Category Archives: Uncategorized

Who will rid me of this pestilent bug?

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My apologies to my readers for not posting recently but when you read what I had pulled out of my lungs you will understand that I just didn’t have the energy to be creative. Just think about those long gelatinous multi-coloured snakes we used to eat as children and that is what was pulled out of my lungs.

I am doing what my husband said I swore never to do; and that is talk about my ailments. I’ll do it quickly and then on to life matters. 

 I don’t like being sick and I don’t like my family being sick. My children have numerous examples of what they call my total disregard for their physical state but I think they are confusing tough mother love with neglect. They are all still healthy, and still talking to me so I can’t have been too apathetic to their needs. My husband does confirm that my mother advised him that if he ever became seriously ill he was to come to her, as he would most certainly die if left to my ministrations.

And that is precisely what I was doing to myself. When the usual 40 laps of my local swimming pool were taxing me, I scolded myself about my indolent lifestyle and pushed myself to swim faster and further. Until one day, about mid-lap when I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs I thought about going to a GP and mentioning that perhaps I might have a chest infection. No obvious signs, a slight cough, no temperature, normal lung capacity; some cloudy patches on the x-ray, (is that a collapsed middle lobe?) delays due to GPs being on leave etc., finally a sputum culture and ahhhhh…an aspergillus infection; perhaps you should see a thoracic physician who took one look at the x-rays and immediately ordered the bronchoscopy.

I gather what was pulled out of my lungs was seriously gross so I won’t put a picture up on the page, as you would think I had been invaded by aliens. Instead I have inserted a photo of a glorious winter sunset in Brisbane, one of many that I have recently had time to sit and watch.Image

 It is very exciting to be able to breathe without choking and my makeup matches my skin colour rather than the nice shade of blue grey that I was. I keep patting my husband telling him the real me is back. There are still some restrictions (much to our credit card’s relief) on activities such as no swimming or flying for three months but I am sneaking out each day to dig and prune my neglected garden. I do not look a glamorous gardener as I now wear a mask when handling compost or manure, because I am pretty sure this is what caused the original infection when, two years ago in London I opened a bag of damp potting mix and inhaled the spores. It will have taken pneumonia, surgery and 6 months of antibiotics to finally get rid of this pestilent bug. Hurrah!

 

 

A chapel for a study

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“ You don’t question some things, you just accept.” A friend’s response to a comment I had made about an aspect of her religious belief flicked through my mind as I listened to the Jubilee Commemorative Service in St John’s Cathedral. I looked around me, wondering how many of my companions were regular churchgoers. I am, not for the traditional purpose but I will enthusiastically go for a wedding or baptism, a commemorative or memorial service because I just love church spaces with their solemn dimness and the cool damp chill air that traps the aromas of incense and candle smoke. As you may have guessed I am not religious.  The bigotry exhibited by the nuns in my primary school and the taunts from childhood companions began my alienation to any one belief.  Personally, I find it difficult to justify the many actions taken in the name of religion that don’t seem in any way to conform to the espoused philosophy of goodwill to another being.

Church bell ringers

 However, whenever I travel I drag my husband and children through cloisters, churches and cathedrals. I won’t gate crash a service, but sometimes I have been lucky and chanced upon a choir or church bell ringers preparing for a service.

Then I am happy to stand, often in a puddle of colour from a stained glass window and listen with pleasure mingled with a tinge of envy to those beautiful voices.

I have become a column hugger much to my husband’s embarrassment. I lean against these trunks of stone and brick soaring skywards and try to absorb the history of its builders. I have sat through an entire service flitting like Tinkerbell examining the architectural details.  Perhaps this is why I enjoyed Ken Follett’s book Pillars of the Earth set in 12thCentury Kingsbridge, UK where the building of a new style of cathedral is the focus of the story and the characters involved take second place.

