Yuletide and comfort food

 

 

 

Yuletide is splendiferous this year. It has flowered much earlier than usual (other years it's been at midwinter) so the flowers have not been damaged by the cold, and seem larger than before. I'm trying to remember if I put fertiliser on it in spring; I think I did, plus homemade compost, so what a great result. It's a wonderful plant that should be grown more often. Quite compact, and can be trimmed back with no problems - ideal for a small garden like mine. I have two other sasanqua camellias, Setsugekka and Mine-no-yuki, but they've never been as good as Yuletide.

 

I'm still pretty much housebound with the aftermath of the cold from Hell. Still with the cough and the headache and the sinuses. What are sinuses for, anyway? Does anyone know? Just another place to get blocked with the mucus overflow from the nose during colds or hayfever, seems like. We need sinuses like we need holes in the head. Har, har. Anyway, I'm annoyed that I can't get outside and do gardening - I had a lot planned for my days off, but these were spent in bed so the tulips remain unplanted and the leaves unraked. I have been cooking up comfort food though, some of the old traditional things like rice pudding and chicken soup and baked apple, all very wholesome and nutritious. I made the rice pudding the way my Mum did; use evaporated milk (evaporated, not, not, not condensed, it's a different thing) and you will have a nice creamy pud. Add sugar and any flavourings you like. Grated orange peel and a little juice is nice, some cinnamon, and this time I addded about 50grams of almond meal. This bubbles up to the top during baking and makes a nice brown top. I can't remember how long I baked it; you do need to boil the rice first, or the result is gritty (as I found out several years ago). So, yum! Also enjoying milky chai, the spices have a warming and strengthening effect, much needed by me at the moment.

Hello, Russian perverts.

So. My nemesis Broken Controllers is at it again, judging by the stats. So hello, all you wankers in Russia. Hope you have  lovely time looking at my cats and my garden, and no, sorry to disappoint, I won't be posting pictures of my nude self here anytime soon. Not that you'd enjoy it anyway. Perhaps I should, just to give you a shock. Enjoy your climax, dudes. At least the sperm that you waste isn't going to grow more idiots like you.

Chestnuts and digital TV

 

Chat noir dahlia - still flowering, still wow!

 

 

The hydrangeas have turned this nice deep red. The spiky flowers in front are pineapple sage; they look great with the light shining through them.

 

 

BIG year for chesnuts. I've been down to the tree in the park, hoping to find a handful, and came back with a whole lot. I've never seen so many as this year. Having a really hard winter and a long hot summer must suit them, also the person who used to pick them up no longer lives there. Chestnuts were one of the staple foods of Tuscan and Umbrian peasants in lean years. They made a flour out of them and baked a sort of cake, castagnaccio, with pine nuts and raisins, no sugar. Apparently it is an acquired taste. There is also a sweet Torta di castagna which sounds a lot more like a cake as we know it, with chocolate and cognac and almond meal. Claudia Roden has recipes for both in her book The food of Italy. I might try the sweet one now I've got enough chestnuts. I wish the early settlers had planted more edible chesnuts; they went mad on horse-chesnut trees, which are attractive trees but not nearly as useful. 

 

The South Island of NZ has gone over to digital TV. I was watching the TV news last night, and it was announced with tones of bewilderment and disbelief that 14% of households had made no arrangements to enable TV to be received in their living rooms, and horror of horrors, they would now have to wait for at least three weeks to get it installed! As if TV was absolutely a necessity of life in the same way food is. Well. I am one of the 14% and have no plans to go over to the digital wonderland. I hardly ever watch TV now; I pay for my Internet connection and find youTube much more interesting than free-to-air TV. The only thing I'll miss is Maori TV, which has programmes about all sorts of non-mainstream topics, and NO ADVERTS. Even foreign-language films, which are nowhere to be seen on any national channel. It's funny, clever and thought-provoking, all things I couldn't claim for the main channels. So ave atque vale, digital TV.

