A normal day.

When the forecast was for rain, it was decided to quickly put in some more plants. Two star Jasmines and a couple of Hebes had been bought the day before. Retirees often have time on their hands and planting things and gardening helps time pass. Helvi suggested a few times I go and visit a men’s club and pass time talking to men. I am not sure if she is not a bit fed up with me hanging around. I remind her I am retired and free to pass time as I see fit. ‘Yes, but you often take naps,’ she tells me. But I told her straight out that I always thought napping was a very proper and well known past-time for elderly, especially men.’

Anyway, I did try and join a Men’s shed. It was last year. I walked into a local Men’s shed and noticed a lot of carpenter and building equipment. Lots of different electric tools, bench- saws, drills, planers, even a welder with eye goggles. A few men were busy making things. My idea of a men’s club was a bit more Singapore-Raffles like. A kind of establishment with easy chairs and a raconteur holding forth on the benefits of retirement in Venice or Thailand. Anyway, this Men’s shed wasn’t talk friendly, with all the machinery whirring around. I noticed a large nervous rabbit in a small birdcage. His master was making a hutch.

I would not really know what to make. I remembered a good friend of mine who spent a fortune on all sorts of tools. He proudly showed me a small wooden box with a hinged lid for putting in and allowing sheets of Kleenex tissues to protrude. I advised that the obvious next home made thing could be a wooden toilet roll holder? Perhaps one could varnish it or even make it look a bit antique? Some years ago making things look antique was popular. The art of making antique has since been surpassed by ripping into brand-new furniture. The side-board or dining table with chairs is now deliberately hoed into, roughed-up, and smeared and wiped white. For good measure sometimes copper nails are banged into the furniture as well. It is to get this much desired French-colonial-farm-country-side look. Some combine this with huge hanging clocks also given the same genuine faux French treatment.

I did not end up joining a men’s club. Just now I dug some holes for the plants. They will be growing against the paling fence. I gave them some extra chicken manure. Today was just a normal day. It is raining now. But that’s alright too.

The spirit of Christmas.

My dad did not like garlic nor plastic flowers. Any devon sausage infused with garlic was not for him. Worse were the plastic flowers. Already then, plastic flowers and even plastic plants were a normal occurrence in people’s homes. ‘They last forever and look so pretty, almost like real flowers,”  many would say. Dad despaired about the country that so loved gardening, yet so accepting of that which wasn’t real. Is there anything else that is not real, he felt like asking?

Years later I worked for someone who had a holiday house at Palm Beach, North of Sydney. Avid readers of my blog might remember, my ruminating over my first visit to Palm Beach noting a total absence of waving palms. How  could anything be so blatantly wrong? Was this legal?

While in Palm Beach working, I came across a garden where the owner had actually planted plastic peace lilies (Spathiphyllum) in the garden. They were in full flower (perennially), a bit faded, but none the less flowering profusely. They weren’t real but that did not seem to bother the owner at all. I find that terrible. What else is accepted that is not real?

Recently, our local council has e-mailed all those with e-mail  asking residents for input about planning the future of this shire. This includes the planting of trees along streets. In the past many cherry blossom trees were planted which looked out of place. The profusion of pink cherry blossoms in Spring at odds with the beauty of the native Eucalypts and fiery  Callistemon.

This area is very dominated and historically been peopled by many from England. Ireland and Scotland. The highlands with its much cooler climate reminded many of the ‘old’ country and subsequently many tried to make their houses and gardens a bit like Sussex, James Joyce’s or Oscar Wilde’s hair,  or Edinburgh castles. Some  gardens have little rose covered arches. Cute white painted cement-cast angels keeping watch over equally cute cement toddlers reading a book together in dappled light of an aged oak. You can’t help but take out a Thomas Hardy book and then try find a yeoman…, a Timothy the Thatcher or perhaps do a tempestuous Pride of Erin at the local food court.

Yes, the council plants year in year out the same plastic Christmas tree. A large one in the middle of a cosy town square. It doesn’t  even look real. It’s plastic shimmering in the baking sun.    My dad would have written a letter  to council, back in 1974 but now it is 2015, almost on the cusp of 2016!

With all the love of gardening and asking for input, council puts up an artificial tree?  What has changed? Surely a live tree could have been put up or even a cut-down pine or spruce? Something real. Christmas deserves that. What an example to the children!

