Guns before butter?

The latest news has us believe we are under imminent threat of being occupied by China. But, no worries. Australia at the behest of our mates the US is going to spend 380 billion on underwater boats which is supposed to check China in its track. For some time now we have been fed anti-China porridge with plenty of golden syrup. Some time back it was France that was going to supply us with those nuclear submarines, but that idea was scuttled when our previous PM, Scott Morrison leaked a text by the French President Macron much to the annoyance of the French. As has been pointed out before, much needed funds for aged care or public education seems to have been pushed back into the never never.

Some people far better with words than I have written some compelling arguments that should warn us not to follow ad nausea the US in its war mongering habits. Looking at their disastrous wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan resulting in millions of refugees, one would have thought it prudent to avoid following the US in agitating for another war with China.

You might like to read up on some facts instead of being swept up by propaganda.

Red Alert: news media ‘Sleep-Walking’ into US war propaganda

I quote some of those words from the above link by John Menadue.

“A Labor government has puts guns before butter… how extraordinary! Today, Pearls and Irritations has taken the unusual step of devoting our issue line up entirely to articles on the drive to war with China and the disastrous commitment of $368 billion dollars of Australia’s public funding to nuclear submarines.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced an extraordinary commitment of $368 billion dollars to purchase nuclear submarines designed for an aggressive war against China under the AUKUS arrangement. The submarines are not designed to defend Australia. They are designed to cooperate with the Americans off the China coast.

In return, Australia will receive submarines on the ‘never never’, some old hand me downs from Uncle Joe.

This follows an unprecedented propaganda drive in Australia’s major media outlets over the past year by American and Austral-American lobbyists to manipulate public opinion. The intent has been to manufacture fear and soften the public up for a commitment of taxpayer funding for massive weapons purchases from US arms industries, followed by an Australian participation in a US led war with China.

This fear of China has been manufactured in Washington to protect its hegemony. The US is not militarily threatened in any shape or form by China, and neither are we. But the US keeps goading China at every opportunity in the hope of China responding.

The US has a record of almost always being at war. It has overthrown countless governments and interfered in numerous countries. It wants us to join it again in yet another disastrous war.

Not since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the 20^th anniversary of which will occur on the 20^th of March 2023, has a US led disinformation campaign been so blatant, so openly misleading, and so successful as we now see.”

I mean, our aged care and hospitals are at breaking point. Schools and education are lagging behind on world standards. People are sleeping in cars and derelict houses.

Ho- Ho- Ho, It’s Christmas time.

Christmas time is always a bit of a trial. The expectations are so often overboard and I actually prefer normal times. Families can get together at all times but I do know and understand that for children Christmas and birthdays are always very special and often magical.

The magic of Christmas in my mind as a child was loaded with the atmosphere of  glistening snow and smells of spruce, almonds and home-cooking. It doesn’t really go well with heat, sands, smells of stale beer and verdant odorous armpits.  And the specialty of the oft revered mince pies is forever escaping me no matter how hard I try and swallow them.  The Southern Hemisphere lends it self much better to horse racing, coarse oaths renting through hot still air, sailing and vigorous tennis.

 We, as adults agreed unanimously not to give presents at Christmas time, and the children are now adults, although from last year’s Christmas’ memory, a deposit in their bank accounts was welcome.

Apropos, the last post, The French onion soup (with the brioche and gruyere) was very nice and we might well have it for Christmas as I have a formidable stash of it in the freezer. So far, Christmas is too far away to know where I will be.  Most times there are often late changes made depending on the ease of meeting up with my grandsons and their mother.  I have put up the twinkling little lights and they  look very pretty, the Christmas wreath is on the door and I might yet get a living conifer for Christmas tree.

 We shall see. I am sure it will be a good Christmas. 

French Onion soup.

This soup when using the right stock, is more of a way of life than a dish and yet there are people who have never partaken in this, nor shared it with neighbors or family. Yet, university studies have proven that those that came out of the recent lockdown most successfully were those that had regularly eaten French onion soup. Those that fared the worst were those on Mars bar, fizzy drinks and Big McDonalds entrails. It might be that in my enthusiasm for this dish I have before written about it, but so be it. I am happy to have shared in the return to normality from lockdown because of this soup.