 

 

The mini-flu

I've had a real shocker of a cold the last four days, the kind that makes me feel really ill. I had a flu shot, and yes I know, they say you can't get the flu from the vaccine, but then they would, wouldn't they? All I know is this is not an ordinary cold. It peaked last night around12-2, and I wished I could die. Couldn't sleep in any position except sitting propped up with pillows, because my nose would just block and I'd wake up gasping for breath, a minute or so afer I'd dozed off. I'd already had a sleepless night the night before, but managed to nap during the day. Each day has had a different torture; day one, very sore throat, day two, blocked sinuses and running nose, day three, blocked nose. Today, it's gone to my chest so no doubt I'll have a sleepless night again, coughing. All these joys are accompanied by a throbbing head and aching face and throat. It even hurts to wear my glasses.
     Today I still have the aching throat and headache, with a feeling of whole-body weakness. I couldn't pull the skin off a custard, as my Mum used to say.
     Can't get the flu from the vaccine, bollocks.

Put a box on the floor...

 

...and someone will sit in it. Emma with my recipe file box.

Anzac slice

Made Anzac Slice yesterday. It's like an Anzac biscuit but baked tray-wise. It's quite nice, a little like a birdseed bar, and would be good for tramping trips or taking along on a day walk.

1 cup rolled or wholegrain oats
1 cup plain flour
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
125grms butter, chopped
2 Tbs Golden syrup
2 Tbs water
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1. Combine oats, sifted flour and mixed spice, sugar and coconut in a large bowl. Mix well

2.Combine butter, golden syrup and water in a medium pan; stir over low heat, without boiling, until butter is melted. Bring to boil, remove from heat, stir in soda.

3. Add syrup mixture to dry ingredients in bowl; mix well.

4, Grease a 20cm x 30cm slice tin; line two opposite sides with baking paper, extending paper 5cm above edge of pan. Press out mixture into pan.

5. Cook in moderately slow oven, 160C for about 35 minutes or until cooked when tested. Cool slice in pan for 5 minutes; transfer on to wire rack to cool.

6. Cut slice into squares.

It's not known whether the original ANZAC biscuits were sent over to the soldiers, or if they were used as fundraisers. They'd probably keep for a while, but long enough to get from NZ to Europe? Maybe in an airtight tin.

Cold

I've got a cold, and I'm grumpy and miserable.

ANZAC Day - Sergeant Henry Nicholas

Sergeant Henry Nicholas, a photo by Christchurch City Libraries on Flickr.

The first Cantabrian to receive the Victoria Cross. This statue stands on the banks of the Avon River, looking toward the Bridge of Remembrance.

ANZAC Day – 25 April – commemorates New Zealanders killed in war and honours all returned service personnel. It is the anniversary of the landing of Allied forces at Gallipoli in 1915 during World War I, and became an official holiday in 1921.

You will be surprised to hear that we are still occupying practically the same ground as at the start of the job here. The only advance we have made has been with the pick and shovel, with which handy tools we have straightened our line and strengthened our position…

I have not stopped any lead yet, but I had a narrow shave the other night. The Turks tried to blow up one of our advanced trenches. I was hit with fallen earth, which must have missed my head by inches, but I got out of it with only a bruised thigh, though the man next to me had his leg broken and died the next day. I can only hope for my luck to continue.

Private Henry Williamson, an Aucklander serving with the Australians, died of wounds three days later.

From "Letters from Gallipoli: New Zealand soldiers write home" by Glyn Harper.