 

The Christmas tree isn’t the only plastic greenery council has put up. The shopping streets in the small towns have all been decorated with cute little baskets of petunias, but…they are plastic. Of course in cold winters one would not have petunias, so…it makes it worse. And…council is employing town-planners…asking for input from locals…? What is going on here? They know better in Bali or Thailand. Nothing plastic flowering there.

This year we bought a small tree made from small slats of sun- bleached driftwood. It isn’t real but it does not pretend (to be real).  Each year we normally take in a real conifer that we have growing in a pot. This year we thought it just too heavy to drag in. On the front door we hung a garland of intertwined wooden sinewy twigs which could also have been made from flotsam found along a Balinese beach. It is artistic and honest, unpretentious. In the middle of this garland is suspended a little wooden star ringed by very small electric little lights that go on as soon as it gets dark. Both look so nice and more real.

We will look at our driftwood decorations together and enjoy the Christmas spirit.

Love sex and looking ‘gummy’.

etching ‘couple’

The visit to a dentist is not high on the list of items of interest to the average tourist. One could not imagine anything worse that walking over the Rialto bridge in Venice and being racked by pain of an infected molar rearing its head. Of course, at the age some of us might be, still owning a molar, infected or not, is something to still be proud of. I still have several with some teeth to boast about as well.

It reminds me of an advertisement of a lonely widower in a Senior Community newspaper on the Mid North Coast town of Port Macquarie. I usually go straight to the back pages, where often the best of ads are hiding. The sort of ads that advertise people seeking love interspersed with ads for massages with ‘happy endings’ and ‘Rosie is waiting for you’, special rates for seniors! Even seniors are now targeted, an enormous market and growing. All this and more cranked up by the merchants of Venice with Viagra.

I just love going through those advertisement of what people still like to experience in the area of love and relationship. Here was an ad that I thought really showed the nous of an unstoppable senior not giving up to aging or possible flagging tumescence. “A 74 years old Male desires meeting a nice lady, NS, ND, NG ( non smoking, non drinking, non gambling) with a view to friendship.” He described himself a retired actuary with own home ( no doubt well insured) and own pension. He plays lawn bowls, collects tin toys and is also a NS, ND,NG man, with Christian values and with OWN TEETH. He also likes Sunday drives!

Now, that ‘own teeth’ really floored me. There are so many people walking around with plastic knees, bionic arms, cobalt jaws and prosthesis that can turn, twist and even ‘feel’, so, why worry about own or not own teeth? People go to Thailand and get whole sets of teeth implanted for the cost of a lawnmower at home. There are now over a million walking around in Britain that have 3 dimensional printed ears. That’s right, you can get an ear replacement made on a printer. But sticking to own teeth. Do you ask your newly met friend,’these are still my own, please tap them?’ It could be that he wanted a partner with own teeth, or, that he was a bit lacking in confidence, and thought he would put upfront a feature that might put him in a good and somewhat more desirable stead. Love works and twists in strange ways. Cupid fires it arrows to unseen and unknown hearts, even implanted ones that are regulated by batteries.

I wished him well and perhaps he did meet up with a lovely woman just as proud of her teeth. I suppose, the subject might well have broken the ice. It is of vital importance that those first few impressions are favourable. Did he smile as he walked towards the café agreed upon at Port Macquarie? When things do match, teeth eventually meet up, but of course, so do gummy mouths.

Does it really matter?

The Beach resort and large Stomachs.

Holiday fun at Port Macquarie.

We came back last Thursday from 5 days at Port Macquarie. It used to be a small town about 400 Km North of Sydney. Now it has grown into a large town with own airport and is overrun by hordes of sun and beach seeking tourists during the summer months, especially during the Christmas school holiday. We too went there as tourists and had booked a 3bedroom apartment. The building was called North-Point and bravely admitted to being a ‘resort’. The resort title was somewhat overstated. It did have a ping pong table and a pool with barbeque as a concession to recreational features. I mustn’t be too chagrined!

The apartments are being advertised as being air-conditioned and well equipped. The combination lounge-dining-kitchen did feature one of those wall mounted air conditioners. I seem to always be switching those types of air cons on and off continually. They blow cold air down on my knees at a rate that seems to vacillate at its own selfish will. Their remotes, as a bonus, are often incoherent with little things indicating mysterious options. The rest of the apartment had ceiling fans, a much preferred option. I like the reassurance of whirring fans. Perhaps seated on a cane chair one could easily drift into a Somerset Maugham at Raffles adventure. A kind of Razor’s Edge recall. In any case, with fans you can chose ‘low or high’, so simple.

