Seven days in Perth

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As I worked through my exercise routine at the hydrotherapy pool yesterday, it occurred to me just how fortunate I am. This was probably spurred on by the presence of two young cerebral palsy patients, each with two carers assisting them in the pool. As I walked and cycled and did the rest of my exercises (unaided), I thought about how easy it is to whinge rather than to take stock of just how rich one’s life actually is. This then led me to consider when last I’d consciously enjoyed my week. The short answer was ‘this week’ – seven days of random things, excluding paid work. So here’s what I’ve been up to lately…

Weather guarding the fruit trees. This involved some compost, a lot of mulch and hard work. The first step was to lower the level of the garden bed in our mini orchard by about 15cm. Whilst that may not sound like much, I have many bags of sand that testify otherwise! There simply isn’t an easy way to get rid of sand when there isn’t ready access for a bobcat or other doggy-machine to do the work for you. It comes down to a shovel, determination and time. Once I’d finally reached the desired level (after mole cricket larvaemuch digging and bagging of sand), I decided it would be a good idea to add a little compost to enrich the area and to make up for having removed most of the topsoil.

This also sounds simpler than it actually was. It turned out that our compost bin was ‘enriched’ by a large number of creepy-looking mole cricket larvae. How the devil they got in there is a mystery, but I know exactly how they got out… I donned the gloves-of-protection, sifted through the compost – by hand – and removed them, one grub at a time. By the time I finished I was decidedly grossed out and very much in need of a shower to get rid of (mostly imaginary) bug residue. Himself very kindly took on the task of spreading the compost and then topping it with a thick layer of mulch. The trees look happy and we’re hoping they’ll have an easier time of it through the February heat.

Socialising. Finding time to spend with friends often falls foul of busy schedules. I’ve found that a way round this is to book what are, in effect, ‘play dates’. These can be lunch/dinner, a walk, coffee, a movie – any excuse to ensure that we can get together to catch up on nothing and everything rather than gradually losing contact. This week I went to a movie with friends, had people round to our place a few times and enjoyed a couple of hours catching up with a good friend over bagels, waffles and coffee. I did wonder whether being an informal DryAthlon participant this January would impact my social life – but it’s made no difference at all.

Harvest. In a moment of crazy late last year I planted out 12 basil seedlings. It was really for some fresh greenery in the garden at Xmas time, but I didn’t expect many of them to all survive the heat. They did. They all did. So this week was the first great basil harvest and pesto making adventure. The house smelled delicious and my freezer is now full of little boxes of pesto for later in the season when the plants have died back. I also took the time to strip our ruby blood plum tree – and to eat a goodly number of the plums. Not a huge harvest this year, so I won’t be making any plum jam – but I’m okay with that since we still have a LOT of various jams in stock from past harvests.

Convention wrap-up. As part of the organising committee for the 15th (very successful) GenghisCon, it was good to share the highlights with the rest of the crew at the final meeting this week. We also spent some time brainstorming as to how we can make the planning phase easier for the 2016/17 committee. Cunning plans are afoot.

Pet fud. A 6am run to the local meat markets on Saturday resulted in the purchase of 10 ox hearts, 2 ox livers and 18kg of beef mince. Later in the day the household vibrated to the sounds of the mixmaster with its mincer attachment going full tilt. Hearts are no problem – the flesh is very firm and easy to cut up and feed through the mincer. Livers, however, are slippery little devils and mince out to a meaty goo that’s seriously visually unappealing. (Just thought I’d share that visual image).

Our pet fud recipe is: 2 hearts, 1 liver, 10kg mince, 1.5kg sardines in oil – mix together (wear gloves!), then weigh out into 600g lots and freeze. Our pup currently gets 300g of this mix each day, along with her (soaked) biscuits and whatever veggies I have to hand. She’s loving it and the meat component costs us less than $2 a day. This time round we processed 105 meals, so it’ll be a while before we need to head back to the markets. Well worth the early morning and a couple of hours of production. Win.

(The rest of the meat was for DaughterDearest to turn into catfud – the process is essentially the same, but with the addition of various cat-specific dietary supplements.)

Veggies. A friend and I take it in turn to go to the wholesale veggie markets every 3 weeks or so. This wasn’t my week on, so I had the pleasure of having three boxes filled to overflowing delivered to the door. Our fridge is now pretty well stocked with delicious fruit and veg that will keep us going for the next couple of weeks. Happiness.

Having reviewed all that, it occurs to me that it’s often only by comparison (to the plight of others) that we appreciate the richness of our own lives, that we realise the value of our abilities and the strength of our relationships. Surely this isn’t best practise? Perhaps being more conscious of these things in the here-and-now, mindfully rather than habitually, could be a useful goal to strive towards this year.

