goodbye to february and more stuff

The man with the van came again and took away lots more stuff. Yay. I have also done other things this month such as delete hundreds of emails, old homework and photos from the computer. I've also used up all the old chutneys and curry pastes and other sundry bottles from the fridge. Little things, but it all adds up. A long way to go still.

Day two of the birthday festival continues. Daughter and boyfriend are currently in the kitchen assembling butterfly cakes (pictured) for this evening's dessert. None of us have ever made them before so we are just making it up. Should there be jam in them?

the festival of [ insert name of child]

Kid's birthdays last for 3 days around here. There is a party tonight, and dinners on Sunday and Monday nights. The Actual Birthday is Monday, the first day of Autumn.
The baby pictured - nine hours old - turns sixteen.
I can't believe it!

the panels

Our house was built in 1964.
We moved here in 2005.
In that forty year period before we came, someone (or a few someones), really got into putting up timber panelling everywhere.

While I know you would have removed it, we liked it.
We painted it, so we didn't have to feel like we were living in a sauna.
It's nearly all Dulux "white birch/antique white" or whatever that shade is called now.
All except the laundry which is Cadbury Purple.
Even the outside has panelling - we invented this colour so it doesn't have a name.

This is not every room with panelling but, you know, this is enough to get the idea...

funny

Prior to this program* being on Channel Nine, I hadn't watched anything on it in years.

It ( the network) is so sleazy I feel like I'm watching an Adult Channel in a cheap motel.

Fortunately this program is also on GO! so I've just had my weekly hit.

Now it's back to either Sue Grafton or Madeleine L'Engle. Or a chapter of each.

*The Big Bang Theory

binge reading reviews and some advice please

A big week of reading for me. Finished Jasper Fforde: really enjoyed it but as the fantasy/sci-fi?/high comedy genre is not one I'm very familiar with, I did tend to get a bit confused because there were so many characters and flights of Fforde's extraordinary imagination on every page.It was hard to keep up with all the ideas: I think he is quite brilliant. The book became a bit Soylent Greenish and grim towards the end.There are going to be two more novels in the sequence: more adventures of Eddie Russett and Jane Grey - excellent.

"Grave secrets" I simply raced through. The mystery of the missing sister was solved and the outcome not predictable and quite shocking. I loved this little series and hope there will be more adventures of Harper and Tolliver, even though Harris finished up in such a way that this could be the end forever, it is hard to say if she'll keep going. I hope so.

"The other family".... Hmmmn. The character I most liked was the fat kitty called Dawson - I would have preferred more of him and less of the ghastly, vindictive and petty Chrissie and her three horrible daughters. I kept reading, hoping against hope they would all fall under a bus or something. What a nightmarish dreadful role model of a mother Chrissie was... do people really behave like this? Would love to know if anyone else has read this yet,it is only just out I think. Question: when did Joanna Trollope start hating women so much? I give it a score of one out of ten, for the kitty, and because now I know about Newcastle in the UK so I learned something new.

And now some advice is needed. I never purchased Stephanie Alexander's "Cook's Companion" when it came out in 1996 because I already had many cookbooks with basic recipes. I've borrowed it from work half a dozen times in the last couple of years though, when my books have lacked a recipe I want to make, or I want to fiddle with an existing one, I do check Stephanie's version.Last year her "Kitchen garden companion" came out, a beautiful book I AM going to buy - I didn't last year because we were saving every spare dollar to go overseas and I couldn't justify the expense.

I have the work copy at home currently, just last night I read Stephanie's opinion on whether Warrigal greens need to be blanched before eating (yes, she says). I was adding them to a curry.

My question: do others have the first book and is it worth buying if you already have a small library of cookbooks? And you are more than a basic/ beginnery cook?
I know lots of youngens swear by it but possibly it is their only cookbook?
Thoughts?

Note: the pictured tomatoes were not grown by me, but a gift from a work colleague. They taste wonderful and the colours are lovelier than a bunch of flowers, sitting as they are in the kitchen window.

bye bye gorgeous

I bought very little when on holidays, but couldn't resist this Doctor Who calendar:



Watched the last episode by myself, on the couch, clutching a pillow, tearing up again and again. Sigh.

The new Doctor is too young and his head looks too big.

really big art

I've known about the existence of the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park for ages, but it's one of those places that just seemed a little bit out of the way to visit for a Sunday afternoon outing. That was until the Eastlink freeway opened with an on-ramp about five minutes from our front door. One kid was out for the day and the other was "too tired" to come, so we got to go out on a date, just we two. Unusual.

