Category Archives: Lifestyle

Getting my Brit Fix and Bridging the Divide

If you had told me when I moved to Melbourne in the early 2000s that a pandemic in 2020 would see Australia close its borders, pull up the drawbridge and ban international travel, I would probably have hightailed it back to the UK (I can hear my Mum saying she wishes I had!). Never did I imagine having to face enforced separation from my family and a country I love dearly with an indulgent rose-tinted, nostalgic fondness.

But I/we’ve managed magnificently: we’ve been suitably British and stoic – and even a bit Buddhist (well, I have; ‘this too shall pass’) – and made the best of it. And, as one with strong Luddite tendencies (yes, I still have a paper diary and LOVE it!) I acknowledge that technology and video calling has given us a lifeline and a rich sense of connectedness; in fact, as a family we’re more up to date with each other’s news than we used to be. I am one of four: there’s two of us here, and two of us there and we have a sibling video call every Friday.

And, thanks to the perseverance of my eldest brother Charlie, Mum uses an iPad and is FaceTime literate. Mum and I started out chatting twice a week, then – as COVID dragged on – I suggested a new way to bridge the divide. When Melbourne is nine hours ahead of the UK, I drop in at Mum’s at noon her time on a Sunday, and we listen (via her radio and our respective iPads), to her favourite programme on Radio 3, Private Passions. Each week presenter (and composer) Michael Berkeley explores the musical passions and lives of his guests. Sometimes we’re riveted by the subject and their musical choices, other times we drift off into chit chat, easy kitchen table tittle-tattle.  Quite often, Mum gives me an update on the birds on her birdfeeder, the state of her garden, what she is having for lunch or who has just walked past the window. It’s as if I am there in the room with her, and we treasure these special interactions.

Tuning into Private Passions with Mum

I’ve also had regular Brit Fixes thanks to plugging into BBC Sounds and listening to abridged versions of classic favourites such as Middlemarch – how did Dorothea stick it out with the GHASTLY Rev. Edward Casaubon? – Desert Island Discs, a Victoria Wood retrospective and, just recently, a reading of a beautifully nostalgic and touching story, written in 1931, of a family on their annual holiday to the seaside. There’s something wondrous about my physical self strolling along banksia- and wattle-fringed coastal paths with my dog Bertie, my headspace transported to Bognor Regis on Britain’s South-East coast, following the Stevens family strolling along the Promenade. Escaping the humdrum of everyday life, excitements back then included freedom from wearing ties, tight collars and stockings, and securing a bathing box with a balcony!

Other wonderful Brit Fix moments have included TV programme Secrets of the Museum – a behind the scenes tour of London’s V & A – looking at the extraordinarily detailed and delicate work of the curators and conservators. What joy to sit on my sofa, getting up close and personal with exquisite treasures, without the slow shoe shuffle past glass display cases, peering in at the small font captions. Another highlight was an episode of Rob Bell’s Walking the Lost Railways of Britain which took in the now disused railway station in Great Longstone, the Derbyshire village where my mother was born in 1931.

So far, so good. But as the months rolled on, I realised, with great sadness and a very heavy heart, that I was going to miss my niece Annabel’s wedding in July this year (it had already been postponed from July 2020) and Mum’s 90th in mid-September.

Once again, technology came to the rescue. My sister’s friend John gave me the most splendid (and I use that very British word deliberately) guided tour of Annabel and Jonny’s wedding in South London. We kicked off early and I had a bird’s eye view of the cake, the flowers, the cheeky bridesmaids and the page boys scampering about, the latter my nearly 2-year-old great-nephew twins, like little princes in their red shorts, white shirts and tartan bow ties.  I was there ‘live’ for the service, witnessed the exchange of vows, my niece radiantly happy and elegant, and Jonny resplendent in his kilt, cape and full tartan regalia, both brimming over with love. As they filed out, I had a quick chat with the just-married couple (making me the first person to address them as Mr and Mrs) and then stayed online while they were strewn with rose petal confetti, posed for photographs and then mixed and mingled. I had chats with many of the guests – from friends to family – until it got to 1am here and I had to remind them I was in my PJs and ready for bed!

And then, the weekend before last, my brother Tim and I video-called into Mum’s 90th birthday celebrations – in fact, it was a four generation, three-country call from Mum’s breakfast table in Nottinghamshire to Tim and me tuning in from Melbourne, and my niece Georgie and the twins (the page boys) in suburban Paris! On the first call we watched Mum – in the swing and bright as a button from the get-go – open some of her cards and presents.

Four Way International Call

We tuned in again closer to her lunchtime party. This time, the newly-married Annabel, now Mrs Recaldin, was emcee. As bubbles and copious canapes were served, Annabel waltzed us around pointing out Mum’s many cards (35 and counting), the birthday banners and balloons and the assembled guests.  “Which of the grey-haired old dears do you mean?’ enquired Annabel as I asked to speak to some of Mum’s friends, “there are a few in the room!”

My brother, Charlie, toasted Mum with some heartfelt and touching words, acknowledging, too, the extraordinary kindness of her neighbours, George and Annette, who have been her rock and strength throughout the pandemic. “I’ve made it to 90,” replied Mum triumphantly, “and it doesn’t feel so bad!” Then, after thanking friends, family and neighbours for celebrating with her, she added: “I know I can be difficult sometimes…”  Thank Goodness for gin, piped up Charlie.

  • Chocolate Biscuit Cake strewn with petals from one of Mum’s favourite roses, Darcey Bussell

Having felt weepy on and off all weekend about missing Mum’s party, I went to bed with my heart aglow. I felt the love through the screen and across the divide, and was thrilled to see Mum, the belle of the ball, in her green linen dress and pearls. The word splendid comes to mind again. And next year I’ll be able to visit in person, catch up on hugs, lots of them, and kitchen table chat.

Now is the time

How heart-shakingly moving was Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb which she read at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. For me, it summed up so powerfully and with such grace and eloquence the choices that stand before us in the COVID era. While she was speaking of America, and against the background of the storming of the Capitol on 6th January, her wise words apply to all of us wherever we live. What also stood out for me – and gave me hope – was that Biden is a man of soul, of the heart, capable of compassion and empathy; the polar opposite to the morally-corrupt, orange-faced ego-maniac Reality TV business tycoon who previously held office. I won’t even mention his name.