 

Guilty pleasures

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I’m pretty sure we all have at least one guilty pleasure – that thing we do or enjoy, but we’re not sure that other people would approve of if they knew about it. Mine has lasted most of my life.

I can’t remember a time when books were anything but a core part of my environment. Our parents’ bookcase(s) provided us with an early introduction to fiction, fact, travel and poetry. Titles I remember in particular are 1000 Beautiful Things (Authur Mee), Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (ed. Francis Palgrave), The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. We all learned to read before we went to school and were encouraged to join the local Public library at an early age – both great strategic parental moves to keep children entertained and occupied.

However, even once I could read, I always enjoyed listening to one or other parent reading stories or poems out loud. They both had a gift for it, their voices clear and their delivery paced for our enjoyment. So it’s not surprising that, when my younger brother and I were given Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland first story records1965 Disneyland read-along storybook records, I was hooked. Each title was on a 33⅓ long-playing vinyl record and came with an illustrated Disney read-along book of the story.

They all started with a similar preamble: This is the story of <Alice in Wonderland>. You can read along with me in your book. You’ll know it’s time to turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this: <the sound of Tinkerbelle’s chimes would ring here>. Let’s begin… It was a very effective format, enabling children of any reading age to follow the story via a combination of words, sound and pictures. They were narrated by Robie Lester and mine included the songs Alice in Wonderland and I’m Late (which I still sing to myself when I am running late).

Several years later I was given a small cassette tape recorder and, soon after, found that some libraries stocked ‘talking books’ for vision-impaired readers. Feeling more than slightly guilty, I tried adding one to my selection of books. To my surprise, the librarians simply issued the cassette like any other book. It was the start of my guilty pleasure. I call it that because, as an adult, I do sometimes feel slightly sheepish listening to stories instead of reading them – as though I’m taking the easy way out. In some instances, such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, this is actually true. I’ve tried to read this classic on a number of occasions, but simply couldn’t get past the first chapter. As an audio book, however, I could finally tick it off my bucket list.

This is because I find it enormously satisfying to sit and listen to a story, to have a tale narrated by someone who can bring the characters alive the way my parents used to when I was a child. The difference is that I can pause, rewind and replay these stories at will and can listen to them whilst gardening, knitting, driving, doing mosaic and so on. Audio books (and headphones) are also an insomniac’s best friends at dead of night, when turning on a light to read a physical book might disturb other family members.

Although I now subscribe to a paid audio book service, I still regularly borrow talking books (at no charge) through the public library system. A few of my recent favourites are the Girl Genius series (Phil & Kaja Foglio), Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman), The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion), A Conspiracy of Friends (Alexander McCall Smith), A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki) and Nation (Terry Pratchett). All are beautifully narrated, either by the author or by talented voice actors, and each provided me with hours of enjoyment.

I suspect that my slight feeling that talking books are an indulgence simply adds to their attraction, as with most guilty pleasures.

Tomato passata flambé

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On job applications and personality tests, multi-tasking has generally come up as one of my key strengths. This is probably because my answers reflect that I’ve juggled family, multiple jobs, tasks, events, social commitments, study and community involvement reasonably efficiently over the years, managing to keep most of the balls in the air… at least most of the time.

So it came as something of a surprise to come home to a house redolent with the not-very-appetising aroma of burnt tomato after a recent evening out. It hit us as soon as we opened the front door – the cloying smell of what I instantly knew to be tomato passata gone horribly wrong.

Essentially, passata is just fresh tomato puree. All you need is an abundance of Roma tomatoes and an equal amount of enthusiasm. The first step is to wash and check the tomatoes, removing any dodgy bit, and then to blanch them in hot water to soften the skins. Since I generally look for shortcuts, I tend to leave out the blanching part and simply cut them in half before bunging them into my stockpot. On goes the lid, gas down as low as it’ll go and set the timer for about an hour.

Of course, if I had a lovely electric tomato press I probably wouldn’t cook the tomatoes. The great thing about a tomato press is that it’s quick. It also has two exit chutes: one for the chunky bits (skins and pips) and one for the tomato slush. This would mean I wouldn’t end up having to cook, reduce and sieve before preserving. Shani Gramham ran a passata-making session a couple of years ago at the Less-is-More Festival and demonstrated using a tomato press. I’ve lusted after one ever since.

Shani Graham passata demo 22Feb14

Anyhow, having reached my one-hour breakpoint, I usually remove the lid, give the tomato goop a quick stir and then reset the timer for a similar amount of time – but this time I leave the lid off in order to reduce the goop to a suitably passata-like consistency. Then it’s really rinse-and-repeat: I check the goop regularly, stir occasionally and enjoy the smell of slow cooking tomato whilst getting on with something else. This takes several hours, but I think it’s worth the wait.