 

Out of our minds: learning to be creative

 

Last flowers of Iceberg, dreading winter to come

 

"Out of our minds" is the title of a very interesting book I've stayed up half the night reading. It's by Ken Robinson (now Sir Ken), and it's about creativity in the broad sense of the word, and why we as humans need it, and why our education system is lagging behind in delivering the kinds of creativity we need.
    It's not about finding the artist within or why to take up watercolour painting. The book deals with a huge range of subjects, which the author manages to make interesting. The history of education, for example, which is pretty dry. He speeds through this, but looks at the big picture, showing education as a product and a producer of the paradigms of the time. (Paradigm is my new word; now I know what it means).
    Among a huge range of issues, Robinson believes that our education system is desperately out of joint with the advances in technology that we have experienced in the last 50 years. We are still educating for the Industrial Revolution; education is like an industrial process, the child goes in at one end and through a variety of operations, comes out the other end as a fully educated, useful member of society. Education is linear and hierarchical, taught by people who have a kind of priest-like vocation in an enclosed silo called a school. And he looks at our paradigm of intelligence; why do we believe that measures of intelligence are so important, and why do we believe that maths is more worth doing than art history? No one ever gets told "don't do maths, you're never going to make it as a mathematician" but people are frequently told "don't do art history, you'll never make a living as an art historian".
     His point is that we need creativity. The planet and our abuse of it, and our disregard for creativity, have led to a number of Big Problems that only creativity can get us out of. He quotes many astonishing statistics. One that stuck with me is that in 2010, 1 in every 31 adults in the US was in the justice system, either in jail, or on probation or home detention or under supervision. In 2008, the figure was 1 in 77. The State of California spent twice as much money punishing people as it did on the whole education budget. There's a problem that needs creativity to solve.
  Read this book. And this article about how a young cafe owner used creativity to finance and run her business:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/8588949/Nervous-start-for-cafes-young-owner

Bits and pieces

Went to a little ceremony today. The local authority that I work for held a morning tea for those of us who have worked for 10 or more years at the council. We all got a certificate and a wooden award thingy, which will make an ideal bookend. I've worked there now for 17 and a half years, so in a few years they will (might) give me a 20 year plaque, so I can have two bookends. I have to say it's nice to be recognised, to have a body of work acknowledged; so often all the kudos goes to the young hotshots who streak across the firmament, changing everything, then leaving for overseas or a higher-paying job. Employing staff who have a historical perspective of change (who know where the bodies are buried) is sometimes useful. Just because we're older doesn't mean we're stupider.

Am I being stupid if I say I feel sorry for the Boston Bomber, as he is now called in the media? There is no way he will get a fair trial, his brother is dead and he is severely injured and separated from his family. His constitutional rights are to be waived, (so much for the home of the free) and who knows what sort of physical tortures he will be subjected to. He will be Made An Example Of, as one of my teachers used to say. No doubt the gun lobby will use this to confirm just why all Americans should be armed to the teeth, and further limits on citizens' freedoms and rights will be imposed by the Senate "to protect American lives" (because they're so much more important than anyone else's). He is a terrorist because he is a Muslim Chechen; if he was an American he'd just be called a killer aka Dylan Klebold, the Unabomber etc., but didn't they terrorise their victims too? And did they have to call out every policeman on the Eastern Seaboard to hunt him down? One guy? It just seems... that there's something off here. As if the whole thing was stagemanaged by ??? I'm not a conspiracy theory sort of person, but....

Red!

 

Made a red assemblage this afternoon. Red is very prominent in my life at the moment; I have a new red scarf, given to me by my boss, red apples from the garden, and these gorgeous red roses, also from the garden. I don't know what this rose is, it's one that was here before I arrived, but it's done much better since the removal of the cabbage trees that grew overhead. It's quite a tall rose, with a good scent. In the background is my old red duffel coat, bought from a second-hand shop 10 years ago when I was newly re-singled and on a strict budget. The glass is a cranberry coloured parfait glass from St Mark's church fair.