It’s ironic in some ways that we mourn the pre-COVID world. So much of that world was already broken and unsustainable; the pandemic has magnified the challenges we face with global warming, food (in)security, factory farming, inadequate systems to deal with the rising mountains of waste, inequity on so many levels (the politics of vaccine distribution to developing nations just one example) and power-hungry corporations putting profit before people and planet.

And then the senseless destruction of forests in so many parts of the world. Since 2016 one football pitch of forest is lost every second. Not only are trees vital sinks for carbon, but emerging science indicates that trees are social creatures that communicate and support each other via an interconnected fungal highway. Who hasn’t experienced a sense of soul amid towering trees in a forest cathedral? I read an article in The Melbourne Age this weekend instancing how a tree on the brink of death bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbours. How magnificent is that?

One of the benefits – if we can call it that – of COVID restrictions putting the brakes on ‘normal’ life (and my heart goes out to all those in the UK and other parts of the world faced with wide-scale community transmission, over-whelmed hospitals and high death rates, particularly those who don’t have the economic or social luxury of being able to socially-isolate) – is time to reflect, to slow down, to live more simply, to look out for our neighbours – get to know our neighbours even – to appreciate the small things, and importantly, to revere the natural world that sustains us. And I say revere deliberately.

In a pre-COVID post in February 2020, I wrote that Planet/Mother Earth can do without us and will cast us aside if we don’t look care for her. Recently I watched David Attenborough’s Witness Statement: A Life on Our Planet – on Netflix in which he went through the decades of his life demonstrating humanity’s impact on the planet as measured by population growth and the decline in wild spaces and biodiversity. It’s a compelling call to action. We have overrun the world he says, with nothing to stop us. We are intelligent but not wise, apart from nature, not a part of nature. Since that was filmed, COVID has swept across the world. If COVID doesn’t stop us from plundering the planet, polluting and over-consuming, nothing will. If we fail to clean up our act, more zoonotic viruses are waiting in the wings. Surely, that’s enough of a deterrent?

Now is our chance to change how we live our lives and how we interact with others and our environment, being kinder to ourselves, each other and the planet. Some say we’re doomed – human beings are inherently greedy, corrupt and selfish; history is merely repeating itself. Isn’t that a lazy let-out clause; a way of propping up the status quo?

We mainly read the gloom and doom stuff in the news – and there’s plenty of it – but we hear less about the initiatives to increase sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry, clever waste recycling, renewable energy and rewilding projects or community support schemes (one of my favourites the conversion of a red phone box in an English village into a community food larder). What a lot of schemes lack is the scale and infrastructure to achieve systemic change, but there’s opportunity for that to change. If we care enough and dare enough, we can all be part of that change through the choices, decisions and values we live by.

Tuning into the digital version of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival last August, I was struck by the words of film-maker Damon Gameau and his efforts to humanise climate change through story-telling, and his positivity: “we need to reframe the crisis as an opportunity and privilege to be alive at this time” and “Optimism is the basis of solutions for a sustainable future.” Like many commentators he instanced how major global events in the past brought about advancements, from the social changes triggered by the Black Plague to the creation of the NHS and welfare state in Britain after the Second World War.

Hope, like trees in the forest, nourishes the soul. One of my mother’s favourite phrases is: ‘Hope springs eternal’ (from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man). Another of her favourites is the poem Leisure by William Henry Davies: “What is this life if, full of care/We have no time to stand and stare.” With life turned upside down and without being able to plan ahead with any certainty, it’s become a bit easier to live more mindfully and in the moment– with more time to stand, stare, smell the roses and meditate. Even a few minutes of micro meditation can take you out of your head and back into your heart.  The trick, I have found, is to cultivate a practice of gratitude and to trust that there is some grand design behind the current global shake-up.


Lockdown gave me the time, space and single-minded focus to build a freelance practice as a grants specialist. And in a pleasantly organic and synchronistic way, organisations and projects that are close to my heart have found me. At the end of last year I supported five arts and entertainment organisations to win Federal Government grants – such a boost for artists whose livelihoods and performance opportunities have been decimated by COVID. Since then, there’s been youth mental health, environmental education and projects to re-purpose food waste. I feel as if I have found my professional feet and carved out my own niche and signature brand.

As a homebody, lockdown was less challenging for me than some. And that’s where the gratitude came in. Finally, I had time to give my garden more love, and to tackle jobs that had been on my domestic to-do list for years. I didn’t clear out a single cupboard but I did install a Vertical Garden in my courtyard and plant out various cuttings I had collected from friends’ gardens.

I painted my various garage sale and nature strip finds (for non-Australians, this has nothing to do with nudity; the nature strip is the grass verge bordering the pavement where people put out ‘hard rubbish’ to be collected by the Council!). While it’s illegal to pinch things from the hard rubbish, I see it as neighbourhood recycling, and it saves items going to landfill. A win-win. A neighbour, Jill and I, alert each other when we spot see something languishing by the side of the road that is crying out for a good home…

More than ever, I learnt to savour the small things: a cuddle with Bertie, a new green shoot in my garden, the first cup of tea in the morning, cloud formations in the sky, the changing colours of the ocean, the magpies carolling, an engrossing book or fascinating podcast. My home-based staycation over the Christmas holidays was a series of simple savoured moments adding up to quite a feast.

None of us knows what lies ahead. All we can do is to keep caring, keep learning, keep hopeful and keep putting one foot in-front of the other. I’ll leave you with a few lines from Amanda Gorman.

But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with


Spikes, tights and fairy lights: a bit of lockdown lightheartedness

One thing about the Covid-19 lockdowns (we are in lockdown take two in Melbourne) is that the dog child and I are confined to barracks every evening. And in winter that means possum o’clock begins around 6 pm when the pesky little critters emerge from their daytime resting spots and start scampering about, taunting my spaniel Bertie by using my fence as a runway, and me, by chomping on a few shrubs into the bargain.

possum-nibbled shrub

Bertie is by nature a hunting dog so the appearance of these squirrel-like nocturnal visitors drives him into a frenzy of frustration.  Whenever I hear him squeaking and shrieking, I dash out to find him hopping around on his back legs, hurling himself at the fence. Safely perched at the top of the trellis, the possums stare complacently at Bertie as if to say ‘bark all you want, you’ll never get us.’ Schadenfreude in action.

