Christmas and Social Intercourse.

With advancing years do we shift into different modes of intercourse? Does it move upwards from the nether regions to a more upper or higher region? Do our vocal chords get more involved. Do we say less aaaahhhs followed by a couple of innate grunts and actually (but finally) articulate ideas, thoughts, wishes, memories or,as in my case, just nonsense?  Has it come about we look each other in the eyes instead of below the belted regions? It is never too late.

For some time now an elderly couple have tried to include us in their lives. They moved almost next door to us about a year ago. She is Australian and he is from Dutch background. The husband has an even stronger accent than I and is over eighty years old, but walks ram-rod straight. He also talks in a rather straight and factual manner. No flourishes or decorations in what he says. You know precisely where you stand with him.

Their invitations are rather formal on a printed card with time and programs and included were; A discussion on our ‘heritage’, followed by a video and the consumption of some finger food. When they knocked on our door, the husband wore a neatly pressed shirt and pinned to it was a card with ‘Elder’ written on it. The wife had a similar ticket with ‘Sister’ on it. A curious way of inviting the neighbours. Still, a brave invitation is better than none. Husband and wife called ‘Elder and Sister’ is not an everyday occurrence. Calling Helvi ‘Sister’ is not something I have as yet tried.

However, apart from the somewhat unusual invitations, I also suspected there was more to this ex Dutchman and his wife the Sister. It all seemed to have a religious tinge to it. It is all far too late for me to get converted. (Once an un-repented fornicator, always a fornicator). All this was confirmed by the last invitation to a special meeting at a building near Bowral. It was a “latter day Saints” and the couple are Mormons. I looked up Mormons and couples are deemed to wear special underwear and other things. They are genuine and nice people. The wife is especially nice and not without a sense of humour. Even so, we did not to go any of their invited parties or events. I am not going to bed with special underwear or any other sin-avoiding attire. I like sin, but even if it is getting less, I don’t as yet have totally repented or given up on it.

We both hope we can meet with the couple but not on the formal religious level. Just normal, you know. But what constitutes ‘normal’?

We had our grandsons over with the usual towering pancakes hovering over the table. The kid’s IPhones’ batteries thankfully went dead. I had put the skateboards and basket ball outside before their arrival. After the initial coming-down from IPhone addiction and a bit of grumpy fighting they took off for the park and we did not see them for a while. It was so nice.

Yesterday we were in Sydney at the annual Christmas Balmain party. It was great. I am now so deaf that any attempted conversation constituted normally with nothing more that the usual questions being answered (by just the 50% chance of being right) by either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’  an added inclusion of,  ‘ I think that is an interesting concept.’ Under the circumstances, with so many people talking in a confined space, it was a rather nifty inclusion. I was doing really well.

I love social intercourse.

(News update.)

“A suspected drunk driver who crashed his car into a metal barrier has attempted to evade police — by hiding in nativity scene.The incident occurred in Yorkshire, England”

 

 

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!’

Rhubarb; a Crumble or Pudding?

Excitement is mounting in this Bowral household. The rhubarb is on the ‘cusp’ of turning into a ‘crumble’. We have had the debate about what the differences are between the delights of puddings and cakes. There is now a new girl on the block; the ‘crumble’. (The word ‘cusp’ seems to have sprung up suddenly and conquered the world within days. In 2012 it was all the rage with ‘new paradigm’. Everyone all of a sudden wanted to ‘find’ their ‘new paradigm’. I lost mine in George Street, Sydney. No one has found it even though it had my name scribbled on it with Mob phone nr.)

Apropos pudding, cake, and now crumble, the debate still rages around the world from Gibraltar to NY city, Mexico to Sydney what the differences are. It is now generally conceded, even acknowledged, that one is steamed or boiled while the other is baked. A Christmas pudding is steamed or boiled in a cloth like other puddings. What about Yorkshire pudding? (steamed in a cloth 😉 ) There is black pudding in a net or cloth, and in the case of G getting an invitation years ago in Whitby to go ‘out for pudding’ this meant a cup of tea with a muffin in a sea-side Tea establishment. Kippers at Whitby was something totally different, it was neither. For a Europhile it remains all a bit like cricket, very esoteric.