Statistics

Managed to get the lovely people at Broken Controllers (see previous post Russian and other perverts) to take my site off their referrals. The traffic stats for Russian hits on my site have gone back to normal. This is good.
  The weather has turned to bad now, our first real dose of nasty stuff for the autumn/winter season. Consequent lowering of mood and morale across the city. There was a grand re-opening for one of our more picturesque streets today, New Regent Street, a sort of Hollywood/Spanish/Thirties streetscape that has been restored from the earthquake damage. They were going to have Spanish dancing and music, but the cruddy Christchurch weather, grey and wet, ruled it out.
  I've lived in Christchurch all my life, but I can't say that I love it here. It's just the place I live and where I've always lived. I think most cities are fairly crap to live in anyway, unless you are very wealthy and don't have to fight your way on to the Underground/Metro/Subway everyday. People go on about the social and cultural advantages of living in a city, but again, these are only accessible if you have a fair amount of discretionary spending and the time and energy to seek these experiences. There are parts of Christchurch that I love, but I can't say that as a city it is anything remarkable. And those who hoped that something remarkable, architecturally, socially, or ecologically speaking, might happen here after the quakes, are going to be disappointed, I think. The same old firms, the same powerful people, the same old money. And the same old arguments, on and on and on....

 

Spanish Hollywood - New Regent Street - one of the few architectural gems left in Christchurch

Autumn crocus

 

These live by the garage, in the shade, and come up every year and surprise me.

Kitchen floor after February 2011 earthquake

 

The cupboards just opened and threw all my stuff on the floor. Unreal.

Bleh

Not much going on at the moment. I'm working at two different jobs now, so trying to get my head around the one that I've gone back to after 2.5 years away, yet stay connected to my old current job too. Between the stuff I've forgotten and the new stuff that I need to learn, I've got a steep learning curve. The old job is much more complex and more stressful than it used to be, and it was stressful enough back when I left on secondment, so I doubt if I'm going to enjoy it much. (Not that I should say this here where anyone can read it). Still, plenty of people dislike their jobs, so I'll just have to suck it up, and do the best I can. I'm so tired of being a 'public servant', and smiling and being nice, when all I want to say is f... off, I don't care about you, Mr or Ms General Public.  If only you could say what you really think. And not lose your job.
     Weird dreams at the moment, always my brain's way of processing new stuff. Strange too, how I can think of some profound truth while dreaming, which I forget on waking or proves to be absurd in real time. Even when conscious, I daydream/segue into an alpha-state and have momentous revelations about myself, others and situations, but find it impossible to remember them when in a 'awake' beta-wave mode. The other day I realised some key fact about myself, but can I remember it? No. Is this normal, to be 'in' your thought and observing your thought as well? It all sounds very Zen. Perhaps this is the function of meditation, to bring the treasures of the subconscious mind into the conscious mind?
  Damned if I know.

  Read a funny caption the other day. It said "I wish my life had a soundtrack, so I could know what the hell was going on".
  Yup.

Venetian antique market

Russian and other perverts

Interesting times. Googling my blog (like you do) I discovered that a group called Broken Controllers had hijacked my URL. This is fairly common; they take  your URL, stick theirs in front of it, so that people googling you will end up on their site. Your stuff is there and the hits will register on your stats, but since the content is then on-posted to shonky sites, you may not like this. My stuff probably appears on porn sites like pregolom, viewed a lot in Russia. The benefit to Broken Controllers is that they improve their rankings on Google by piggybacking on your hits, and they can widen their content to sell more ads. So you are being used as an unpaid, uncredited author to gather kudos and money for them. You can place a copyright notice on your site, which I have done, and request them to take down their links to your site. Email whadu@brokencontrollers.com. I can't imagine how disappointed some Russian jerkovski are when they find my site talking about gardening and books. The entry entitled Aristocrats must have them foaming; no doubt they expect pictures of high-class women showing pink, not a historical series about the granddaughters of Charles II.
     I imagine the title broken controllers was used after someone had done a hit-count of the most common google phrase used by searchers. This is depressing; it means that as a planet, our biggest problem is that the Game-boy/PS2/whatever won't work. Fuck world poverty, I want to play ActionMan.
     And isn't that the problem in itself. Kim Jung-Un playing with his rockets and tanks. He's just a little boy but with the real thing to play with. The naked glee on his face when reviewing the troops is frightening. The phenomenal amounts of money spent on developing these things could have fed and housed his people, but he has given them pipe-dreams and rhetoric instead; a new kind of junk food, tasty but neither filling nor nutritional.
   And every day now, there is news of yet another mall or school shooting in the US. It's more dangerous now to live in the US than in Somalia or Afghanistan.
    Broken controllers. Now ain't that a metaphor?