I’m not so worried about the noise of his barking, although it is pretty disruptive, but more concerned that his efforts to scale the fence are damaging his already stiff back. Even as a pup he’d sometimes limp a bit in his left hip. And he’s always sat with his right leg sticking out at an angle – presumably to relieve the stiffness on the other side. While an X-ray showed he doesn’t have hip dysplasia as such, there is wear and tear in the back and hip area. And if you try and massage that area or apply pressure, he’s not impressed.

Having said that, noise abatement has been part of my game plan. For the last year I’ve had pesky noise-phobic neighbours – renters rather than owners, thank Goodness. The first time I met them the conversation was ALL about them, their health, trials and tribulations.  As if in warning, they said they hoped my dog didn’t bark, and that in previous houses they’d had to write to the Council about dogs that yapped all day. Bertie does have an impressive bark but it’s never continuous, more a response to certain stimuli – a bird on the roof, a possum, a knock at the door etc.

As I write this, I’ve decided to devote a future post to these crazy neighbours who have applied an accusatory and forensic approach to each and every noise – be it my heating, a sporadic Bertie bark, the neighbour’s air-con or occasional loud parties, construction noise or the guy over the other side playing music. They write letters, they climb up on ladders to peer over the fence, and they throw eggs. They are due to vacate – after much wrangling and a VCAT case – in August ­, so watch out for my celebratory blog then. Stressful at the time but amusing and cathartic looking back…

Suffice it to say I’ve had ample motivation to do my utmost to deter the possums and divert them to someone else’s garden. A few years back I installed a sonic possum deterrent– it may have helped for a while but I reckon the possums grew accustomed to it. I re-positioned it recently and at one point turned up the volume. Then I got calls from Mrs Noise Phobe asking if I could hear a strange whirring noise around midnight. Had I got a new possum deterrent? I denied everything, but did turn it down. The minute they move out, I’m going to crank it up again!

Then a friend recommended solar-powered coloured fairy lights as a way of keeping possums away. I duly trooped off to Bunnings, and my hero brother helped me string them along the fence. Clearly, there’s got to be enough solar gain in the day to keep them flashing at night (oh yes, I have set them to epileptic fit-inducing flash). Still the little buggers scampered across the fence, driving Bertie berserk. Next, I resorted to Old Wives’ Tale remedies and, keeping some hair from Bertie’s last groom, stuffed it into a stocking which I suspended from the fence. That only compounded the problem as he mistook the dangling black shape for a possum, and barked at it!

Some nights if I caught the possums red-handed in a stand-off with Bertie, I’d train the hose on them or poke them with a long pole. And please don’t go Animal Rights-y on me. I’m not harming them, simply encouraging them to hang out elsewhere. Suffice it to say, none of the above proved to be sustainable solutions. Back to Dr Google. This time I invested in humane possum spikes 2cm high and 4.5cm wide, which I positioned at strategic points along the fence. That didn’t work either. Perhaps if I had covered the whole fence it would have been more successful, but, then again, the possums didn’t seem to mind to walking on then.

Back to the drawing board and to the possum spike company, who were only too happy to cash in on trying to solve what is clearly my (insert marketing speak) ‘pain point’ as a customer. Taking advantage of the end of year sale, I ordered a different type of spike. Tall, resembling 6-inch icicles, and made of Perspex, these are the real deal. My brother, bless him, came over and put them along the entire length of the fence. For the first few nights it was quieter. But possums are resourceful – I reckon there’s a movie in this along the lines of Wallace and Gromit’s The Curse of the Were-Rabbit or Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox – and, soon after, I spotted a possum crawling along my fence underneath the spikes, and another using the side of the spikes as a climbing frame.

I reckon they got in through the gaps down the side of the fence adjoining the noise phobes’ garden – so I have strung up netting and filled in the gaps. It is quieter on the Western Front now. Bertie can still hear the possums on the other side of the fence but he’s less frenzied when he’s no longer eye-balling them. It’s only a matter of time, of course, before they discover they can leap from my other neighbour’s gutter onto my shed and along the fence underneath the spikes – but till then we’ll keep on with our spikes, sonic possum deterrent and flashing lights. Never a dull moment over here!

C is for Chevy: Cruising in the Yarra Valley

In these times of heightened uncertainty due to that other C-word, it’s important to remember that there is still joy and brightness in the world. This is not to deny or diminish the seriousness of the Covid-19 virus, the global disruption, the economic fall-out, the fear, panic, loss of livelihoods and lives and ensuing grief, the enormous stress on medical and social service professionals, and those who are vulnerable, disabled and disadvantaged.

So, to share a fun and cheerful story, last Friday my brother and I had a special day out, just ahead of all the cancellations and shut-downs. Tim turned 60 in January, and I decided to give him an experience as a present, rather than something gift-wrapped. When I read about d’Luxe Classic Car Tours in the Sunday Age travel section back in January, I knew I had found the perfect way to mark his milestone birthday.

I didn’t tell him what we were doing but he knew it involved some form of transport and a trip outside Melbourne. I’d seen pictures of the 1956 Chevrolet on the d’Luxe website but nothing prepared me for the razzle dazzle of the real thing. Purchased in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and brought back to Australia via a 2,000-mile road trip from Seattle to Los Angeles by John Frostell and his sons, Lois is a sight to behold: shining chrome fenders; spotless white wall tyres; and the body of the car – a four-door pillar-less hardtop sedan –  resplendent in two shades of glorious green, turquoise and a darker sea green, with pointy fins at the ‘trunk’ end.