Benedict Arnold Window

Sitting through a service is no bind if I can look at the stained glass windows where saints and sinners share eternity. Churches will always surprise me. In the small St Mary’s Battersea I came upon a window remembering General Benedict Arnold keeping company with J.W.M. Turner and William Blake. I have spent an entire service contemplating windows containing heraldic coats of arms and wondering what I would include if I was designing one for my family. Think of all the lives and stories that are represented around the walls and floors of these churches, and in the surrounding gardens. My imagination goes wild with the thought of births and murders, tragedies and happiness, lives lived to the fullest and lives crushed before they have had time to blossom.  People mourned deeply or respected widely. There is so much history in a church. I love reading the plaques about artists, poets, soldiers, traitors, mothers and children. Being Australian, I was hugely excited when I discovered the sarcophagus in which Admiral Bligh was buried in St Mary of Lambeth church garden.  I couldn’t stop myself from telling some American visitors all about his amazing navigation feats.
I would love to have enough land to erect a family chapel just so that I could have a finely detailed tessellated floor and a stained glass window. Perhaps I could have a small tile made for each of the many birds, goldfish, chickens and mice my children raised, and of the wonderful cats and dogs that so contributed to my companionship.  I would have a wonderful heavy carved timber door with a huge key to enter it. There would be no place for a keypad because I cannot ever remember the numerous pin numbers I already have. Perhaps I could even incorporate a column in an outside corner as I have seen in many European buildings. I would use it as my study and fill it with flowers.

A Russian Orthodox singer

Having recently read Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists I do find I have a greater appreciation of the contribution to art, music and architecture that religious communities have made.  So I will continue to wander through churches and even sit through a commemorative service not because religion will contribute to my pathway to another better life but as an acknowledgement that the expression of religious belief has contributed to the sophistication and refinement of my world.

The Gods of Old Age

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“Susie, he’s trying to kill himself,” shouted my mother, leaning over her balcony.

“Well he hasn’t succeeded,” I shouted back.

The gentle whirring sound was still going so I put my garden tools aside and walked next door to where my father was sitting on his very old exercise bike.

“I’m feeding my brain,” my father explained in response to my arrival. “I read that laboratory animals do better at solving complicated problems when they have a wheel to work out on.”

“So now I am living with an 85 lab rat. You silly old fool,” my mother said in exasperation. “Perhaps we should offer his body to the local Veterinary School,” I suggested.

 There is a certain amount of vanity in all this effort and my sister has a lot to blame for it. She told Dad about a ‘young looking’ chaplain who officiated at a recent funeral of an 80 year-old. The 90 year old chaplain told her he kept fit by swimming a couple of times a week. So guess who insisted on accompanying me to the local pool to swim 500 metres yesterday. I was so worried my father would disappear beneath the water and not come up I couldn’t concentrate on my own laps.

He survived the swim and has now joined the health centre, delighted with the discount the manager gave him due to his age. I wish she had doubled it.

He plays bridge, 18 holes of golf a couple of times a week, now swims and is walking the dog around the neighbourhood befriending other dog owners. He is determined to defy the Gods of Old Age anyway he can. Good luck to my old man I say and I hope I can do the same.

 

 

No more cookbooks

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I have resolved not to buy another printed book until I remove one from the nearly 2000 volumes that currently take up shelf space in our house; and that doesn’t include at least 500 cooking magazines.

Despite moving overseas and living in small apartments, we still travelled with our favourite authors.  Of course during those five years we have collected other favourites and we now have not only the huge task of unpacking nearly 100 boxes but also the more arduous task of deciding where to put all these books. Even taking the opportunity to give away numerous titles that we won’t read again, we have run out of space.

The most difficult magazines to part with are my collection of Gourmets, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Cuisine and Bon Appetite that I have collected over 30 years.  Andy was threatened with instant divorce if he even considered disposing of these treasured items. My children have decided that they will use them to make me a paper mache coffin, which I think would be sending me off in the appropriate style.

You would think I would have learnt not to buy more titles after the initial move from Brisbane to Los Angeles.However, I have vowed not to buy any more cooking magazines, well, at least not until I can find shelf space for them. So I have started to leaf through these old friends to select interesting articles or recipes and then I am tossing the skeleton out. This is more fun than looking at the family photo album as many of the recipes carry memories of fantastic meals with family and friends or of holidays inspired by articles.

And while I am going through these memories I am beginning to compile a volume of my favourite recipes. You know, the ones that you tend to make regularly because they are everyone’s favourite, or very easy and still look impressive.  I am also culling my recipe books, sending most of these to a nearby charity, as my children don’t want my old books.

So here is my list of a dozen must keeps. There are some authors to whom I have been loyal for decades such as Elizabeth David, Julia Child, and Richard Olney. Then I would include more recent cooks who know and understand the Australian lifestyle including Stephanie Alexander and Bill Grainger. Then there are the cooks who have made the transition between Australia and the more traditional UK including Skye Gingell. I would have to add Peter Gordon into that list as his blend of western and eastern flavours is wonderfully imaginative and able to be adapted to home cooking. Then for the vegetarian in the family I would add Maria Elia plus Richard Bertinet for his wonderful sourdough bread and finally because they combine escapism and food, I would include Lucy and Greg Malouf.  Naturally I would have to include many of the wonderful Women’s Weekly food magazines because they never fail to provide a dish when needed. There are so many other writers I could include and whose ideas and recipes I use regularly. This list doesn’t even begin to cover all my favourite cooks and I haven’t included web sites that also contain wonderful food ideas including the many food blogs that enthusiasts contribute to.