Shirley Henderson as Yum-yum in The Mikado - from the movie Topsy-turvy

Today's pic; and morbid musings

 

Autumn - haul of Red Delicious apples from the garden. The basket is really old; it was made by my uncle when he was in a sanatorium recovering from TB after the seond world war. I'm careful not to leave it outside, I don't want it to rot. It's great for fruit picking. My uncle has been dead for many years (he died peacefully in his sleep) but the basket he made lives on, to be used and appreciated by a niece he never met. I do wonder what will happen to my 'stuff ' when I take the high jump. Probably all end up at the Salvation Army, but hopefully someone will get some use out of my things.

 

Two days off now, then back to work on Monday. I hope to finish some painting, plant some bulbs and perhaps take a daytrip somewhere if the weather is fine.

 

 

A gift! and odd musings

Opened the back door this morning to a gift from Thomas. A hare's foot, no kidding. We have no hares around here, so I guess he must have grabbed it out of someone's rubbish. At first I thought it was the remains of a rat, but it looked too weird, then I saw the toenails on it! Very peculiar. Of course, he loves it and plays with it. It's a pity he can't bring home some $100 notes.
    Going back to my old work place on Monday. My secondment time is up, and it's back to the future at the library. Don't really feel very positive about it, I hate going back to things once I've moved on. The good things are that I won't have to get up at sparrowfart, and won't have to drive into the madness of city roadworks that have made a Chinese puzzle out of Christchurch. The bad things are I'll have a lot more customers, all infected with the flu (I'm getting a shot) and more ghastly children who cough all over me. Better lay in a stock of Lomotil as well; I always seemed to have stomach bugs at the library, brought in by the ghastly children; there's always something "going around" the schools.
   Feel a bit tired of life at the moment, that feeling that you've seen enough and done enough and thought enough and felt enough to move on to your next incarnation. Sometimes I have to have a little lie down because I'm thinking too much and sleep is the only thing that turns my mind off. It would be amazing if you could have a holiday in another person's brain, but I can see it might not be very restful. Oh dear, I feel a lie down coming on.

Ibid

 

Today's random piccy: the walls of Este Castle, and the rose garden within the walls, taken on a warm early summer evening. It almost looks unreal, like a stage set for Romeo and Juliet, but it is real and authentic.

 

And the nightmare nearly came true. This morning I decided to park in a different car-park, Mainly because getting home from the other one is means running a gauntlet of obstacles. So I took another route, but missed both my first exit and my second. Alarmed to find I was beginning the run up to the motorway, I went down a side street and doubled back. But I was so tempted to just keep on driving; the sign said "Arthur's Pass --- xx kms" and I thought how pleasant it would be to spend the day driving to Arthur's. Perhaps a nice lunch, a little walk, and then stay the night, or go on to the Coast. One of these days I will do just that, be like Mole in the Wind in the Willows, and "hang spring cleaning", metaphorically speaking.
   I might even end up in Italy.

Road works

Christchurch is bedevilled by reconstructive road works at the moment. Practically every street has something being done to it to repair the ravages of the quakes. The problem is, it doesn't seem to be co-ordinated across the several different firms doing the work. Just going to the supermarket this afternoon had me driving around in ever-decreasing circles, dodging road-closures and road-cones and pumping, digging and dumping zones. It's a lot easier to stay home than venture out, but I've got to go to work tomorrow so no choice; I have to go a different route, since the street I normally take coming home is closed in three places. I've had a nightmare where I can't get back home at all, all the streets around my house are closed. And it's snowing. And getting dark.And I'm out in Sockburn (about five miles away) because the detours have railroaded me out there. Classic anxiety dream.
  And there's still subconscious trauma. A truck started up in the next street, with a low thrumming, and I realised I was bracing myself for the jolt of a quake to come. It's become second nature now, and will probably take many years to overcome.