Our five days at Port Macquarie, after reflection, made for a somewhat minor observation. Holiday makers, especially the beach and surf fans seemed to have grown in size! Our apartment was on the second floor of a ten story building. Each floor would have five or six entrances to other apartments. There was a continuous movement and shuffling in the corridors of people clad in skimpy bathers. Christmas holidays in Australia traditionally always included entire families on the beach and swimming. In earlier times, it was the rent of a sea-side cottage, the caravan or camping ground. Today, many seek Bali, Thailand, or, if staying home, go for the ‘resort’. Well, we chose the ‘resort with ping pong table’.

A much lamented complaint by overseas visitors in Australia is the lack of availability of Wi-Fi. Of that we were not disappointed. The resort did not have Wi Fi but did offer the name of a provider, who, for a cost, sold different packs of access to the Internet. We tried several restaurants but all offered no Wi Fi. Now, last time in Bali, the waitresses would politely ask if they could type in the Wi Fi code on your device, all part of the service. Same in Koi Samui- Thailand. North-point resort at Port Macquarie did not even gave an excuse. Of course, for us and our grandkids it was a bonus. Instead of tablet fiddling, it was swimming or table tennis, water slide and strawberry picking on a farm.

They, the tourists, came or entered the lifts all day till late in the evening. You could not leave the place without being confronted by swimmers. The lifts stated a maximum of fifteen people. Perhaps when this building was erected people were still of a moderate size. I felt like printing a sheet stating that 8 might be the maximum now. The bathers would have normal limbs but when the lifts opened up, one would be almost pushed aside by stomachs appearing first followed by the bather. There was no modesty, coyness, reticence or any kind of holding back. Why would they? Oh no, everyone was large now. It is normal. I am the freak in my long skinny RM Williams stock-yard jeans and heavy boots. Not them.

A good time was held by all. Daughter and grandchildren enjoyed themselves. I played table tennis and was surprised how my form had slipped. I used to always have a good way of putting enough spin on the ball for the opposing player to miss a return hit. All gone now. In fact, with my dodgy eyesight the ball slipped past the bat on a few occasions. How dreadful this matter of ageing. Still, I loved the salt and pepper calamari. The reason for large stomachs soon became clear. All day and at all hours people now eat. They eat while swimming, walking, driving, crossing the road, even talking. Entire streets, towns are taken up by roving eaters. You can almost even hear it.

Eating has become our raison d’être.

Me, no complain.

Violins and French Polish

Cupboard after French Polish.

A good violin player knows his/her instrument better than he does his or her toothbrush. So does the French polisher. It seems a ridiculous statement, but let’s examine it. Of course, the latter does not necessarily play a musical instrument but applies art just the same as the former. There are more details than just intimate knowledge of their toothbrushes that are similar.

The violin produces sound by vibrations caused by the bow made of horsehair striking or moving across strings suspended above a wooden soundbox. We all know that. However, the sound produced by horsehair strung across the bow needs a certain ingredient called ‘rosin’. This gives a certain resistance when striking across the strings of the instrument. You would be hard pushed to get a sound out without first having ‘rosined’ the bow’s hairs. Note the verb ‘to rosin’! Rosin is a solid substance mainly obtained from the resin of pine trees. I am fairly sure that a musician, especially a good one, knows how to direct his wishes onto the instrument just as much as being obedient to the instrument after sound has been produced. As always, a give and take in the kitchen of any creative act.

It seems odd that despite the violin being such a great and popular instrument, most of the great 19th and 20th composers have written just one violin concerto for this instrument. e.g, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Chaikovski, Dvorak, Elgar, Sibelius, Bartok. ( From Wiki)

Personally, I think Sibelius violin concerto the greatest piece of music ever written. I know it is a bit heavy and like most of his work, steeped in all things Finnish. You can indeed see the frozen sixty thousand lakes skirted by birch and spruce laden with snow. The melancholic and endless winter nights, but also the warm springs and loganberry filled summers, the simple and all artful that is Finland.

