though. Christmas was always my favourite holiday. We’d decorate the house with paper chains, put up the tree and mum would cook a roast dinner. We often had family round for Christmas in those days, aunts, uncle, cousins and cousins families sometimes, most of our cousins were a lot older than us. As we’re a British family it was hard to give up our traditional Christmas dinner but in hot weather sometimes we’d have salads and cold meat as well. Everyone would bring something. After lunch there would be presents from under the tree and later the adults and any of the kids that wanted to would record messages on the tape recorder for relatives in the UK and South Africa which would be posted to them after Christmas. Sometimes they would sing old songs that were popular when they were young and the family was together in England.

What was your favorite toy or possession? Doll, camera, radio, bicycle?

I loved my childhood dolls but by the time I was fifteen I was not playing with them very much. I loved my record player which I was given when I was thirteen and my Kodak Instamatic camera.

Bonus: What was your favorite adventure? Family trip, amusement park, field trip, or vacation perhaps.

My favourite adventure was the steam train excursions run by the Australian Railway Historical Society. I went on my first one aged thirteen as a birthday treat. Once I turned fifteen Naomi and I started going more regularly. We went to various suburban stations and to country towns around South Australia. We went to the Barossa Valley, the Yorke Peninsula, the mid north, the Riverland, the south east and even into Victoria. Apart from the fact that we loved steam trains we never would have been able to go to these places any other way, not on our own. They were great days.