Even though the main ingredients are 8 sliced yellow onions, the secret of the dish is mainly due to having the right stock, this can be either chicken or beef stock. Last time and well before Covid lockdowns when I made this dish I don’t mind admitting I ignored this advise of getting a good stock, and knocked together something from beef cubes. Mea culpa, it was a bad mistake and so salty that I had to dilute the soup with one liter of water and even than it was salty. People were polite and said it was ‘lovely’, but they drank a lot of water afterwards and there was also a steady stream to the bathroom with the associated noises of flushing toilets. I have three bathrooms with three toilets. Thank goodness for that. Anyway, that was my first onion soup. I did not dare mention the word ‘French’ then.

Yesterday I made yet another French onion soup and it was much better as this time I used a shop readymade beef stock. It is a good dish also because it takes at least 45 minutes to cook the onions, thinly sliced in some olive oil till soft after which you add two table spoons of butter and some garlic and bay leaves. The secret is to caramelize the onions which takes about one hour of constant stirring.  It does keep you on your feet. After one hour of stirring I added some dry white wine and a little sugar to aid the browning of the onions.

At that stage one can add about 8 cups of the beef stock which this time I used the commercial stock ready mixed. This then takes another hour or so of simmering. The finale is to dish it out and float on top of each soup dish French bread heated up in the oven topped with gruyere cheese.

I had some after I cooked it and while much better, I will hesitate to invite friends as it was still not as nice as anticipated and I did not want a repeat of toilet runs or thirst parched friends and visitors. My next move will be to make my own stock. You cook meat with leeks, carrots, onions and herbs and slow reduce it to about a liter of stock. I am so exited about the prospect of making my own stock.

This French onion soup is only as good as its stock.  

 

French Onion Soup.

These are real onions.

Before anyone thinks about making this soup I would like to stress that the main ingredients are onions. Without them I cannot see how a genuine French onion soup can be made. Going around the shops I have noticed that increasingly foods are being substituted by artificial ingredients. Manufacturers are  following demands, often by the newly-wedded, for instant foods that preferably can be put into squeezable tubes, not unlike toothpaste. Cheeses, some vegetables such as carrots, cauliflowers and herbs are now available in tubes that can be squeezed onto plates making for instant meals. I have yet to see onions in tubes but no doubt scientifically bent manufacturers are feverously working on that.

The secret apart from using real onions is in the stock and the art of caramelizing the sliced real onions. I peeled and sliced 6 brown onions and in a heavy red coloured cast iron French pot slowly cooked them with about 60 gram of unsalted butter for about 40 minutes, till the onions got that golden brown colour. I then added sliced garlic and thyme. (not from a tube!) My first attempt then by adding a Campbell 1 litre of beef stock and cooking it slowly for another hour was a bad mistake. It tasted too salty.

After almost two hours of stirring, cooking and not having Annette to console me, this disappointment was not easy to bear but I reared up and got an inspiration which you readers might remember if you too are making a faulty French onion soup. I took a colander and drained the salty liquide into the garden thereby saving the cooked onions.  No doubt the salvia will benefit from this added real fertilizer. I then rushed over to the Farmers Market in Bowral through storms, flooded roads and severe tempest and bought a Maggie Beer beef stock. Maggie Beer is an Australian food Ikon well known for her stocks and brilliant recipes. I added this new stock to the caramelized onions and added some bay leaves and this time it was perfect.

Of flooded plains

Of course on hindsight, it would have been better to make own stock by slow cooking a piece of cow with herbs and spices. Anyway, I put the French onion soup in the fridge together with a dozen rock oysters and a bottle of French champagne and now feverishly hope for the weather to turn sunny and thus enabling my darling Annette come and drive here, to sidle up next to me sampling the soup with gruyere cheese on toasted French bread, sip champagne while sliding the oysters down. And then some more!

It will be heaven on earth!

 

 

 

 

 

The words just keep on moving.