The freeway is kind of ugly but some money has been spent on impressive public sculptures placed along the roadway, which livens up the journey. This is my favourite, "Hotel" by Callum Morton ( not a photo by me, just lifted from the Eastlink press release about the art, but you get the idea):



Then when you reach Langwarrin, just next to Frankston, there is lots more Big Art in the sculpture park, which is a bushland setting of 16 hectares. There are at least 70 outdoor sculptures you can walk around and look at,made by Australia's most prominent sculptors.

It is wonderful.









There is also an indoor gallery which had a show of "twilight landscapes and coastal scenes" by the painter John Ford Paterson, this was lovely but the sculpture outside is the main attraction. There seemed to be a cafe also but there was a book launch or official opening or something going on in it with dozens of dressed up types milling about so we gave that a wide berth.Happy to have a water bottle in the car and a cup of tea and some banana cake at home.

spoiled

Today I met up with a friend who lives in an Owlish sort of house:



I haven't seen her since getting back from holiday and she gave me some pretty things for my birthday. They are already hanging up on the wall. Here is one:



She has very good form, giving gorgeous gifts.
Look at the biscuit tin I received at Christmas. Ladybirds!



Thank you, dear S.

too many magazines

I have a long history of buying magazines. Girly English comics when still at primary school, things like Princess Tina and Jinty! Later - Dolly magazine, then Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Tatler and Harper’s Bazaar (UK). For a couple of years I was obsessed with American magazines after going to Hawaii for a holiday (Glamour, New Woman, Vanity Fair). Bought our first house in 1988, then added all the Lovely Homes mags to my reading. Also gardening magazines and Grass Roots when I started gardening in earnest.
I even, heaven help me, bought a couple of Bride magazines when I was getting married and a couple of baby type magazines when I had the first one.
I think at my worst in about 1990 ( in my twenties, just married, renovating) I was probably buying a glossy something every couple of days.

The last four or five years I have subscribed to one magazine per year – all of them housey/ decorating/ garden/ countryish/ foody things ( I was still buying others too, but not in such high volume).

Interestingly, with every magazine, by the time the subscription was ending I was sick of them, barely reading them and would then cancel for the coming year.

Last year I subscribed to an overseas one after buying it a few times over the counter.

When the sub started it had lots of retro-vintage-op shoppy type decorating, interesting recipes and , groovy do-able gardening. Then after about 3 months they sacked the editor and the focus changed and I knew ( for me) the magazine was doomed. Sure enough, it instantly became the sort of publication where the people featured said things like, oh our renovating budget was $80,000 and blew out to $250,000 but it was worth every cent! And the boring houses featured were just open plan 40 square nightmares full of new stuff bought by people with too much money and no creativity or style.

At the same time, my Dad had his stroke, slid quickly into dementia and life in a nursing home and died at the end of November. The magazines, looked at briefly once during the madness of my life last year, piled up in the bookshelf. I bought other different ones at various times, again, I’d read one article and add them to the pile. In December, I let the magazine subscription expire. Last weekend, I collected sixty or so magazines from around the house and started working through them. Mostly I can’t even think why I purchased them. Some favourite themes in a few, but why I've purchased others – no clue.

This year I’m giving up on magazines. I don’t read them so it is a crazy waste of money. Especially as work buys every magazine I used to read (guess who has added their old favourites to the library subs when review time comes up every year, and we are all asked for suggestions?) Anyway all the magazines are right there if I want them – which I don’t. I just have no interest any more. I prefer reading blogs and newspapers and bits and pieces on the Internet and now I’ve discovered The Design Files blog I’ll never have to buy Lovely Homes again.

back-from-camp-cake

This afternoon, Year 7 son returned from a short school camp. He is a home-loving(like me) boy and I know being constantly surrounded by people and noise and stimulation for a few days wears him out (also like me). I loved the way he came home and went straight to his room, listened to music for a while, looked at his books and the stuff on his desk and just quietly unwound.

I made an old reliable cake yesterday, which we all had for afternoon tea today.
(Cookery The Australian Way recipe, Foundation Butter Cake, plain.)
The icing is pretty slap-dash because I did it at eight o'clock this morning.