At this point most people would immediately pour their passata into sterilised jars, seal them and then boil the jars in a canning pot to preserve the puree – or use a fowlers vacola to do the job, if they happen to have one.  I seldom make enough to make all that rigmarole worthwhile. Instead I squish the goop with a potato masher, not bothering  to sieve it, then pop it into half litre plastic containers. Once it’s cool, I put some in the fridge for immediate use and rest of the containers in the freezer. This is a very effective way to preserve the passata, assuming you have enough freezer space.

My last tomato cook-a-thon turned out slightly differently. When it got to the reduced enough stage, we went off to the movies instead of portioning the goop to into plastic containers. I reckoned it would be cool by the time we got home and I could just do it then…which is how the flambé part came about.

Note to self: muli-tasking fail; next time remember to check that you’ve TURNED THE STOVE OFF before rushing out the door!

(At least I managed to salvage the pot – thank goodness for good quality stainless steel and determination.)

Suffragette

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On the way home in the train this week I noticed a poster advertising a local university. The headline caught my attention.

Brilliance has no sexual orientation. Opportunity doesn’t discriminate.

It probably made more of an impact on me than it otherwise might have because I’d just been to see Suffragette, so my mind was still full of the extraordinary accomplishments of the women it portrayed so vividly.

The combination of the film and the poster brought The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, to mind.  I read this book almost two decades ago and was powerfully affected by it. The story is set in a not-implausible near future dystopia in which a puritan theocracy holds sway. This scenario, in which women are stripped of all power, highlights the relative ease with which the rights and freedoms we tend to accept without thought can be taken from us.

These rights and freedoms, for which generations of women fought doggedly, now appear to have always-already existed. Most young women I speak to have little interest in how these rights and freedoms were won – and even seem to find it implausible that our society has ever been anything other than the way it is today. As for the possibility of those rights and freedoms being eroded or lost… that’s not a conversation they seem to want to have. Apparently it’s ‘so last century’.

Perhaps seeing Suffragette could shift that point of view, at least somewhat. The portrayal of the determination and spirit of ordinary women striving for a better world was both engrossing and humbling, and the absolute silence in the cinema when the film ended was very telling.

A few key points regarding women’s suffrage that have direct bearing on my past: In South Africa, the land of my birth, white women were awarded the vote in 1930. My mum would have been about 13 years old at the time.  It took a further 64 years before black women gained the same rights.  Here in Australia, my chosen home, women gained the right to vote at a national level in 1902. This excluded aboriginal women, who were allowed to vote from 1962 onwards – but were only were granted full citizenship in 1967.

This window into the past shows some interesting parallels – and it also shows how far my homelands, past and present, have come. Complacency is dangerous, however. I think it’s often all too easy to accept a way of life when it favours us, without giving thought to how that way of life might have come about – or whether we would have the strength of character to fight the good fight to gain it or to keep it.

It’s also appears disturbingly easy to not pay attention to shifts in our society until they coalesce and we are no longer heading where we thought we were. Around the world there is a perception that women’s rights are being gradually eroded or sidelined. Equal pay and non-discriminatory hiring practices continue to elude us, despite having the vote and notionally being equal under the law. But most disturbing are endemic sexual assault  and the never-ending arguments as to who has rights over women’s reproductive capacity.

Are we paying enough attention to these things?

To quote The Handmaid’s Tale: Ordinary… is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

Is this what we want? For mysogyny to be ordinary?

The links between the history of women’s suffrage, a patriarchal system that is self-perpetuating, shifts in social attitudes, the ease with which freedoms are accepted and can therefore be eroded – along the possible attendant consequences – are clear. What all this tells me is that a poster advocating that opportunity doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender or sexual orientation is, quite simply, misleading.

So take responsibility – and play a part, however small, when it comes to awareness of key issues in our society, paying particular attention to emancipation and to feminist solidarity.annie lennox feminism.

 

Let the good guys win

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I’ll start the New Year off with words that aren’t my own – although they resonate with me very strongly.

May I get what I want / Not what I deserve / May the coming year not throw a single curve / May I hurt nobody / May I tell no lies / If I can’t go on give me strength to try… / Bring the old year out / Bring the new year in / Bring us all good luck / Let the good guys win…

I heard this song for the first time in 2005, at Swancon XXX. It was performed by one of my all-time favourite authors, Charles de Lint, accompanied the equally lovely MaryAnn Harris. The song isn’t theirs either, but they sang it as though it was – with belief and feeling and gentleness.

I was immediately captivated – both by the informality of having Charles and MaryAnn performing for a room full of fans, and by the song lyrics themselves. So much so, that this is my see-in-the-New-Year-song of choice every year.

When you see something wrong / Try and make it right / Pull your shadowed world / Into the bright sunlight…/ Bring the old year out / Bring the new year in / Bring us all good luck / Let the good guys win…

… and that’s what I wish you all for 2016, … singing hey ya, hey ya, hey ya / hey ya, hey ya, hey ya…