French sardines and my birthday cards

There has been a spell between the last time I wrote down some words in a certain order. The times just keep on going and for every intention to get back to write, something came between the intention and the words. The birthday was a main event but reaching 80 has now passed and it feels the same. I keep a keen alert on moments of forgetfulness or lack of instant recall on names.  Many people of my age I noticed now are doing crosswords and even cryptograms to remain sharp and alert. In my Bradman Cricket café group called Stumps, we help each other out onto remaining alert by recalling movies we might have watched with details of actors’ names, or special events that were shared in times gone by.

We all nod in pleasurable contentment we still know the details of war battles or the Queen’s birthday, the capital of former Rhodesia or what it means to have fallen down a ha ha. When I go through my garden I try remember the names of the different plants that were put in, and at times I do struggle with the instant re-call, but when I let it go, through the sheer magic of my brain, the name will suddenly pop up. So, all is good and still in order.

However, a serious slip-up came to the fore this morning. My usual wake up routine, (as if this is of any importance to you, my dearest and most faithful followers), is to go downstairs and ignite the heating systems, before hopping back into bed to wait for the comfort of a warm and pre-heated wave of air to greet my face. This usually takes about half an hour which is spend, while still in-situ under the blankets, by checking any dire messages or the latest Covid-19 fatalities on my iPhone. It’s not exactly reassuring knowing that those of advanced years are by and large most likely to be locked within the latest fatalities.

So, to keep this short and reverting to the slip-up. As I finally got up, had a shower and got dressed, I noticed after carefully ambling downstairs, that I had left the milk outside the fridge. Can you believe this? I might have told you that instead of sipping Shiraz I now have taken to drinking warm milk with honey. I take one in the morning and one before going to bed. I hope it is not a sign of slipping. Perhaps giving up the Shiraz was not such a good thing. Mind you, I buy the top label of milk named A2, and is twice as expensive as normal milk. It is the best milk money can buy but of course it is not Shiraz. I don’t get a buzz out of this top-milk no matter how much honey is in it. (12%)

Was it a mistake and should I go back to Shiraz?

A farm in Australia?

A continuing memoir.

Son Nicholas and a painting.

The first few weeks from our latest return from French farm-house mania, our friends’ patience would be severely tested and without letting up. Talk about an obsession. I just kept saying; ‘the stone walls in France were that thick’. And I would then demonstrate by spreading my arms as wide as I could. This would be followed by some remark denigrating the flimsy Australian domestic architecture. You know, paper thin walls made of gypsum plasterboard and fibros sheeting. ‘They are mere wind breaks’ I would continue, adding insult to injury or reverse. Helvi, would poke me in the side.

After a few more weeks of insults and self absorption, things would calm down. The photos of French farm houses would be stored away, not to be seen again till recently when the majority of photos that were stultifying and boring got thrown out. We are not photo lookers, and I can’t think Helvi ever took more than a handful of photos, even though she did have a camera. She would leave that to me.  I enjoy taking photos, especially now that you can see the result immediately.

I remember the excitement waiting for photos to get developed by the photo and camera shop. It would take a week to get hem back, and as for coloured ones; they were send off to Melbourne. The black and white photos were small and had serrated edges. How time and science has now all changed that. Instant gratification in photography is normal, and now the world keeps taking selfies, nauseating really, but I am guilty as well. Go to any public event and one sees a forest of sticks in the air with excitable tourists busy taking selfies. In the next second the picture is forwarded and looked at in Taipei or Amsterdam, immediately. Tourism is really people paying to go somewhere taking selfies and looking at their own  images with the country they are visiting of least importance or at best an extra. Amsterdam and Venice are now desperate to try and get tourism to scale back with the locals feeling they are being trampled upon.

The Australia farm

I am not sure when I suggested to Helvi we perhaps ought to think of making a move and buy a farm or country place locally, in Australia. It was during the latter half of the 1990’s. There was a kind of feverish ‘break away from the large cities’ movement when the term, city dwellers or townies were starting to be coined for those seeking an alternative life-style. A week-end farmer was another one. Of course the more serious of large scale farmers were called Pitt Street farmers, suggestive of landlords leasing out huge tracts of land for the cattle industries, often managed by real farmers running hundreds of thousands of acreages. The owners themselves were well heeled lawyers doing their utmost to lower their tax obligation while whooping it up in Sydney’s Pitt Street cavorting with crooks, souteneurs (сутенер) with their shady ladies of pleasure…

Is “Me too” overdone? Men are bad women are good.