The stalks of the rhubarb in our garden are still green. Helvi reckons not all rhubarb turns red. Last year it was green too. I then made a delicious crumble with apple, some muesli and lots of butter. The apples were the green ones, very tart but snappily juicy. The addition of cinnamon and a couple of cloves did add some spice although H reckoned the cloves were a bit over the top.

Anyway, the word crumble must indicate the looseness of it all. It crumbles. I am sure no-one could call it a pudding or cake. I have seen it being called a pie. I don’t know. I suppose there are meat pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies, mince pies, why not rhubarb pie?

Yes, I googled rhubarb and the stalks can be green, green fading into pink or bright red. It is a fact of varieties and not of age or soil. Anyway, all stalks turn green when cooked. What a revelation!

I am struggling trying to make this tale amusing but I am not sure if rhubarb lends itself to humour as in lost socks or the profoundness of Pierre Cardin’s lost pyjamas, the pathos of a little boy’s lost train ticket.

Last night we had dinner at the local Royal Hotel. My favourite was on the blackboard ‘fresh pepper calamari’ with H’s choice being the ‘flat-head fish fillets and stringy chips’. A bottle of fine white ‘The Royal Chenin blanc’ in an ice bucket made it to our table as well.

Both meals were honest without pretence or concerns if they were puddings or cakes. I now will look at my rhubarb cooking results tomorrow and will call it either a cake or a crumble depending on its consistency. A cake, if it stays together, or crumble, if it crumbles. However, if it is all runny I leave the option open to call it a ‘slushy’
The RHUBARB SLUSHY.
It will take the world by storm. Phew…I made it!

Borgen :11 out of 10

Borgen; 11 out of 10.

You can’t go past a good series of Danish TV. Not long ago we had ‘The Bridge’ and ‘The Killing’, which I believe was a Swedish-Danish Co-production. It was riveting TV watching and we were counting the days when it would be on again. The pepper-crackers would be out and the Stilton cheese with the Shiraz brought to room temperature together with my ear-phones. Those earphones were superfluous. The series were translated in English sub-titles but I wanted to hear the Danish language. Dutch and Danish are brother languages, (or sisters for the pc readers of this blog).

What makes these series so extraordinary is the ordinariness of it all. The prime minister lives in a modest house with the dishes piling up at an overflowing kitchen bench top, husband walking around in his singlet and their children wanting to eat Coco-pops for breakfast. She goes to work on a pushbike without wearing a helmet, and seems to have no security concerns. Husband of the PM and mother of their two children seem to have the best of a most normal of functional marriage. The odd thing is, in most of the Northern European governments, the Borgen treatment of PMs (and their royal families), it is not that far removed from reality.

The TV show apparently was difficult to obtain in the US with claims by competing commercial TV stations of piracy. I believe in California people can now see the series legally. It seems that the differences of political systems and the holders of power between the US and Denmark were seen as almost un-transferable in a TV series and, that at least in the US ‘normality of politics’ is hardly ever residing in a world of being ‘normal’. No president would go to the White-House on a bicycle and would probably have to go through numerous security cycles to just buy his wife a bunch of flowers.

The Danish TV drama shows how the PM can remain herself despite having risen to the highest office. She remains cool and normal and the series is not blown up in grandiosity like so many American dramas such as West-Wing, Homeland, and House of Cards. There are no lines of limousines or black-clad security lurking on roof tops with machine guns at the ready or hovering gun-ships overhead. No one is seen talking into their sleeves or wear Polaroid sunglasses.