Daughter and her friend ate big slabs too. They are not like some of the girls in their year level who would NEVER eat cake. Only a mini lemonade icy-pole thanks, with a cigarette chaser. True.

fat tuesday

Shrove Tuesday /Pancake day / Fat Tuesday ( I think I like the last one best).
In the last couple of days the light and shadow in the garden has changed.The days are warm but it's cool in the morning when I water the vegies. I look for it every year. It's only February, but I can feel Autumn in the air already.

just remembered Adam Foulds

My "books I have read" list skipped over "The Quickening Maze" without any comment about it. It is a novel based on real events, concerning the patients and some staff at the High Beach Private Asylum in Epping Forest, on the edge of London. Set in 1840,the chief characters are the asylum's doctor Matthew Allen and his patient, nature poet John Clare. The Asylum is run on reformist, modern principles with the family living freely with the inmates, who are treated humanely rather than as if they were criminals, as was once the norm. Without giving too much away, I really enjoyed the brilliant characters portrayed here, fully realised and very flawed. Some are portrayed in one light and then as the story progresses, they are revealed to be completely different from first impressions. The book is not sentimental or politically correct about the really dreadful mental illness suffered by some of the inmates, and is therefore quite confronting.

I hope to finish Jasper Fforde tonight or tomorrow, and then will race through "Grave Secrets" which at last! came in for me today. Then on to Joanna Trollope which has 17 reserves on it and is due back on February 24. So a few days of intense reading ahead. Lovely.

we love him

David Tennant appears for the second last time as Doctor Who on the ABC this evening.
Across Melbourne, middle-aged women everywhere will weep.
Well, I will.

a bit arthurian

After I was sick last week, when I felt up to looking at books, I sat staring at paintings in a couple of art books on Renoir. When we were overseas looking at galleries, the Renoirs moved me to the point of tears. Particularly this one in the Musee D'Orsay:



Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

The light and shade and colour in this painting has to be seen in person. It simply shines.

Another book I love to look at and borrow once or twice a year from work is this:



Carl Larsson's watercolours of his family life in Sundborn in Sweden have made him Sweden's best-loved artist. The colour,the reds and greens,are so dynamic, and the house interiors and detail fascinating. We have lots of 70s sauna-ish panelling in this house - now painted white - so this book inspires!

When I was well enough to concentrate again I read Susan Cooper's "Over sea, under stone", the first in the five part "Dark is rising" series. It was exciting, tense and I'm looking forward to the other four books in the sequence. It made me very nostalgic for my only other association with King Arthur: Rick Wakeman's record from 1975 - The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
My sister and I were obsessed with this record and listened to it endlessly. I think Merlin the Magician was the track they played on 3XY - yes, I'm THAT old!
I bought this CD from a recycle shop a couple of years ago, and have listened to it with enormous fondness a couple of times this morning while pottering around.

Now I've added T.H. Whites' "The Once and Future King" to my mental "to be read" list. It's never going to get any shorter is it?

The other book I've started is Jasper Fforde, "Shades of Grey". Just so clever: combine Brave new World, 1984 and high comedy and you have it. Quite dark undertones too. My only problem with Fforde ( and possibly it's because I'm still a bit unwell) is keeping up with the cast of thousands and who they all are. I'll be reading away and think, hang on, who IS Bunty McMustard? (I've forgotten.....) Can't wait to see how it all ends, it is fascinating.

op-shop show-off

Things have been all quiet on the op-shop front around here lately. Partly because when you are in throwing-out mode, you don't want to ruin all the good work you've done by filling up the empty spaces with more stuff.

The other reason is that I was spectacularly un-successful in my forays into op-shops overseas last month, and I think it has put me off my game a bit.

I came across MANY op-shops in England (I do have a radar, it's true):
three in Bath,four in Stratford, and four in the Knightsbridge-South Kensington part of London. Even found one in the Stanley Markets area of Hong Kong. None in Paris - walked passed a beautiful second-hand shop in Rue du Bac on the way to the war museum. There was a tiny painting of a bunch of old roses displayed in the window - would have bought it regardless of the pain of transporting, or the cost. The shop was closed until the middle of January so we were long gone by the time it re-opened. Oh well.

I'm digressing. All the English op-shops were Oxfam, or in aid of other charities and called things like "The Dorothy Perkins Hospice Shop", and they were all extremely up-market and kind of expensive. For example - sweaters: seven or eight pounds, skirts for five pounds. The books were amazing - only a year or two old, looked brand new.
They didn't seem to sell kitchen stuff, or old pillowcases or any china except for a few very new looking items. I'm wondering if they are bound by health regulations of some sort? In Bath, I bought a copy of Austen's Northanger Abbey because it was fun to read it there and I didn't have a copy at home. My daughter bought a little M&S cardigan for four pounds, also in Bath. But there were none of the fuggy, slightly dusty treasure houses you find in the Melbourne suburbs.