The battle between the sexes has never been more at the front news than lately. Of course, the inclusion now of all the different sexes and orientations makes for even greater complexities. As if our cocooning inside Facebook and Snapchat hasn’t been enough to isolate us. Mind you, one can get even more assaulted within those media than in face to face realities. Words can be stronger than actions. Wasn’t there an ‘Anti Bully’ day not long ago? It seems almost all days are now taken by feel good and pro-active attention seeking slogans. We had a day for Breast cancer with soon after a day dedicated to those born a Woman, a Heart Disease day. We had a Same Sex Day. We have Earth-hour soon. Easter day is also looming. Did I hear a Haemorrhoids day being planned in May?

However, this morning my attention was caught by an article in the Guardian where an actor refreshingly confessed that she was grabbed, rubbed, groped and even farted upon without any regrets or life-long lasting devastations. Apparently the late Robin Williams had a penchant for those outrageous actions.  She claims to have enjoyed working with Robin Williams and never felt annoyed by him. ‘That’s just how he was,’ she stated.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/21/robin-williams-groped-flashed-me-on-set-mork-mindy-pam-dawber

What is behind all those legal actions now taken against the world of famous but shadowy men, going around touching knees, breasts or worse, as was the case with women being assaulted by Mr. Weinstein? Many women have joined the action and are now lining up as a group known as ‘Me Too’ to seek redress perpetrated upon them by rapacious men. What went so badly wrong? In the case of Mr Weinstein, we now know that outrageous things have happened. But, why? If the assaults were so devastating, why did it happen and seemingly allowed by the women?  And why did Weinstein feel he could get away with it? Did the women accept the behaviour for fear of missing out on a career in the entertainment industry? Some felt there was no option but to go along by it.  Were they unable to run away or tell him to F…* off, kick him in the crutch, report him? What made for all this powerless non action. And why, after many years, now the tears?

I can’t imagine the average Italian, or Dutch, Scandinavian or French woman to accept behaviour they don’t want. Why is this mainly a problem in the Anglo world? Women are being paid less, have less opportunities, are not equally represented in Governments and more unequal than in many other parts of the world. Look at the action of the Palestinian  teenage girl slapping Israeli soldiers in their occupied territory of Palestine.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-22/ahed-tamimi-palestinian-teen-who-slapped-israeli-soldier-jailed/9574716

Compare that with the sobbing tales of having endured unwanted actions of having been pushed or brushed  against by a bad man years ago.

Perhaps there are other reasons why so many ended being molested or groped. One reason that could lead us to find an answer is that in the English speaking world, very often girls and boys are brought up almost as if a different species instead of just children. The world of Barbie dolls clearly separated from the little brawny Football player. Sex segregated schools even at primary school level are not unusual in the Anglo world. Mummy does cooking with little Anny, but daddy goes fishing  or shooting with big boy Jagger. From birth, girls are often guided into the giggly feminine and boys into the harsher masculine roles. The betwixt and in between are not allowed to flourish, let alone encouraged.

Why is that so? Am I wrong?

What do you think?

A sigh of relief or is there more to come?

 

Getting up early is a habit that I indulge in each morning. Around 6.30 am the kettle is put on. The kettle is made of stainless steel, has a whistle and its water is boiled on gas. It is almost the first sound that is heard in this household every morning. The silver crested cockatoos are usually the first at that lovely honeyed twilight betwixt dark night and morn’s light.

It’s been three weeks now since I had my morning’s coffee. I swapped over to tea instead.  Helvi still insists on her first drink to be coffee. Making both coffee and tea each morning is a rather nice change from the earlier solo beverage routine. This morning was special. France had voted.

Anxiety always follows me in a symbiotic relationship. I am sure things would just not be the same if all went smooth.  That was one reason I jumped out of bed with a bit more than the usual sprightliness this morning. Watching last night’s news with Le Pen and its right-wing antics had me all keyed up. Last time I felt similar pangs of fear was during the Dutch elections when Geert Wilders was in the running. I felt most ebullient when he was dealt a mortal blow. But…France seemed a different kettle of poisson.

