Free potato bake! Awesome.

My old chum Ciarne came to visit me last week. In a somewhat unexpected turn she made me a potato bake. It was awesome.

Ciarne was literally the Girl Next Door during my childhood. When we were young we would while away summer holidays in each other's imagination. On reflection, it was a colourful and, frankly, batshit crazy place to inhabit.
Days would often follow a common template - I would head over the Ciarne's place and we would play, getting progressively more involved in our world as the day wore on. Late in the afternoon someone, often my reality-attuned brother, would remind us of the universe's laws, and we would call it a day.
Activities often occurred at Ciarne's house because she had a trampoline and a see-saw, whereas my house didn't. One did not enter Ciarne's house but her yard was full of wonder - cubby house, guppies, empty sodastream bottles.
My house, on the other hand, was an internal affair. We had a table with those green lego mats inset in it at a tub in the middle for all the pieces. Ciarne would make intricate houses and creatures out of our random lego blocks and then, when her back was turned, I would destroy it with my lego robot, and consume the pieces to grow my abomination.
Once we started in on the business-end of primary school and gender roles reared their ugly head our relationship retracted back into a "at home only" affair. Boys and girls could not be seen to fraternise in school. Fear of cooties reigned.
During high school Ciarne moved away. To be specific, she moved about 800 metres away. Even though she was only around the corner it seemed much farther, and I recall visiting her new abode on only one occasion. Luckily we shared the same bus stop to school and our friendship was preserved despite the usual teenage drift.
After we all finished school she moved to Adelaide and we see each other rarely. I enjoy it when we do though and she seems happy. This is good.

Here's some scattershot recollections of my childhood time with Ciarne.

Marrying Cats

The girls across the road had acquired two small kittens. We decided that, as they were going to live together and were of opposite sexes, they should be married. Despite our grand plans the ceremony amounted to two kittens being placed in a cage as we spoke aloud. Following this tear-jerker we gathered around the "chapel" and cooed as they cuddled each other. To us, their close contact was a result of their boundless love for one another - not the result of being shut in a small cage. The reception involved us learning that the cats were brother and sister and the wedding party running as fast as they could for an as-yet-to-be-determined honeymoon. Romance was in the air.

The Ultimate Solvent

A sizeable portion of Ciarne's back yard was taken up by her father's shed. From my bedroom I could see the roof of the shed and, for five-odd years, the Toxic Avenger action figure I had thrown up there by accident one day.
Running across the back of the shed was a line of empty Soda Stream bottles. One day, putting our own spin on the timeless "mudpies" pastime, Ciarne and I decided to fill the bottles with, well, everything. We filled the bottles with water from the tap and then jammed dirt, rocks, dust, leaves, buttons and whatever refuse we could find in there. Shaking the concoction well, we poured it on the side of the shed and behold! The dust was washed away like a repentant hooker's sins! To our surprise, we had invented the ultimate solvent! Capable of cleaning any surface and cutting through even the toughest stains! Surely we would ride this powerful elixir all the way to millionairedom! Huzzah! With little time to waste we began filling the rest of the bottles with our powerful formula. We had enough to start a modest lemonade stand-sized operation before, again, reality crashed in and we realised a basic property of water - it is wet, and washes dust away from sheds.

Ghostbusters

Ciarne, myself and a few other kids from around our street would play Ghostbusters all the time. If memory serves, we'd fall into the same old tropes every time. Ciarne had a device (a radio?) that could detect ghosts. She'd point them out and we would attack them or run away. I, irritatingly, would always pretend to be killed and then resurrected as a servant of evil. I had a blast, but suspect it grew quite predictable by the fourth time. I often wonder how we appeared to observers - a girl fiddling with a radio before pointing at empty space, her friends screaming and then falling down, only for one to get back up and walk slowly towards the rest.
As a sidenote, I convinced everyone my glasses allowed me to understand what dogs were saying. I could never come up with that today as the flawed logic of an eyes-based device enhancing hearing is like a splinter in my geekdom.

The Clubhouse

My yard had a shed at the back that was used for nothing. We decided it should be a clubhouse. My definition of clubhouse was "somewhere you sit in" but Ciarne had broader ideals. One month it was the Animal Club so we each got hand-drawn posters, membership cards and newsletters. This was repeated for the Monster and Ghost clubs. She would draw three copies of a four-page newsletter, make the place look awesome, and then I would sit in it. I can't remember why this particular pastime ended, but suspect I wasn't quite pulling my weight.

Rollerblades

For some reason every kid in our street got rollerblades for Christmas at the same time. Cue three months of awkward rolling. We lived in a street two blocks long. It was a quite little stretch almost devoid of traffic, and that was where we were allowed to roll. At the end of a street was what appeared back then to me an epic mountain, which we would repeatedly walk up and roll down at imagined breakneck speeds. Passing by there today, I realise the slop is barely steep enough to see an egg roll down it without listlessly stopping halfway.
At the time though? We were on the edge.
I, sadly, never learned how to stop. Ciarne's concrete driveway provided an uninterrupted path to the front of her house, which I could use to brake by slamming into bodily. If I had to stop without the benefit of a wall, I had to fly around in tight circles until coming to a stop. I. Looked. Awesome.
At the end of those particular holidays we put the blades away and never got them out again. Not sure why, but my unbroken bones are happy.

There's also an entirely unrelated tale in which I ate half a potato bake for dinner on Friday night. I was a bad idea, but tasted too good to stop.