Hone my story telling skills by using this space to share anecdotes about my life.

Gardening in Australia is not without its hazards. It is easy to forget that we are home to some of the most poisonous creatures on the planet. Weeding my flower bed inevitably unearths a few bulbous looking spiders of varying sizes (all of which are too big for my liking!)

My flower bed is a rather simple one that was created when I was quite a young age. My parents simply separated it from the lawn by placing some rocks down to mark the edges. It makes keeping the grass out a tricky prospect.

One particular day, I was turning the rocks over to weed out what had taken root underneath and prevent it from spreading amongst my flowers. The birds seemed to be enjoying the show, with one particularly enterprising magpie picking at the bugs I was uncovered, at what it obviously considered a safe distance away from me.

Of course, the inevitable happened, and I overturned a rock with one particularly big, hairy spider underneath. It quickly scrambled to the top and I quickly scrambled away. The magpie took all this in with interest. It looked at the spider then looked at me, cocking its head to the side. So I did the only sensible thing… I backed away a bit more.

In one chomp, my problem was gone. I knew there was a reason I liked magpies.

There is one item on my resume that employers always want to talk to me about at an interview and that is my overseas acting career.

Yes, I was an actor in Italy. For three weeks.

I was part of an acting troupe with just three other people: two boys and another girl. We’d formed in the last year of high school and were the best students there. Our director was our former teacher, who, in that last year of high school, quit teaching and went into youth work. We spent a year and a half doing outreach work; we toured local schools and youth centres, performing and discussing the issues that arose.

After that, we moved on to a new play, adapted by our director from a novel and focussing on themes of environmental awareness and depression. We took that to a number of schools in the area, too.

Somewhere along the way, and quite unbeknownst to us, our director applied for us to attend a youth theatre festival in Italy. We were accepted. That year was a flurry of organising, rehersing and performing.

The place hosting the festival was a town in far north Italy… so far north, in fact, that they spoke German as well as Italian there. This was a stroke of good fortune, as none of us spoke a word of Italian but two of us had studied German in high school and knew enough to get us by.

Troupes from all over Europe attended, so there was an incredible mish-mash of languages. To make things trickier, the festival required that performances be given in either English or German… and the majority of them were in German.

One day, early on during the festival, I was walking from my hostel to the theatre where a performance was due to take place. I trailed a large group of girls, who were happily chatting away at a rapid and completely incomprehensible way. I decided to try and practice my language skills by listening in and attempting to identify their language. Perhaps, if they were speaking German, I might be able to translate a little.

To my shock, I soon realised they were speaking English. It turned out I was trailing the troupe from Belfast. Their Irish accent was so thick to my ears I hadn’t even realised we spoke the same language.

It’s surprising how difficult this is for me. I keep wanting to engage with the nature of story telling and how it is related to community (and why everyone is writing Christmas stories at the moment!).

Funnily enough, the first memory that sprang to mind for this goal is also a Christmas one. Christmas in Australia is always a little different from the traditional ideas about that holiday. It’s the time of the year when the days start off hot and just get hotter. This particular Christmas was no exception.

My dad’s family had gathered for Christmas at my Aunt S’s house in Sydney. This was unusual, because although my dad’s family is a small one (he’s the oldest of three and my grandfather died when they were young) my uncle teaches overseas. This year my uncle must have come over from Indonesia to make it to the celebrations, because he brought his new wife with him. To my young eyes, she was an exotic individual. Dutch American, she had nut brown skin, stringy blonde hair and a deep voice, tinged with an American accent. She was also constantly smoking and ducking outside to indulge her habit, since my Aunt S didn’t permit that inside the house.

It was Christmas morning and all the children were up and most of the adults were still in bed. My new aunt was standing under the shade beside the fence, cigarette in hand. We heard her deep, throaty chuckle and she called us over. Beside her, crawling its way over the worn wooden boards was the biggest, hairiest caterpillar I’ve ever seen. Perhaps it is my child’s mind that remembers it so big, but I remember it being about three or four inches long and covered in brown bristles, with longer white bristles poking out at regular intervals.

A plan was hatched and the caterpillar was boxed up with some leaves, wrapped in Christmas paper and given some breathing holes. It was put under the Christmas tree with a tag for my Aunt S’s husband. He was a sweet and very mild man, though had his own mischievous streak.

As soon as he saw the present, I’m sure he had an idea of what it was, but went along with it, expressing his surprise and astonishment when he opened his present, causing us to shriek with delight. I think of it now as an act of small generosity that made that Christmas a truly memorable and special one.

He put the caterpillar back on the fence and we commenced with opening the rest of the presents. But do you know, I don’t think I remember a single thing I got that year. All I remember is that caterpillar.