"Rosso" reminisces on the great cordial disaster of 1984

I helped my mum move into her new house just before Christmas and after a solid couple of hours of maneuvering beds and heaving Jason recliners down the hallway, I thought it was time for a refreshing glass of orange cordial.

Moving Mum into a new place had made us all terribly nostalgic as we had packed and unpacked her 78 years of chattels.  Her old sunbeam electric fry pan with decades of curry sausaged coating had made my brothers and me particularly teary.

With a vegemite jar glass in my hand as I rummaged around for the Cottee’s, my mind went back to the great cordial disaster of 1984.  It was a particularly hot Melbourne Summer and we were taking refuge from the heat in our parents “good” living room, the coolest part of the house, which occupied the downstairs section of our split-level home.

It had cedar clad walls, a brown Tessa four piece lounge and some luxurious mid 70s white shag pile carpet.

Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by CHUX. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100% authentic and written in their own words.

This room was reserved for dinner parties where Mum served up Beef Wellington and the righteous laughter from Dad’s well-rehearsed ribald jokes echoed up the stairwell, interrupting our viewing of Young Talent Time.

The hot weather gave us our only real opportunity to hang out in this space and we were making the most of it, kicking back listening to the cricket on the radio and eating Saladas with vegemite.

Being three teenage boys in the house, on this particular afternoon there was a rare détente and I particularly was enjoying a break from corked thighs from being given “dead legs” and lumps on my head from “crow pecks”.

Not that it was all one sided, because I was the youngest I had to resort to weapons and I once threw a knife at my brother in the kitchen and luckily he skillfully ducked in time to watch it spear into a pine cupboard, stick and then wobble like in a Western movie.

He wasn’t so lucky when I piffed a spoon at his head and it took a small section of his ear off.  Thankfully, he wore a beanie for a week so Mum didn’t find out.

The uneasy truce on this hot afternoon was short-lived when I hit my eldest brother Stephen over the head with an encyclopedia after he called me a Nob-Jockey.  Smart enough to run as soon as I made contact with his head, unfortunately I ran straight into my other brother Campbell who had just walked into the room carrying a large glass of orange cordial.

The glass went skywards and the cordial landed slap bang in the middle of the white shag pile carpet, creating a bright orange circle one metre in diameter.

Retribution for the Britannia bob to the head was put on hold as we desperately tried to remove the stain, with salt, towels and at one stage the garden hose.

When the folks came home that night there was no way we could hide the awful truth that the carpet had been ruined.  Not even the professionals who were called the next day could shift the enormous stain.  My mum in her wisdom decided that cordial was now banned, not just from the good room but also from the house full stop. Being a woman of her word, we sailed through the rest of the 80s sans cordial.

Almost 30 years later, I screamed out  “Mum, where’s the cordial?” and she quickly yelled back. “We don’t have any, it’s banned!”

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