Should this autobiographical fragment appear in my Memoirs? It was played on CBC radio in Richardson's Round-up about 7-8 years ago and I got feedback of a rather ribald quality from one of my colleagues who heard it. What do you think?
Wendy and I did most of our courting in the picturesque hills behind Adelaide. One day when driving in these hills we were overcome by amorousness. We carried our rug to a grassy slope out of sight of the road where we settled down to express our affection for each other in our customary way. Before either of us had really warmed to the business at hand, my beloved suddenly screamed and leapt up, tearing frantically at her clothing. In our careless haste, we had spread our rug on a bull-ants’ nest. Bull-ants are fierce fire-red creatures a centimeter or so long, equipped with sharp pincers where lesser insects have jaws. They were displeased to have their nest and its approaches obscured by our rug, and let us know in the only way they could. Wendy sustained several savage bites that, she later told me, raised angry welts on parts of her person I was not yet permitted to see. We retreated in disarray and confusion. After that unhappy experience we inspected the site carefully before spreading our rug – or stayed in the slightly cramped but ant-free safety zone inside the car.
This story dates us: in the pre-Pill era most respectable people (and we were respectable) were rather circumspect and perhaps even a bit inhibited about sex. We were both shy too, after all here we were, both of us in or on the threshold of our 30s, still unattached. Many of our contemporaries in nursing and medicine respectively, were married and parents of a couple of kids by the time they were our age. Our courtship was a wonderful period of mutual discovery of each other's minds and bodies. I wonder whether courtships nowadays are as satisfying and pleasurable as ours was.
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