What joy, what relief greeted me opening ABC’s news. Marine le Pen was second. The other main parties will now back the Emmanuel Macron who came in first getting 24% of the vote. The new wonder boy is likened to Canada’s Trudeau. He is on the right  side of politics but in a refreshing twist is actually promising an increase in welfare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron

Just cop this!

“he is “neither right nor left” and that he advocates “a collective solidarity”

And what really attracts me is the following;

“In his book Revolution, published in November 2016, Macron presents himself as both a “leftist” and a “liberal … if by liberalism one means trust in man.”^[39] With his party En Marche!, Macron’s stated aim is to transcend the left–right divide in a manner similar to François Bayrou or Jacques Chaban-Delmas, asserting that “the real divide in our country … is between progressives and conservatives”. With the launch of his independent candidacy and his use of anti-establishment rhetoric, Macron has been labelled a “populist” by some observers, notably Manuel Valls, but Macron rejects this term.”^[40][41]

France does not suffer from the Westminster political system,  wherein any change is almost impossible to achieve seeing the aim of the British system is to forever try and knock the opposition out by endless warring and shouting from a chair high up ‘order- order.’

With the German right wing in retreat the world is again showing signs that xenophobia and fear of the foreign might be fading. I don’t know how we in Australia will go. At least this government is also getting on the nose, and I don’t think Pauline Hanson is making much headway anymore either.

I feel so much better now, and might even have a coffee again.

The drunken conductor and Bush. More hyphens.

As mentioned earlier a Pole had become a self-proclaimed taxi-driver. In Holland this would never ever be allowed to happen. It was an example of how one could become and have the freedom to initiate an independency without interference from higher up the Australian Bureaucracy. It was a heaven of freedom. However, on the way to the train I could hardly look the Polish taxi-driver in the face. I had observed his wife in the shower and seen her ‘bush’. The showers were sex separated but in the same block. I had already heard through the camp grapevine, that if you took the last cubicle adjacent to the female section, one could get a peek. Soon after, I too became privilege to that peek and had obtained another level of attainment in sexual observations. At that time I was the envy of aspirations held by many boys in their early teens. It was such a specific goal in growing up…I could now hold my head high.

Of course, today those things are observed in all its plucked colonoscopy chicken wing minutia on the Internet well before 15 years of age. Different times now, but far more erotic then. It was afterwards and with some guilt (always on automatic) I recognised the woman walking along the mess-hall. I could not look her in the eye. One can imagine going to the Polish taxi-driver’s hut when she came out. It was his wife that I had been viewing through the opening of the flimsy shower partition. A deep shame must have coloured me red…But, I was fifteen.

The train trip. We had all settled in the train. Mum was holding a small suitcase in her lap in which she had packed numerous sandwiches made from the free white bread and previously mentioned free fruit laden IXL jam. Those sandwiches would see us through the day and perhaps even on the trip back. Frugality would reign in this family through thick and thin but mainly thin. But, the rhythmic rocking of the train together with the pleasure of viewing the new passing landscape was interrupted (never to be forgotten) by the conductor wanting to clip a hole in all the passengers’ tickets.

There was something a bit odd about him. He had a dense smell and unfocussed eyes. ‘Show us your thickets or fickets’, he kept mumbling, swaying along while holding onto mum’s seat. We could not understand what he was saying but knew he might want our tickets. Even so, dad wanted to know and asked; ‘pardon?’ Pronouncing it in French. ‘Show us yer frucking thickest mate’, he persevered, now lurching dangerously towards my mum. She kept her suitcase firmly in her lap. We were by this time getting very alarmed. Were we about to be robbed or worse, was our mum and her sandwiches at risk? All of a sudden, the conductor gave up all pretence of soberness and just fell on top of mum and her case with sandwiches. We were all dumb struck. What was this? Someone said ‘he’s been on the turps.’ We had never heard of this term, didn’t know even what ‘turps’ was. A man who understood our plight gave the hand to mouth gesture indicating drinking. We understood quickly. The passengers helped the man up who stumbled back to his locket. We were so scared. In Holland we had never ever observed a drunk. A drunken conductor on a train? What would be waiting for us in Sydney? Lucky, that was the only incident but it was a great shock to us. We made it back home and the kind Polish taxi driver was waiting at the station. This time I was more brazen and felt that after the shock of the drunken train conductor, a mere peek of his wife in a shower was now an honest well-earned bonus. We had survived some difficult times and I needed something to cheer me up.