Here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsbrRAgv1b4

Let’s now go to the French Polisher and his art. I rattled on of resin for the bows of violins and other similar instruments. The French Polisher also uses a kind or resin called shellac. It also comes from trees but is actually produced by a beetle which deposits its excrement onto trees. Typically it is only the female beetle that does this. I don’t know why, perhaps it is supposed to lure the male. I would not be surprised seeing how many females stop at nothing to get a mate, even if it means the poor old male gets stuck on the resin and cark it. Anyway, this resin deposited on trees by the female lac bug in India, Thailand and China produces the major ingredient for shellac. Shellac when mixed with spirits is mainly used for French Polishes and food glazes.

Like a good violin player giving direction and responding to the instrument so does the French polisher direct and respond to his pad soaked in shellac. The shellac gives it the sheen but applying it makes for a certain drag or resistance like the rosin on the violin’s bow. It is an art of getting a ‘feel’ of just enough pressure on the timber surface, enough drag to leave behind the desired honey coloured sheen. Not enough or too much pressure and it fails to glorify. Applied too fast or too slow and it will not happen either, at best giving a mediocre result. It does need a bit more than experience to obtain a feel for this form of art. I suppose it is like that with all things creative.

A feeling and expressing it, giving it form.

I am not sure about the reference to toothbrushes. I am no Violin player, but can do a bit of French Polish.

Pancakes ( Our diabolical regression in the Art of cooking)

Of course, our eating habits have changed. Who would have thought mums now buy a plastic bottle with the advice ‘just shake it’? The ‘just shake it’ seems to be a prepared kind of pancake mix. I would imagine the intending cook fills up the empty space in the plastic bottle with milk and then ‘just shake’ it, with mixture ready for pancake making. It probably makes about five or six pancakes and at $ 1.85 works out at the outrageous price of 30cents a pancake, not including the golden syrup or jam on top. Perhaps the ‘just shake it’ has been embedded from a latent subliminal message from eager husbands pestering tired wives late at night. A clever use of product enhancement.

It must be back-breaking work to put flour in a bowl, and then add some milk, a couple of eggs and whisk the lot together and get the old fashioned pan-cake mixture for a quarter of the cost. Walking slowly past the supermarket’s shelves there were other similar products. A cheese in a tube, some powder that turns into instant mashed potato, but the most irksome of them all, and H is so sick of me commenting on them, are…simmering sauces. My eyes forever keeping guard on our dietary habits, I even spotted a kind of meat-spread in a tube. It was called, I think, devilish spread which came in mild and spicy.

Yet, again, I switched on the telly and it’s almost obligatory now to find and watch a cooking show. No matter what time, there is someone with eyes turned heavenly upwards, saying ‘oh, how yum’ or ‘wow’. Fresh ingredients are tossed together; fish, meat, snails, frogs are being infused, thrown about and cooked almost to the point of a kind of Le Mans’ car race.

It’s all very confusing. There are options in watching French, Italian; Spanish cooks either cooking away in their own country or in top restaurants in Britain. They seem so enthusiastic, you wonder if they have mattresses tucked behind those huge gleaming stainless steel stoves and just take quick naps in between the stacking of delicious looking char-grilled hearts of goats and noodles with infused ginger and deep fried shreds and strips of celeriac with chanterelle-shiitake mushrooms on giant plates.

Then there are culinary delights shown in Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, even Thailand. Fresh fish swimming, frogs are croaking and eels or snakes still slithering about. Within minutes it is all cooked and on the table with huge smiling families feasting away.

If pancake making is the only thing my grandkids will remember me by; so be it. It would be nice to have an epitaph on my pebble crete slab; “here lies the greatest pancake- maker” (but keep off the grass).

Cooking needs to be an act of love. You can never cook something in total indifference. When the kids are over, pancake making has almost religious overtones. Their own parents’ pancakes seem to lack ‘crispy edges’, I was told by Max who is the youngest of the three grandsons, adding, ‘they are alright though’, not wanting to dob in his parents.

It is not as if I swoon over every pancake but I do hand mix the dough adding water and pinch of salt. I use real butter and cook on two cast iron solid pans on high heat. When I gently lower the mixture into the pan, the edges frizzle and sizzle out into the much desired golden crispy and crunchy edging. While hot, I rush them over to the kids seated at the round table, fork and knife in hand and at the ready. I squeeze some lime juice and sprinkle a light dusting of sugar.

I leave the rest to them.