Within minutes Tim and John were talking cars – Tim ran a very successful consultancy in the automotive industry and knows his stuff. As we set off from the CBD towards the Yarra Valley, we relaxed into the gentle purr of the V-8 (eight-cylinder) engine, its burbling rumble a feature, so John told us, of the special muffler (part of the exhaust system), a modification by the original owner. Winding down the windows there’s uninterrupted space – that’s where the lack of pillars comes in – and when the windows are up, the expanse of glass affords 360-degree views. It was a temperate day so we didn’t need the so-called ‘4/40 Air Conditioning’ – four windows down and forty miles per hour!

Inside, the roof, dashboard and seats are all turquoise, and the front bench seat (long enough for three) reminded us of a Ford Zephyr our father drove in the ’60s. The scallop shape of the speedometer and radio is echoed by the crescent shape made by the back windows when wound down. They really knew how to make things in those days, with every detail beautifully crafted, from the shining stainless-steel trims and the green push down door locks (remember those?) to the 18-inch green steering wheel. One simply had to pose in the driving seat!

Our route was via Wonga Park and we were soon in the leafy environs of the Yarra Valley amid farms, paddocks, fruit farms and vineyards. Our first stop was the Yarra Valley Dairy, which is housed in an old farm with a corrugated roof. We tasted four cheeses, a mix of cow’s and goat’s, and we particularly loved the Saffy, a cow’s milk cheese marinated in saffron, lemon rind, cumin seeds, garlic and olive oil, and the mature goats cheese log – the Black Savourine.

From there we headed up to Medhurst Winery, where arty sculptures dot the landscape and the cellar door and restaurant are on a hill with views over the estate.   We tasted our way through six or more wines including an excellent 2019 Rosé  (we both purchased some), the outstanding Sauvignon Blanc, much more subtle than some of the overly floral NZ numbers, and several reds, our favourite the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon. Medhurst was also our lunch stop, and we shared a plate of glorious cured salmon, smoked chicken croquettes, crisp on the outside and gooey on the inside, followed by tempura eggplant dusted with harissa.

By then our time was pretty much up but we snuck in a trip to Alchemy Distillery in Healesville. With former incarnations as a wood-fired bakery and an antique shop, the place is full of character, a stuffed deer looking like Diana Ross with black hair, leather skirt and boots sits surrounded by barrels and artfully arranged piles of antlers, while in another room there’s a majestic stag’s head and a surviving Small & Shattell cast iron oven set into a niche in the wall. If spirits are your thing, Alchemy make chamomile gin and citrus vodka – I tried the latter, its sharp lemony notes would make it a glorious summer drink. Eagerly awaited is their single malt whisky – we saw the barrels in the tasting room – which is due in 2021 after three years’ maturation.

All our senses fully sated, we cruised back to Melbourne to a soundtrack of Latin America jazz, Nina Simone and other mellow numbers. To find out more go to: www.dluxeclassiccartours.com

 

 

 

 

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” (Henry David Thoreau)

The other day as I was walking in my local suburb with the dog child, I noticed that yet another house had been bulldozed to the ground to make way for yet another new build. But this was no ordinary house and certainly not a tumbledown. Well-maintained, it was an elegant and gracious Victorian-style home enclosed by a bluestone wall with a polished brass number plate. In fact, it was smart enough to have statues in the garden. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl – albeit in a Southern Hemisphere setting – I used to peek through the fence, admiring the porch with the tiled floor, the wrap-around veranda and the ornate cornices on the roof. This is the kind of house I would buy if I won the Lottery, I told myself.

Elegant sash windows

I was aghast seeing it demolished and furious at the waste of materials – those lovely long sash windows – and the senselessness of it.  And this during the summer that Australia has been experiencing the worst bush fire season in its recorded history, with over 2000 homes destroyed. One the hand greedy developers and fickle homeowners and, on the other, individuals and families powerless to save their homes from being razed to the ground by ferocious fires.

Whatever your views about climate change and its impact on our environment, one thing is indisputable. The way we are living on planet Earth is not sustainable. We rape, pillage, plunder, pump out pesticides and plastic, spend, acquire, amass, throw away and then start over again. And we don’t learn from the past or heed the warnings. Think of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring published in 1962, considered to be the book that kick-started the global grassroots environmental movement.

And I’ve just read – and very much enjoyed – John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America. In 1960 Steinbeck set off in a truck converted to a camper van on an epic journey across America with his standard poodle, Charley, a colourful character in his own right.  It’s a wonderful tale full of rich and lyrical observations of the natural world – especially the giant redwoods in southern Oregon, amusing anecdotes about the different states he passes through, and chats over coffee and whisky with a cast of quirky characters he meets on the way. But it’s also deeply reflective and the themes he raises are still relevant today.He laments the amount of waste (including wrecked and rusting cars) in American cities, and the amount of packaging used in every day life: “I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness – chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea.”  He talks of towns encroaching on villages and the countryside, supermarkets edging out ‘cracker-barrel’ stores. “The new American finds his challenge and his love in traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry.” And he encounters political apathy – life seems to revolve more around baseball and hunting than discussions about the respective merits of Kennedy versus Nixon in an election year.  Sound familiar?

Steinbeck died in 1968, just eight years after writing this book, at the age of 66. I wonder what he would have made of the digital era. I suspect he might not have been much of a fan. “No region can hold out for long against the highway, the high-tension line and the national television.” And he rails against trailer homes, a tax efficient form of property ownership with an inbuilt form of one-upmanship as owners constantly upgrade to a better model. Overall, he comes away disenchanted.

“We have in the past been forced into reluctant change by weather, calamity, and plague. Now the pressure comes from our biologic success as a species. We have overcome all enemies but ourselves.”

How prescient, and how uncomfortable, especially given the recent outbreak of Coronavirus. Let’s face it, humans are the problem. Planet Earth can do without us, and most likely will cast us aside – as insignificant specks of dust – unless we learn to live in harmony with the ecosystems that support all life, giving us clean soils, air and water.