Whitby-Peterborough-Rotterdam-Bruxelles-Sydney.

The stay in London’s Shepherd’s Bush was during the time Holland won a World soccer cup or European soccer cup. Sport is not my forte, apart from a short stint of basket- ball playing, I generally have always ran away if a ball of any shape threatens to roll towards me. Of course at my age now, balls have given up all hope and never roll towards me anymore.

My Australian friend was really English and he suggested I could spend some time with his mum. His dad had died a few years earlier. Her name was Maureen and was living in Yorkshire’s Whitby and had worked as a Magistrate dealing with difficult English youth. The English seem to specialise in rearing difficult children. Already then, whenever a soccer match was being played on the Euro continent, the police forces were marshalled in by the thousands and lists of banned English fans were already in the making.

After a farewell to Lord and daily English bread pudding we took a train and after introduction to my friend’s mum settled in at a spare room at Maureen’s charming cottage at Whitby. She was a very chatty and jovial person and she drove me many times to places of interest. It included the beautiful East coast up and down from Whitby and of course we had ‘real smoked’ kippers for breakfast while viewing Whitby Abbey during lunch.

Whitby or Robin Hood Bay?

A few years before Maureen’s husband had died he had left her to live with a French women. According to Maureen they met while enjoying a week’s  stay in a Yorkshire -Dale bed and breakfast high up one of those breathtakingly beautiful hill tops that the area was so famous for. I had already heard this sad story of her husband’s philandering way with a ‘French woman’ from her son. He was less accommodating and reckons his dad had the happiest few years of his all too soon end of  life. ‘My mother nagged him to death’ was the rather merciless opinion about his mother. Even so, I was given the opposite story from Maureen.

During their stay in that B&B the father met this French lady who was asking for directions. Maureen told me that soon after many bottles of French wine were bought by her husband who, according to Maureen was much more of a beer drinker. I heard that a much clearer sign of husbands’ infidelities are the mysterious appearances of brand new underpants. No new underpants in Whitby though! She did not think much about it till out of the blue, he just left her to live in France with the French woman, leaving the French wine in her cellar next to her car.

She was still totally overwrought with this as we sat around for the few evenings I was there, she asked me if I minded drinking the French wine that her ex-husband had bought at the beginning of the ‘affaire’. “I can’t stand the sight of those French wine bottles” she added ever so sadly. It was amazing that her husband had so abruptly left his wife and mother of children on a whim, just like that! As we kept up the French wine drinking, she kept repeating her surprise and anger interspersed with much love and devotion for her husband still lingering after the passing years and his early death, in the words flooding out with tears of unrelenting bitterness and so much regret;  a conjuring act between much love lost and hatred fanned. Are they really that close?

A bay somewhere on the East Coast of Yorkshire.

After a few days with Maureen, listening to woes of a lost marriage while drinking her ex-husband’s, ( deceased and buried) French wine I ended up cooking her a nice tuna pasta before saying goodbye, and caught a train to York. After wandering and some sight-seeing I suffered terrifying pangs of being on my own, decided to return to Holland and Helvi and caught a train to Peterborough, booked a bus-ferry-train to Rotterdam-Nijverdal and stayed there with my mum as well. So that’s two mums within a bit more than a week.

The whole trip away from Helvi all took place with just a bit over three to four weeks. Before going home to Helvi and family, I travelled by train to Brussels of which the reason why, I have forgotten. It was a wonderful visit and as someone pointed out afterwards, the world’s best restaurants are found there. My money was short so I  used to walk around the streets of cafes and restaurants and just tried the fare for free, offered by the waiters standing outside the restaurants for passers- by to try out. I tried not to overdo this in case they started to recognize me (the third time around) as some kind of free- loader if not a vagabond. I especially liked the way some expert cook  had done the mussels on toast.

Brussels restaurants

From there back to Sydney and my Helvi. On return she reckoned the state of my underwear was ‘scandalous!’