Autobiography of girl
Here I am, a pretty normal girl, in what I consider to be quite an average bedroom having a few giggles to myself. I think everyone laughs at their own photos. Well those were the days, I don’t think other people will have photos like these; they’re the ones from when we had ostriches in our back yard (well more specifically, down in the paddock by the stables). All those miles we travelled, viewing lots of different ostrich farms, I’ll never forget one man’s name, Magdy Shanawhanny, I got really scared of his dog, as it put its paws upon the work surface, it was as tall as my dad, and to a seven year old child; it’s quite daunting. My mum, Di, used to do talks, craft fairs, stalls even, all based around ostriches of course. I helped out loads with them: holding up the boards at talks, helping to sell our products (coloured feathers, figurines, quill pens, cuddly toy ostriches), help with her promotion for sales at ‘Tindalls’ and ‘Moons Toy master’, even ‘sprint print’. We got in the Newmarket paper and ‘The Telegraph’. How embarrassing, my picture didn’t come out quite how I’d hoped. She went on Cambridge and Suffolk radio. There was even one time I’ll never forget, when she went on ‘The Big Breakfast’ morning show, I was really proud. It seemed so cool that my mum was going to be on a TV show watched by thousands of people. It was great, I was there when they were filming, they did an ostrich egg pancake, hence the fact it was broadcast on Shrove Tuesday. Mum even went as far as publishing her own book, ‘The amazing and amusing facts about ostriches’, we still get the odd phone call asking for orders of the book. Considering we were mainly selling about five years ago, it’s really pleasing for my Mum when she gets that satisfaction that people are still interested. I guess I should introduce the rest of my family: well you’ve just learnt about my mum, quite an out going character, now to my Dad (John). You could say that he did the ‘behind the scenes’ work for the ostriches, feeding, keeping them safe, healthy, (that includes one time when we all had to muck in and help in the preparation for the health injection, a wormer). It was quite a scary experience, baring in mind the fact that they can rip open a lions stomach with their toe nail, funny, but very true. I got the job of holding the gate open whilst the ostriches came out of the trailer, they weren’t all that settled, they barged and charged out of that door, easily capable of squashing me behind the gate. I wasn’t bothered about the occasional pecking on my head. I just didn’t want to be thrust against the wall with no escape, they can run about eighteen and a half miles per hour, when frightened it goes up to a forty three mile an hour sprint.