Rather than getting depressed and defeated, however, it’s vital that we use the current level of global discontent to campaign and advocate for change to policies and practices that reduce emissions and promote sustainability. And as we do that, let’s not lose sight of the many positive initiatives being undertaken by changemakers, entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists to tackle social and environmental challenges.  It’s not all bad: just this week I read that one of Britain’s largest builders, Bovis Homes, is incorporating “hedgehog highways’ into existing and future housing – hedgehogs walk more than a mile each night foraging for food, but numbers have dropped significantly due to habitat loss and pesticide use. A nice win for biodiversity!

Scarecrows, Sprockers and State Visits

Have you ever thought about the history of scarecrows? I hadn’t but the 12th annual Ranskill and Torworth Scarecrow Festival – a village fundraiser close to where my mother lives in Nottinghamshire – prompted me to do some research. The Egyptians were the first to make wooden scarecrows in the likeness of deities to deter the birds from eating grain. In medieval Britain children would walk through the fields throwing stones at birds raiding the crops but when the Black Plague decimated the population in 1348, there weren’t enough people to work in the fields so they made scarecrows out of straw with turnips or gourds for heads.

I always think of that song in Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat (still one of my favourite musicals of all time) Stone the Crows, the one that comes after Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream:

Well, stone the crows
This Joseph is a clever kid
Who’d have thought that 14 cows
Could mean the things
He said, they did

And who remembers Worzel Gummidge, the TV series from the 70s and 80s, based on the books by Barbara Euphan Todd with John Pertwee aka Dr Who as Worzel, the scarecrow? I’ve just read that the BBC is filming a new adaption to be screened later in the year. There’s something very lovable about a scarecrow who comes to life and befriends children, getting up to tricks and mischief.

I didn’t count the scarecrows lining the roads around the two villages but there must have been a good fifty or more covering topics ranging from humour to history, cartoon characters, fiction, fantasy and fairy tale. Mum and I hopped on Wilfreda Beehive, a 1965 London Routemaster Bus, to view the exhibits in style.

Some of my favourites included three Spitting Image-style politicians: Theresa May, Jean Claude Juncker and Jeremy Corbyn, a policeman holding a hairdryer as a speed detector and a robed figure sitting on a chair entitled Mindfulness. Positioned atop trees and hedges along the route were knights on horseback, astronauts and children’s favourites such as Peppa Pig. A lot of fun.

But there was more: amid the stalls selling hand-crafted bags and natural skincare products there was a dog show and competition with categories including Gundogs, Working Dogs and Hounds, Pedigree, Pastoral and Toy, Good Looking Boy/Girl and Most Appealing Eyes. Drawn to the spaniels, I met several Bertie lookalikes. They were, in fact, sprockers – a mix of cocker and spring spaniel. Bertie is the result (one of ten) of an accidental mating between a field spaniel and a cocker spaniel. What does make him? A focker, a flocker? The mind boggles. That same day I accompanied Mum to St Peter’s Church in nearby Clayworth, home to theTraquair Murals by renowned Scottish Arts and Crafts artist Anna Traquair (1852-1936). I reckon Mum goes more for the social connection than any deep-rooted faith. The somewhat happy clappy vicar – it was Pentecost Sunday (reminding me of our/Australia’s Pentecostal PM, Scott Morrison) – challenged us to reflect whether we were ready for God’s Kingdom on earth. The lady in the front pew assented with a vigorous YES and clapped her hands in the penultimate hymn. Mum, meanwhile, whispered all too loudly, that the service was going on way too long and she hoped there wouldn’t be yet another hymn. There was. I enjoyed a bit of time out to reflect, count my blessings (excuse the pun) and admire the fabulous murals.

Not to be defeated by the rain, we also visited Retford’s local museum housed in a handsome Georgian mansion. A mix of various private collections – china, glass etc – and displays of bygone eras, I enjoyed the Second World War Kitchen, the cabinet full of lotions, potions and medicines such as Dr MacLean’s Stomach Powder and the Victorian schoolroom. Although once a thriving market town (granted its first charter by Henry III in 1246) and then a coal-producing centre connected by a network of canals, it’s gone rather downhill and is now full of shops such as Primark and Poundstretcher.

There’ve been some afternoon naps – I’ve bagged what was Dad’s reclining chair and plugged in a little hot pad in an attempt to create a sun lounger experience. I’ve done lots of cooking and, to Mum’s delight, tried recipes that I have collected over the years with only one culinary flop so far. And all this against the backdrop of the ongoing Brexit debacle: no deal, a revised deal, a postponed deadline, proroguing Parliament, a General Election, scrapping Brexit or remaining. It’s chaos. And the way the Conservative party leader selection process is going, it looks like the UK and the US will each will be ruled by blond blusterers with bad haircuts. I met a lady on the train to London who was on the Conservative Executive Committee under Thatcher and was injured in the Brighton Hotel bombing in 1984. She knows Boris and insists that the buffoonery is all an act and that he is a shrewd player. Let’s hope she’s right!

Trump, of course, basked in the attention, pomp and ceremony surrounding his State Visit to the UK (labelling anti-Trump protests as fake news) to mark the extraordinarily emotional 75th Anniversary of the D-Day landings. Britain being Britain, he was highly criticised for his sartorial faux-pas with the vest of his white-tie outfit way too long under the jacket. Then there was the errant h in his spelling of the Prince of Whales and his vicious verbal attack on the Mayor of London. By contrast, the Queen so dignified and chipper and doing her bit for that so-called special relationship between the two countries.

 

The Republic of Words 3 of 3: Writing, dogs and the meaning of life

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, a book about writing and the relationship between animals and humans, was another perfect fit for me. It’s a novel but I thought it was a true story as it reads like a memoir and is, I discovered, the most autobiographical of Nunez’s book to date. It is a simple story but one that is multi-layered and full of literary allusions with an animal as the central character. It’s about a woman in New York – the narrator – who reluctantly inherits a dog – a Great Dane – when its owner, her friend, a womanising professor who has been married three times, commits suicide. Nunez, like the female narrator, both teaches and writes.  She has no social media accounts and leads a quiet life: “I became a writer because it was something I could do alone and hidden in my room.” She is an ‘old school’ writer who views the craft as a vocation and was surprised to find herself in the limelight as the winner of the 2018 National Book Award.