The Danish way on thorny issues and legislations are resolved or passed with the parties sitting around the table sipping coffee and making sensible compromises within minutes. The Danes have a serious addiction to caffeine. What I would not give for our Australian politicians to behave like that!

We had just about given up on TV watching when Borgen rose up like Phoenix from ashes, none too late. The urgings of funeral insurances advertisements and the manic laughter of so many comedy trailers got us so depressed our intake of Stilton with Shiraz almost doubled. True, the Ancestry.com.au kept us going but soon waned when most of people restlessly searching for their ancestors ended up teary and overwrought when it was found out, their great, great, great, great grandfather had succumbed to whoring and a dose of the clap with blindness to dear Aunty Betty at birth in 1789 in Yorkshire to have been a result of all that.

We soon came to switching off the telly and just sat amongst the crackers and cheese, talked or did the after dinner washing up instead.  Not anymore now though. Another five days and Borgen will be on again.

There is hope for all of us now.

Go, buy some good cheese and watch “Borgen.”

A life of Lentils and Beef Eye fillets.

We have never lived the life of the miser nor of the squanderer. We followed the example set by our parents. Their main philosophy on how to survive the financial peccadilloes of a life was; don’t ever buy anything unless you have saved for it, even then, resist the temptation for buying things that are not essential. It might be a boring philosophy but it does help in the long run. Start off with living of nourishing lentils and you will feast on beef eye fillets or caviar later on

Waste not want not with a penny saved is a penny gained (gotten) are the sayings supposedly having originated in Yorkshire. In fact, the Yorkshire-men claim that it is two pennies saved. The first penny from not spending it and the second penny saved in case you would have spent it but did not. The logic escapes me a bit but as a Dutchman I might not be as fast on the penny uptake.

The Dutch have similar sayings and habits of parsimony. One famous saying “Sparen is Garen”.  Roughly translated it means, “Sparing is Gaining”. For the Latin lovers there is also; “Magnum vectical est Parsimonia,” followed with a lovely and succinct, “Acquirit qui Tuetur.” I don’t know Latin but it sound lovely and musical, at least to my ears.

Alas, the frugality that parents installed in us seems to have got lost on the younger generation. How on earth can kids spend so much time on their Iphones? Forget about mobile phones. They would not be seen dead with a normal phone as a phone, it got to be 4 G stuff with internet and hundreds of Apps stuff probabilities and has to include global surfing and 3D-printing with lots of ‘stuff like that’ or(boys) include ‘shit like that,’ girls mainly ‘stuff like that’.

I just walked past a school, a high school with, I think, mixed sexes. It’s hard to tell now-a-days. They all seem to revel in mobs of unruly hair that they keep shaking around making sure it hides their distant horizontal vision and so enables them to continually look down better at their G4 Iphone and stuff in case of a missed bullying opportunity.

Apart from most school kids walking home with their heads down intent on gadget peeking, there was also a flourishing trade going on in a mixed shop opposite the school. A steady stream of school uniform attired kids were coming and going from the creaky swinging fly-screen door.

It was one of those ancient lollie shops that used to always be opposite any school but have mainly vanished through the rapacious tactics of the big super markets. They often, but not always, had fly-blown metallic and slanting show- cases with stale custard-tarts sprinkled with dodgy looking cinnamon, meat pies from last Tuesday or the week earlier and traditionally would leave trails of stomach complaints from school kids not able to resist their hunger pangs and wait till home cooking (and stuff like that). The lamb chops with mashies and gravy has been overtaken by the take away or micro waved instant meal consumed while standing up while bowed over the 4G and stuff.

Of course, the kids would hydrate themselves with 2 liter Coke. Perhaps not a bad thing in alleviating or killing the bugs in the custard tart or dodgy meat-pie. Alas, the history of those shops catering for the school kids has just about vanished together with parsimonious penny saving.

It’s a pity because, thanks to our parents example we are now able to ditch the lentils and feast on the Angus beef eye fillet and Kipfler potato with crispy green salad. (And stuff like that)