The op-shop in Knightsbridge near Harrods was hilarious. There was a Chanel suit in the window (no price, the only person it would have fitted is someone as tiny as little Kylie Minogue) and a pair of Jimmy Choo sandals inside for a hundred and forty pounds. Only one shoe was out, you had to enquire about the other, in case of thieving I suppose.

Probably the reason I wasn't looking at clothes is that you lose interest in trying on when you are wearing five layers to keep warm. Yes, I was, and I was warm.

So I'm thinking I was due for a win when I went out op-shopping today.
Paydirt.

3 Kathie Winkle cups and saucers for TWO DOLLARS (total). The drought is broken!
A set of Willow tin kitchen cannisters for $20.
A handful of books, too.
Excellent.

you have GOT to be kidding

Happily, I was rostered to weed a bay of fiction when I was on desk this afternoon.SMIT to ZURA, if anyone is interested. Did my usual slash-and-burn through the books, finding quite a few interesting ones that tend to get overlooked because it's the end bay and a bit squashy in there, so I put a whole lot out on display, where they were soon snapped up. I also found a novel called "Three bags full ( a sheep detective story)" by Leonie Swann. In brief, the detectives are talking sheep and their shepherd is murdered. According to the blurb, this book is being translated into sixteen languages.

*

*

*

No, I can't believe it either.

vegetable love

Around this time of year, always about two months too early, I start thinking about the Autumn/Winter vegetable garden. A nice ritual is going through the seeds, seeing what I've already got hanging around.



I can't do anything rash yet (like pull the garden apart) as the ignored summer vegetables are still looking good. Self-seeded tomatoes and pumpkins ( no fruit but I can live in hope),cucumbers, zucchini and basil that was put in the day after we came back from holiday. My first bush tucker, the Warrigal greens, are thriving and went into a curry the other day. All the herbs are doing well, and the passionfruit vine has lots of green fruit. The big rhubarb plant is going gangbusters and even the two little six month old plants are coping.

I am a very messy vegetable gardener and it drives my husband a bit distracted.
I have things planted in the style of a perennial garden, with different leaves, flowers and foliage mixed up like a paint palette. He prefers neat, orderly rows of vegetables. When he was chief gardener years ago the vegie garden was immaculate. Because I am now in charge, as I have the time to plant, weed, and whatever and he doesn't, I have it the way I like but I know he struggles with it. In my defence, apart from the look of it - softer, and you don't notice if you pull out a lettuce or whatever leaving a gap, because everything is so blousy and voluptuous - it is better for insect control. I read something once by Jackie French who said planting vegies in lines was like providing a runway for insects to travel from plant to plant, but mixing things up confuses them. I like the sound of this very much ( and I have no bugs on my plants, except the odd snail so maybe the theory is right).




I'm also a great believer in planting by the cycles of the waxing and waning moon which produces more vigorous disease resistant plants. You can buy calendars from places like Digger's seeds if you want to try the theory. I know this makes me sound quite batty but believe me, it works!



These are Warrigal greens / New Zealand spinach. I want to try planting more and different Bush tucker this year.

the lost weekend

On Friday morning I was in the bank at about 11 a.m. Everything seemed to be taking too long ( three separate things, not too involved),when I suddenly realised I was excusing myself to cough, oh, about every three minutes or so (was in the bank for about 45 minutes all up).

When I was walking back to my car I was thinking,gee, I must have been sitting in a strange way, all those pains shooting up and down my back are odd.

In the fruit shop, I could absolutely not make any sort of decision or judgement about the fruit to buy for my mother, who was coming out of rehab ( new knee, not drug or alcohol related) so I just left the shop empty handed. Getting into the car again I was shivering and shaking and thinking, even though it’s 21 degrees , my but it’s cold. At home, I ate a roll I didn’t want(it tasted like cardboard)because it was 2.00 p.m and I’d had breakfast at 7.30 a.m. and surely I should be hungry by now?

My husband telephoned to ask me something and we had a strange disjointed conversation ( accompanied by coughing) and he said, you sound really unwell are you feeling alright? I realised then I was feeling horrendous and had been for some time. When you are lucky enough to be a person who feels really well nearly all the time, you tend to not recognise sickness because you’re not looking for it.

I hung up the phone and went up to bed in a daze, after popping a pill for the headache, from all the coughing. For the next couple of hours I dozed in bed,wearing bed socks, and a jumper because I was shivering all the time and could not get warm (later I was breaking out in sweats) The kids came home -I spoke vaguely to them, half went back to sleep until 5.30, then started up realising my daughter needed to be taken to work,about 10 minutes drive away,had to be there by 6.