Nunez/the narrator has a dig at the proliferation of writers and quotes the deceased friend as agreeing with Garrison Keillor: “When everyone’s a writer, no one is,” a sentiment Nunez traces back to the pre-digital era: French critic Sainte-Beuve said in 1839: “To write and have something published is less and less special. Why not me too? everyone asks.” What would have Sainte-Beauve have made of self-publishing and blogging?

Anyone who has tried to write a book and bumped up against the self-doubt, angst and feeling of being a fraud will take comfort from learning that John Updike always felt he had got away with something when he saw his books in a store. For Virginia Woolf and Isak Dinesen the act of writing helped to ease pain and sorrow, whereas Philip Roth found writing frustrating and humiliating. And how surprising to learn that prolific writer Georges Simenon described writing as a vocation of unhappiness.  The most pertinent quote for me was from Rainer Maria Rilke: “If you were forbidden to write, would you die?”

I certainly don’t feel compelled to use my time out from work to write a novel, memoir or best seller – not at the moment anyway. For now, I am content to blog for the love of writing and to maintain the practice of crafting words. Although I do rather love the image of tapping away at a  book n a house by the beach with my dog at my feet…

The friend in the story refers not only to the deceased professor but to the Great Dane Apollo.  This is no saccharine story of puppy love, however. At first an unwelcome burden, the dog is a wise old soul who gradually becomes central to the narrator’s life – she even reads to him (something a holistic vet suggested I do to calm my dog Bertie!) – and manages to persuade her landlord to let her keep him in her tiny New York apartment. Much of the book is about the relationship between humans and animals: “They may know us better than we know them.” I also loved this: “I like that Aborigines say dogs make people human.” The Friend also references famous people who have owned dogs such as J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967) editor of BBC magazine The Listener. While he took a rather unhealthy interest in his dog’s heats and bodily functions (there’s a chapter in his book My Dog Tulip called Liquids and Solids), he spoke of his relationship with Tulip as a 15-year marriage, the happiest of his life. In similar vein the narrator in The Friend quotes a passer-by as saying: “Better a dog for a husband, than a husband who’s a dog.” Hear, hear, I say!

Although a fictionalised life lesson, I also enjoyed The Why Café by John Strelecky, partly because I read it in German – Das Café am Rande der Welt ­­– and tapped back into the language, and partly because it never harms to ponder the meaning of life! The narrative construct is that a stressed advertising executive runs out of petrol and finds himself in a café in the middle of nowhere. On the menu are three questions:

Why are you here?
Do you fear death?
Are you fulfilled?

Through conversations with the café owner, waitress and a patron, the book encourages readers to challenge their thinking. Are we being true to ourselves or doing what others wish us to do? Are we slogging away to earn money to amass belongings that we think will makes us feel happy? Are we keeping madly busy because we haven’t found our purpose or our calling? Are we waiting till retirement to do what we love? Do we swim with the tide or against it? What is our life purpose?

I sometimes wonder if writing is my calling or just something I love to do. Maybe dogs are my calling – or animals. Or maybe it’s writing funding applications to support animal welfare and conservation! I certainly find great solace in nature and love being away from screens and devices, chatter, noise and distraction. Walking out across the fields in Nottinghamshire yesterday, bright red poppies dotting the landscape and foamy cream hawthorn blooms bordering the path, I stood and ‘chatted’ with a cow, who stopped his meditational chewing and turned to look at me, its eyes full of knowingness. Mindful moments like those remind me how wondrous it is to be alive. And, for all the self-help and psychobabble, we don’t need to have all the answers. Another brilliant quote from The Friend by Rilke: “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart… live in the question.”

 

 

Here we go a-truffling

When I booked onto a truffle hunt with my dog Bertie, I pictured him scampering around in the orchard and sniffing out a mature Tuber Melanosporum aka a Perigord Black Truffle. That’s because Field Spaniels – Bertie is half Field and half Cocker Spaniel – are being bred specifically for the truffle industry. Field Spaniels are renowned for their hunting skills and exceptional noses. When Bertie was a puppy and we attended puppy pre-school at the vets, he quickly located where the treats were. While the other dogs wriggled around on people’s knees, Bertie maintained a hypervigilant eye and nose on the prize.  His olfactory system never sleeps – even a short trip around the block will usually yield an edible find. He once shot off across the beach­ – leaving me panicked that he would run onto the road – hot on the scent of a sausage sizzle hosted by a party of Rotarians. He would have made an excellent sniffer dog. In fact, he could have excelled in many different nose-based careers.

As it is, he is a much-loved and over-indulged pet. Which is why we booked onto a Truffle Hunt organised by a company called Gourmet Pawprints offering ‘pawfect’ food and wine experiences for people who like to take their dogs along for the ride. As befits a canine-centric business, the dogs are guaranteed a window seat on ‘Bella the Bus’ (Kerry, the owner of Gourmet Pawprints, not only runs the business but also drives the bus!) and are greeted with a goody bag of treats. Bert sat across from Penny, a skittish but adorable Dalmatian (one of two on the trip), and Iggy, a well-behaved black lab. At one point, Penny barked which lead to a Mexican wave of barks across the bus, reminding me of a classic read from my childhood, The Starlight Barking by Dodie Smith.

I once dreamt that Bertie accompanied me on a trip back to Britain. In my dream there were sofa beds – you know the ones with the pull-out metal frame – and the dogs slept underneath.  Wishful thinking on both accounts; you’d only find a sofa-sized bed in First Class (dream on Charlotte) and from a cost and quarantine perspective, taking Bertie on holiday to Britain would be totally impractical. I do love to imagine him, however, running across babbling brooks and green fields criss-crossed by dry stone walls in somewhere like Derbyshire (where I was born) or Yorkshire.  But travelling up to Daylesford by bus – Bertie kindly let me share his double seat on the way back – on a Wuthering Heights-type wet and wintry day came a close second.

Our destination was Black Cat Truffles just outside Creswick, and we were greeted with oozingly rich truffle-infused d’affinois cheese and a glass of sparkling wine – just an hour earlier we had had chocolate brownies and coffee in Ballan! We learnt that truffles are the edible fruiting bodies of fungi that grow underground in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of host trees such as hazlenut and oak, most typically in low nutrient soils with a high pH level. At Black Cat the orchard is planted with French and English Oaks and the truffle dog is a trained Labrador named Ella. She had already sniffed out where the mature truffles were located, and the owners Andres and Lynette had marked the trees with a ribbon.