Topsy-turvy

A cold afternoon, so I sat indoors and watched the movie Topsy-turvy, about Gilbert and Sullivan and the production of The Mikado. Great cast, great music, but probably did not get the acclaim it deserved because of the subject matter. Produced and directed by Mike Leigh, who is better known for his gritty modern movies like "Secrets and lies". Love the Victorian interiors and clothing; everything that could be decocrated was decorated, with bows and flowers and stuffed birds. Houses drowned in 'stuff', which we would now decry as clutter. It was a status symbol to have stuff, and the more stuff you had the more status you earned. The Japanese aesthetic of less is more must have seemed very puzzling, exotic and even crude to the Victorian mind, hence the fascination with Japonism and Japonaiserie. 
  But now I have to go and cook something for dinner. Why oh why is the desire to cook not consonant with the desire to eat?

The end of the golden weather

 

Finally, my aconite has flowered. It was growing here when I bought the house, and I always thought this plant looked like an aconite although it was quite weedy. So I left it in place and here it is. Also called monkshood, this is quite a poisonous plant, and was the stuff in the potion that the well-meaning Friar gave to Juliet. It's a pretty colour, but has rather weird-looking flowers.

 

Tonight is officially the end of summer; the clocks go back tonight, so no more Daylight Saving Time. We've had a good, hot summer, such as we've not known for many years. The farmers are complaining of course, but they've had fifteen years of wet summers to build up their finances, so I can't say I feel a lot of sympathy for them. I remember when we had a drought every year, it was quite an expected thing, so yah boo sucks, farmers. The last weeks have been glorious, especially at Easter, but now the weather has turned cold. Tonight I've cooked my first casserole of the year; the urge to get cosy and eat comfort food is growing with every day. I'm also baking a lemon cake to have for breakfast! (Not the whole cake; that would be piggy, even for me).

 

.

House not garden

Some views of my house instead of the garden. Special emphasis on lightshades.

Funny old standard lamp. Mum bought it for me at McKenzie and Willis' Trade-in store, which was a goldmine of good quality secondhand furniture, but now, like many things, turned to rubble.   It's a bit munted, because it fell over during the quake. I like it because it reminds me of a howdah umbrella, used by a maharaja on his elephant. And I like fringes. Wall is Resene Raspberry.

 

The peachy hall-way (Resene Romantic) looking into the Pale Leaf bedroom. The TV is going; NZ is switching to digital, but as I don't watch TV I'm not going to bother buying a new one. The shell lampshade was a find at Redcliffs School Fair, tucked under one of the trestles. Bought it home, put it up, and it looked like it had been there all along.

 

 

The laundry which doubles as a flower-room - vases stacked on  high shelves. Not very earthquake-savvy, but my solution to having them cluttering up the kitchen cupboards. Note large pile of ironing - I hate ironing and put it off forever. Trim is Spring Green.

 

 

Bedroom complete with Thomas in sunlight. Macrame lightshade from St Mark's Church Fair. Pink handbag from library lost property, and white ewer from the old family house in Lyttelton. It was discovered in the coal-cellar, keeping company with a brass kettle.

 

View from the entry porch, which also doubles as a painting/drawing room. Roses are Whisky and Peace.

Random stuff

I want to write a fan-fiction where Dr Sheldon Cooper becomes the first atheist to have a vision of the Virgin Mary. What would he think? What is his field, anyway? Perhaps if he's searching for the God-particle, he might well find the BVM?

The children over the road had an orangeade stand yesterday. It was very festive, with lawn chairs and sun umbrellas and a Dora-the-Explorer tent in case customers felt the need for a lie-down. At one point, tinny recorded music played Christmas songs over and over again. Then played Vivaldi's Four Seasons at a completely manic pace, as if played by an insane but very clever monkey.  I had to laugh. I'd rather have this than a boom-box any day.