Just as I was looking for keys, thank goodness my husband walked in an hour early so he took her to work, then went to get a prescription filled for me. You see, my husband had this exact lurgy 5 days after we came back from holiday (he got a much worse dose than me and the doctor gave him a repeat prescription which he hadn’t used up so now I am).
I had a bit of dinner in bed and slept for a long time, gathering my strength for Saturday because I was working and knew I would never be able to get anyone to replace me at the 11th hour because we never have enough casual staff to cover the I- desk on weekends.

On Saturday I tottered in to work and the team I work with were fabulous, so I got through what I had to - the last bit of the afternoon dragged a bit but I managed, kept manically disinfecting the phone and pens and computer keyboard with the stuff we were given by management when swine flu broke out in Melbourne last year. Stayed at a distance from the others. Home to a quiet evening and early bed, we had to cancel a dinner out with friends which was really annoying because we were all looking forward to it. My husband had done this on Friday evening, knowing that after working I would be a basket case.

On Sunday , still coughing (and am still) but my head was better after sleeping most of the afternoon. I don’t like being sick, it is such a waste of good reading time. I have looked at books with pictures and flicked through a few more but with a woolly brain it is hard to function at my usual clip.

sick

have spent many hours in the last 36 just lying here looking out the window (door).or sort of sleeping.
very peaceful, despite the coughing. goodnight.

what I'll be reading for the next few.....years

Stupid, I know, to have so many books sitting around taunting me to read them, but in my defence, I can have SEVENTY items on my library card and this pile falls well short of that.

This is the order in which I think I'll read the novels. (After I finish Adam Foulds, which is brilliant).

1. Over sea, under stone - Susan Cooper.On my "to read" list forever. Now I'm doing it!

2.Shades of grey - Jasper Fforde. Loved The Eyre affair, and the nursery crimes novels (The big over easy and The fourth bear) even more. They defy description, his novels. You need to read them.Crazy.

3. The other family - Joanna Trollope. In my early 30s when I was at home with babies I devoured all JT's novels. Either she's gone off, or I've changed too much because I haven't thought much of the more recent ones. I'll give this one a try. Heavily reserved at work.

4. Torn apart - Peter Corris. I have real soft spot for Cliff Hardy, Corris's Sydney detective and tear through each one.

5. Jar city - Arnaldur Indridason. I want to read the older books about the Icelandic detective.

6. The glass room - Simon Mawer. I seem to be reading my way through last year's Man Booker shortlist, this will be number 4.

7.Never let me go - Kazuo Ishiguro. A friend raved about this.

8.The story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor. Read his "Love and summer", so would like to read more of him. This also applies to:

9. Fatherland - Robert Harris - (read Pompeii)

10. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (read The virgin suicides)

Tomorrow: the non-fiction. I'm coughing and have a sore ear. Need to lie down with a book or ten.

flustered

This word best described my son after two days of high school. Day 1 was fine,Day 2 required a quick dash up to school before the locker area was secured for the night because he got hopelessly muddled about the difference between a workbook and a text book. His sister got him sorted. There is so much to remember for a year seven - notes to have signed, rooms to find, names to remember. As he said wistfully, primary school is SO EASY, everything in one tub in your one room with one teacher.I'm just smoothing everything down and accommodating any whim this week, and his favourite dinner (spag carbonara) tonight.

Happily,today, Day 3, he told me he was in a group of "ten new friends" and they hung out at lunchtime. Forget the academic stuff, this is all I want to hear this week.

I am flustered in a good way. I stupidly reserved all my heart's desire for reads in the next month or so, and they all arrived on my desk today. I have nearly finished Adam Fould's "The Quickening Maze" so tomorrow I will go through the dozen or so I now have stockpiled.

no, I don't like the heat either, Shady

...so stop looking at me like that.

mother's new year

Forget January 1, since having school aged children my new year starts on February 1 when they go back to school. Always such a happy day, that one where they are back to routine! If I was a stay at home mother I would be having friends over and cracking open a bottle of something. As it is, I'll be off to work and slaving over a hot book or two, hoping that my very, very nervous year 7 is having a reasonable day. His sister kindly said to him this morning, "don't worry, you'll probably want to cry every night when you get home this week - I did - it's fine".

I'm going to take a shorter lunch today and be home for the day's de-brief and possible meltdown....