I would love feedback on other favourite food writers and why.

Death by mildew

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Living in Brisbane is like living under a permanently dripping tap. Although our cat would be delighted with a permanent water supply, I am convinced that if I stood still I would start to be covered in ghastly black mildew.

I had forgotten just how damp living in sub-tropical Brisbane can be. After three days of almost constant showers we have mould appearing in the strangest of places. You get used to the dark spots appearing along the grouting in the shower but I wasn’t expecting the buttons in the toilet cistern to be jammed because of the light layer of mould. Yick! Actually I was hoping it wasn’t repairable so that I could justify a new toilet cistern but that was not the case. I can never understand why the women who feature in television ads for cleaning agents look so happy. Now every time I go in there I go armed with spray bottles of bleach ready to aim, fire and run for my life before the dank mouldy fingers strangle me and dump me as a symbol of the failed housekeeper that I am.

I don’t mind rainy days; in fact I like them and enjoy watching the clouds roll over the Taylor Range occluding the hillsides.

I took a photo yesterday as the cloud descended turning the landscape into a monochrome of greys.  It was a beautiful gentle light. When the sun came out it produced a spectacular contrast of heavy grey cloud against golden light.

I even managed to get into our soggy garden wearing my bright yellow wellies when it was lightly sprinkling, enjoying the slightly cooler air; all the while dreading the anticipated humidity that causes me to have a meltdown. This is when I disappear into the air-conditioning and refuse to come out almost like a whelk in its shell.

I reflect on the description of the rain we used to experience in London; there, we often had ‘sprinkles’ forecast, which is very apt but far more politically correct than the term Australians use of ‘spitting with rain’.

 

 

 

 

A wet summer

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The sound of rain on a corrugated iron roof. Now here I was lying in bed, well after midnight, listening to the constant drumming as we experienced our third consecutive night of torrential downpour. In desperation, I buried my head beneath the pillow, and resorted to earplugs, reminding myself that this was one of the sounds I used to think I missed whilst living in London. This and the intense sticky dampness from a couple of days of constant sub-tropical downpours.

As the rain eased off slightly during the afternoon and needing to stretch our legs, my daughter and I wandered down to the creek at the bottom of the hill, curious to see how high it had risen over night.

A torrent of muddy water was swirling around an enormous pile of debris consisting of uprooted weeds, bamboo, tree branches, enough rubber balls of varying origins to outfit an entire primary school and an enormous number of plastic bottles discarded by lazy drinkers. It was obvious from the amount of water on the local playing field and the pile of debris jammed against the bridges, that it had broken its banks.

Even had I been wearing my wellingtons I wouldn’t have clambered over that debris or walked through the water. We could see lots of lizards crawling across the mountain of balls and bottles but it was the snakes that made us hesitate. My daughter had already seen a brown snake weaving across one of the clearings on the opposite slope so we were very cautious in clambering across the piles of creek silt that had been washed against the trunks of the trees lining the pathway.

I wonder about the wildlife of this creek and whether it survives this mad rushing water. On our walks we often see turtles and carp in the still water beneath the bridge and there are always families of ducks, moorhens and swamphens floating near the banks. 

I saw one family of ducks shepherding their 6 ducklings into the bushes on the far side of the flooded playing field so perhaps the birds are safe and will return when the water  flows more slowly.

Red concrete or a tree?

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I returned to Brisbane keen to see how it had adapted into its self-proclaimed image of a ‘World City”. The www.visitbrisbane.com.au site proudly proclaims that Brisbane is “…clean, green, sustainable, friendly, tolerant, multi-cultural, creative, collaborative, energetic, progressive and livable.”  Oops. Let me apply some of those adjectives to traffic calming at an intersection in my suburb.

The Windsor Road / Murray Street intersection is not green but red. It is a study in boring, ugly paving with few redeeming features. Why would our local council build something so pedestrian? This traffic-calming initiative may possibly calm the traffic moving from Windsor Road into Murray St but it does not contribute creatively, sustainably or psychologically to our local community.