Thankfully the rain let up and ushered in a brief sunny spell just long enough for us to get up close and personal with the truffles. We were invited to kneel and sniff the soil before digging up a few spectacular specimens; mine was the size of a cauliflower and would have commanded a price of about $1000 on the market.  It’s hard to capture the distinctive aroma of a truffle in words; it’s strong, woody, earthy, pungent, heady and sticky sweet.

Needless to say, none of the dogs got a look-in when it came to walking around the truffière. The environment in the orchard needs to be carefully controlled and protected – we had to dip our boots in disinfectant. Instead the dogs got their own special treasure hunt in an adjacent paddock and had fun unearthing treats.

After sampling and/or buying truffle butter, truffle salt and truffle honey in the shop, it was time to move on for lunch at the Farmer’s Arms in Creswick. The entire menu – bar the wine – was truffle-infused from the charcuterie platter to the main course of barramundi or beef cheek. But it was the honey truffle panna cotta with a berry coulis that stole the show. The sweetness of the honey and the earthiness of the truffle shavings (spot the black dots in the photo) were perfect foils for the cooked cream.

While we had been feasting, the dogs were treated to massages and edible treats on the bus. With the dogs relaxed after their pampering session, and the humans sated and soporific after rich food and fine wine, there was much dozing on the way home. That’s what’s so enjoyable about a tour; it’s all done for you and you can sit back and let the day unfold – no map-reading, thinking or organising needed. Pawfect indeed.

Blind Dates and Silent Movies: 36 hours in the Barossa Valley, South Australia

Could I trust him? Take him at his word? Or would he lead me astray (not again, I hear some of you murmur)? Even though – let’s call him George – spoke nice RP (Received Pronunciation) English, cut glass diction is no guarantee of reliability. George, you see, was very much a blind date.

Although just about everyone else I know – bar perhaps Mum and other octogenarians – uses GPS navigation to get them from A to B, I am a bit of a Luddite and still use hard copy maps and the Melway. It’s part silent protest at the increasing digitisation of our lives, and part preference for following a route across the pages from end to end. So here I was in my rented Toyota Corolla, a sat nav virgin, with George the GPS my co-pilot.

My brain wiring isn’t used to screen, voice, road and dashboard interactivity – there was no way I could listen to the radio as well as tune into George and take heed of the endlessly changing speed limits (I jumped the first time George beeped with a road safety camera warning). What would have happened if something went awry with George’s wiring and I ended up in, say, Port Lincoln, rather than Tanunda in the Barossa? You really have to trust the technology. To be fair to George, he got me to Tanunda although I had to ring the B&B where I was staying for directions for the last two kilometres as he took me in a big loop beginning and ending in Seppeltsfield Road.

I arrived after an afternoon meeting in Adelaide about 4.30pm on Friday, just in time for a quick sunset walk. My original plan, had I left in the morning, had been to drive via German/Australian artist Hans Heysen’s (1877-1968) studio, The Cedars, near Hahndorf.  Instead I spent a very enjoyable hour and a half in the Adelaide’s Art Gallery. The permanent collection in the Melrose Wing is divided into themes and combines some European classics – think Rodin, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Reynolds, Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud – with Australian artists such as Sidney Nolan, Hans Heysen and members of the Heidelberg school. And alongside cabinets filled with 18th century bonbonnières, scent bottles and snuff boxes are some arresting modern pieces, one of them titled We are all flesh, a sculpture of two horses made from horse skins (acquired from a tanner in Brussels) suspended from the ceiling.

We are all Flesh by Berlinde De Bruyckere (2011-12)

Saturday was my only full day in the Barossa so, as is my wont, I rather packed it in – barrelling around in more ways than one – as I had two fixtures shaping my day: a 2 pm cookery demonstration at Maggie Beer’s Pheasant Farm and a 7.30 pm silent movie night with live organ accompaniment in Tanunda. With George stuffed in the glove box, I started my day at the Mengler’s Hill Sculpture Park admiring the sixteen or so sculptures, most of which are hewn from local marble and granite, and enjoying views over the verdant Barossa Ranges.

Chateau Tanunda was my next stop, a family-owned winery and bluestone estate built in the late 1880 by migrants from Germany – as is the case with so many of the Barossa wineries. As well as sampling some oaky reds and a botrytis (dessert wine), I enjoyed looking at the vintage photos of when the estate had its own railway. Next up was a trip to the Barossa Bush Gardens, a volunteer-planted native garden with prolific bird life and a backdrop of laughing kookaburras and screeching galahs and parrots. In the neighbouring nature reserve there’s an open-air chapel with a huge gum tree acting as a kind of altar and pews hewn out of tree trunks. I had a mini contemplative moment or two,  but wanted to get to Maggie Beer’s so I’d have plenty of time for tastings in the Farm Shop before the cookery demonstration.

For those who don’t know of her, Maggie Beer is an Australian national treasure – a bit like Britain’s Mary Berry. In fact, she wasn’t around on Saturday as she was resting in between filming the Great Australian Bake Off in Sydney. She pioneered the use of Verjuice (green juice from unripe grapes) in cooking and is also big on Vincotto (cooked wine made from non-fermented grapes). After wandering through the shop sampling delicious pâtés, salad dressings, jams, pickles, dark chocolate and vincotto paste, salted brandy caramel and passion fruit curd (I had thirds of the last three), it was time for the demonstration.  Simple but delicious, we witnessed and tasted how much zip a bit of verjuice can add to sautéed mushrooms and roasted vegetables.

