I was asked by Nicole Kidman when we were under the shower the other week, Why Radish? I told her if it was celery it would have snapped by now, but it did bring up (‘s’cuse me) an important question………….
…………….WHY RADISH
It all started in primary school, Salisbury Consolidated Public School to be precise. Why Consolidated you well may ask? Well it was a conglomerate of Salisbury Extension, St. Kilda, Bolivar and the original Salisbury Public. Why extension you also may well ask. Easy dear Watson, the extension school had to be built to accommodate the pupils from the families of the workers from the ammunition plant established nearby at the Penfield Plant later named LRWE then WRE. I was in the Extension until it closed and then had to go into town, a half mile walk, uphill in both directions, no shoes, all weather oh life was tough..
At the time there was a cartoon character named “Radish” a horse. I guess my surname was close enough to adopt the moniker as school kids are want to do. It started as a taunt, you know……Raaadish Raaaaadford, Raaadish Raaaaadford, Raaadish Raaaaadford, nah, nah na na nah.
Little pricks.
Anyway it stuck. Then my Dad got stuck with it and then my older brother and little sisters as they came on the scene. Nobody at the footy club knew which ‘Radish’ they were referring to and there was no Radish 1, Radish 2 etc, just RADISH.
As the kids from the primary school went to the same high school the nickname followed.
As the kids in the high school went to the Army Apprentices School the nickname followed.
As the well trained, fit and handsome soldiers went to the RAE Corps the nickname followed.
For the next six years it was Sapper Radish this, Sapper Radish that; until I started chasing sheilas, then it was big red Radish THIS, big red Radish THAT is soooooooo good, well you blokes know how it is.
Then nature took its course and the Radish took root (so to speak) and a whole row of radishes grew strong and healthy.
PNG and tok pissin gave up the nickname sumtin bilon cau cau. Which loosely translated meant I was a sweet potato. As there were more sweets in the LAD than the squadron I settled for Yam. SVN saw a return to the well established nickname of Radish either directly or via the radio net. “HOLFAST RADISH” .
I dropped the prefix RED, as that was who we were fighting. “Better dead than Red” as Frank Burns was known to have said, over and over and over. Finally my time in the green, root crop machine came to an end, and so did the nickname…………… BUT!................ do not despair. Or as the RSM would say…………………WAIT FOR IT!!!
After about five or six years of a real name, if Peter is a real name, one of our sales representatives came into the head office one day, saw me and said, “Good day Radish,” I just responded as always and said, “Who died and made you a weather forecaster.” Then it hit me; the bugger knew my nickname. It turned out that he had visited a Shire Council workshop down his Riverina way and the workshop wanker was an ex Army Apprentii who also went to the Boy Scouts back where I grew up and obviously knew the nickname.
Oh! ……….And bye the bye, the afore mentioned wanker? Well he was ex RAEME so that should explain his fat stomach, lack of tact, in-a –bluddy-bility to hold his piss without mouthing off, a need not to tub, loose lips and a cloth thingy he still wore on his head.
Yep. I still go by Radish at Squadron reunions and on e-mails, one of my sisters gets the moniker every once in a while, but she won’t tell me if she likes the red radish or not. Now lemmesee, I have a carrot headed niece, a carrot headed grandson, an ex wife who looks like a pumpkin, all my kids are string bean skinny, non of the grand kids will join the Brussell Sprouts (cos run by the Mormon church here), and the red radishes I have seen here are little round things, not the large, long red frightening rooter that was all the rage around Liverpool in the 60’s………………………..err ……………….1960s that is.
So I don’t want HH responding about all us being fruits and nuts, cos it’s obvious we are a deli of vegetables.