Its psychological effect is to make me angry and discouraged each time I drive past as it seems so little design or creativity went into this example of traffic calming. The red concrete island looks cheap and nasty. This isn’t the only example of ugliness in this neighbourhood. At many of the intersections to what are obviously local streets along Windsor Road red paint has been used on the road surface.  It is difficult to know what this red paint is meant to indicate. It certainly doesn’t contribute visually to the local environment and once it starts to fade it looks particularly ugly. It is almost a study into how to make a street look unwelcoming. Surely the Brisbane City traffic planning authorities could have been a little more creative and planted a couple of trees and plant boxes at these intersections?

Here are two pictures of Brisbane’s traffic calming initiatives. Judge which image you would rather see on your street.

 

 

There are many studies supporting the fact that trees and street planting bring benefits to the community that outweigh the cost of the initial planting and maintenance.

These studies have identified that tree-lined streets have a calming influence on drivers, causing them to slow down, improving their awareness of their environment, and making them more alert to the presence of pedestrians. This calming influence may even play a role in reducing road rage and aggressive driving habits.

Why if we are being encouraged to reduce our carbon footprint do we not plant more trees and garden beds at intersections? Not only do they absorb the carbon we produce but they also aid in reducing air pollution from car emissions. The shade produced by trees has many beneficial impacts including reducing by 3-5 degrees the ambient local temperature which may impact on the amount of energy local residents use to cool theihouses. Trees and shrubs will also encourage birds into the suburbs.

We shouldn’t underestimate the influence of living in a beautiful environment. A prettier street will encourage greater pedestrian traffic whether it is exercising the dog, riding a bike, or just walking to the local shop. The more people on the street, the more likely we are to stop and chat to each other. This greater connectivity can only encourage a stronger empathetic community.

I think the Red Hill community should inform their councillor that we don’t want to see a band-aid of red concrete placed across our roads as a ‘token’ traffic calming initiative. We should discourage ugliness and insist that design and beauty be integral in all aspects of council planning initiatives.

Does anyone else think along these lines?

A tree is as individual as the person who walks in its shade.

 

Sewing is a lost pleasure

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I adore walking into a fabric store and wandering around in a kaleidoscopic world of colour, texture and pattern. It is such a tactile experience and I cannot resist fondling the linens and delicate silks, the colourful cottons and fine wools, fingering them, stroking their softness and enjoying the sensuous feel as the fabric slides across my fingers. I can dawdle for hours whilst imagining the fabulous outfits I might create.

I recently visited what was once a favourite central Brisbane fabric store, Gardams and came away very sad. It was such a small store with so few selections of fabrics and accessories that I doubt I will go in there again. I googled the name to see what had happened to the business and I gather there is a larger store at Indooroopilly so perhaps in fairness I will have to visit it, but I am not sure I could stand it. I think it will be like visiting a beloved relative who is slipping into old age and has lost their sharpness and acuity.

I still sew the occasional garment, but perhaps looking at the downsizing of both Gardams and Lincraft others do not. Are we buying all our clothes ready made and is this a skill that is being lost rather than being handed down from one generation to another? I know one of my daughters sews, but I don’t think either of the other two do, or my daughter’s-in-law or sons other than to sew on a button. I think they are missing out on such a creative and fun activity; I remember the hours of fun in browsing the pattern books dreaming of what I might make, then selecting the fabric and then the pride when I had actually made a garment that I enjoyed wearing.   The simple pleasure of fabric with its colours, pattern and feel is something I will never forget.

Brisbane’s Cove

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I am looking at Brisbane trying to see it through new eyes and was pleasantly surprised at the dining precinct called Cove on Southbank.

There is an intimate and inviting grassy amphitheatre beside the river girdled by white terracing that resembles the ribs of a beached whale. We watched today as small children met the challenge of heights to jump down, whilst others launched themselves from the hard surface to race each other on their bikes across the grass towards the riverbank.  This delightful ‘cove’ is overlooked by a series of restaurants offering a variety of food styles.

We went there today to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary.  At this time of year it was the perfect outdoor setting, under an umbrella, on the pavement watching the world go by. I will be intrigued to see how the architecture copes with Brisbane’s extremes of hot weather, tropical downpours and winter as it has a high roof and what appears to be a smallish enclosed area for cooling or heating. I’ll use it as a good excuse to revisit this dining precinct, which provides some lovely and delicious food.

There aren’t many restaurants in Brisbane where you can sit and watch the river life and judging by the number of people eating out in the three venues currently open I think others are as enthused as I am.