After a cup of reviving chai and a quick flick through the papers in a café in Tanunda, I had just enough time to return to my B&B, shower and change for the evening. Tanunda is the kind of place where restaurant kitchens close at 9 pm so I needed to get dinner around 6 pm to make the silent movie show. And what a highlight that was. Built for Adelaide Town Hall in 1875, the magnificent Hill & Son organ, the oldest concert organ on the Australian mainland, is now housed in the Barossa Regional Gallery. The evening included a selection of 1920s silent film classics ranging from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to Felix the Cat. Accompanied by David Johnston, considered Australia’s finest exponent of silent movie accompaniment, it was a gem of an evening. What skill it is to play the soundtrack to those slapstick silent films and get the timing, intensity and nuancing right. My favourite was Felix the Cat: with just four main characters the laundry-washing mother; the piano-playing boy; Felix; and a bunch of cheeky mice, it’s crisp, funny and deceptively simple. What a treat.

Walking back to my car I passed a wine bar with live music playing. Savouring a glass of smooth Cab Sav named Audrey (making me think Hepburn, a bit of a pin-up of mine) I caught the last quarter of an hour of music and got chatting to some interesting locals, one of whom I met for coffee the next morning.

After coffee on the Sunday, my belly full of an enormous B&B breakfast, I drove back to Adelaide via a few more wineries: Langmeil (long mile in German) was once a small village which extended over a mile (hence the name) from the site of the winery to the church. Here I sampled some delicious reds, my favourite the 2015 Valley Floor Shiraz, and then I walked up to a small boutique winery, David Franz, with wonderful views over the hills. Here I tried and bought a rich, syrupy Shiraz liquor – rather like a young port. Then it was time to rehabilitate George and let him get me back to the airport, which he did, and on time. All is forgiven. I might even take him out again.

The joy of flying solo

The Sunday before last I dragged myself out of bed early to get to a 10 a.m. Meetup group. Intriguingly titled ‘All My Friends are in Couples and I’m Single’, I thought it was worth including as part of my experiment with offline living.  Sporting my five Euro sequined hat (purchased for the Gala evening at the International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam last October), I yawned my way into the city on the train wishing I had stayed in bed.

It’s busy in Brunetti’s on a Sunday morning. I scoured the place and eventually located what looked like the group. Disappointed by the imbalanced ratio of women to men, probably about 4 to 1, I hovered with my pot of tea and wondered where to sit. The group was arranged around a long refectory-style table which made it difficult to circulate. As much as you can ever judge a book by its jacket, I liked the look of a man at the far end; he was slim, with receding, greying hair and had an air of refined intelligence about him. He seemed engrossed in conversation with the woman next to him.  Hmm, how could I break in? As I approached I noticed that they were both wearing wedding rings and seemed uninterested in mixing with the rest of the group. It wasn’t till they had eaten their breakfast and left that I realised they were nothing to do with the Meetup. And that they must have been married to each other.  Good start, Charlotte! I had to stifle a little giggle at this point.

Instead I got chatting to one of the three remaining men. Stocky but clean shaven and OK-looking, he tucked into a hearty plate of smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and mushrooms while I sipped my English Breakfast. His opening line was to admire my hat, so I had to give him credit him for that. Bridget Jones-like, I made a note to self that the hat might come in handy on future sorties into the dating world.

He didn’t waste much time in letting me know that he was comfortably off, his IT business pretty much runs itself and he has plenty of free time to travel (business class, of course), play golf and go to the gym. But he confessed that finding someone to travel and enjoy life with is proving a challenge.  In the next breath, he related his bad experiences with internet dating, telling me that half the women he was interested in turned out to be resident overseas and those on these shores were mostly gold-diggers. Doesn’t he see a connection between bounty hunters and him flagging (bragging about) his wealth as a selling point? And, moreover, doesn’t he see that most of us would only see the wealth as a bonus if it were part of a package involving an interesting personality, a strong level of connection and shared interests?

One woman who had ensnared him had persuaded him to join her on a European river cruise. It later materialised that her female travel companion had had to cancel at the last minute and so it was more about finding a convenient stand-in. It didn’t go well but he did enjoy the Abba Museum in Stockholm. Turns out he was right on trend with that one given the recent news about Abba making a comeback. To which I can only exclaim: Mamma mia!

portrait,adult,recreation,wear,people,woman,festival,actress

All they need is a sequined hat…

His hand brushing momentarily over my right hand, he admired my pearl ring and told me he had tickets for the opera. And maybe I would be the lucky one. That, at least, sparked my interest. What opera and which company? He didn’t know any of the details, only that it was an opera.  Call me fussy but he would have needed at least to know the name of the composer and the opera.  He came across as a box-ticker. Trying to do and say the right thing. If he were an item of clothing, he’d be an off-the-peg number whereas I prefer the designer gown approach, one of a kind and plenty of character.

There is much to be said for the freedom, fullness and flexibility of the single life, a sentiment that was explored in a Spanish film – No Filter – I saw on the weekend. It’s a comic romp of a film featuring an over-the-top cat-loving sister, an Instagram-mad millennial, a pot-head chauvinist neighbour, a selfish and self-absorbed artist husband and an ex-boyfriend with a controlling girlfriend who puts them both on a pre-wedding diet of baby food. The protagonist, Paz, gets increasingly stressed as she runs around people-pleasing and putting up with second best. Then, with the help of a phoney Chinese guru, she finds her voice and starts saying what she thinks, really thinks – hence the title. https://www.spanishfilmfestival.com/films/no-filter

Birthday cake for cats

This is a film that will resonate with many women who have held back from saying what they really want to say. I can think of times in my life when I wanted to let rip but didn’t. Such as the self-important work meeting where I fantasized about sweeping all the coffee cups off the table and screaming out in frustration, and the post-argument lunch with an American boyfriend in Paris (he was ultra-preppy and precious) where I seriously considered upending my bowl of vinaigrette-drenched frisée au lardons all over him and his Calvin Klein suit. Then there’s my alter ego who writes anonymous letters to neighbours about squawking parrots in cages or puts up notices in the dog park warning of the karmic consequences of not picking up the poo.

In No Filter Paz doesn’t fall for the guilty overtures of her hopeless husband. Or her ex who questions if she wants to remain on her own.  No, she replies, I don’t want to be alone. I want to be with myself. She reclaims her life and her voice, and, case packed, takes off to the airport. Flying Solo – the flipside of the relationship coin –  at its best.