Category Archives: Travel

Bird, Beaches and Balmain

I started writing this post at the weekend sitting outside on the deck surrounded by subtropical rainforest with a soundtrack of bellbirds, whip birds, scrub wrens, finches, kookaburras, catbirds and yellow-tailed black cockatoos echoing around me. I was staying with my friend Nicki, who moved from Melbourne to the New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast earlier this year, for the Australia Day weekend.

Having been in Melbourne all over Christmas and New Year I was more than ready to get away, and NSW very much delivered. Nicki had an unexpected family commitment in Sydney on my first day and offered me the choice of staying home with her delightfully playful and engaging young cat, Maya, or catching a ride into the city. I decided to go into Sydney but wasn’t up for touristy stuff, crowds, shopping centres or sightseeing.

Maya

Maya

I just wanted wander without any fixed agenda. Nicki used to live in Balmain and suggested that it could be a good place to nose around. It sounded suitably village-y so I took the ferry (‘ticking off’ – from the relaxed distance of the boat – a few of Sydney’s iconic landmarks on the way) and got off at East Balmain.
I’d only walked a short distance up Darling Street when I found a small shop called Home Industry selling vintage items, linens, glassware, china, soft furnishings and cotton reels in jars. I bought a non-vintage, but charming, small white bowl with an embossed dragonfly on the rim – it’s already in use as a butter dish – and got chatting to the two sisters who run the business about cushion cover sizes. As you do…

Further up the hill I came to St. Andrew’s Church where there’s a weekly market. I browsed bric-a-brac and jewellery and then spotted a Chinese massage stall. Something to do with the early start the day before and Jetstar failing to get my luggage on the right plane had left me with a cracking headache. I negotiated $15 for a head and shoulders massage and the guy worked wonders, pinpointing the areas of tension and hammering away at the knots.

Feeling clearer and lighter I walked on to a café where I enjoyed an extended cup of tea and the papers. I got chatting to a few people, even a good-looking man, but it started to spit with rain (it’s hair-curlingly damp in NSW this summer) so it was time to move on. Part of the fun of hanging out in an unknown area is observing people, their houses, gardens, kids and everyday comings and goings.

Balmain was once a working class suburb and home to coal mines, shipbuilding, metal foundries, boiler making and soap factories. The tiny cottages lining many of the streets were originally built for the workers. Now, of course, it’s undergone a process of gentrification – hence the smartly groomed samoyeds and standard poodles walking head-in-the-air with their owners and the boutique-style shops, but I’m happy to say that it’s retained its soul and character.

I browsed a few shops and ended up buying a hand-made damask duvet cover with matching pillow cases in a knock-down sale in a pop-up shop. At only $70 including postage to Melbourne, it was an irresistible bargain. In a men’s clothing store, I got some ‘designer’ shaving balm as a birthday present for my brother, and then met Nicki for lunch at a wholefood emporium called About Life, a wonderfully earthy place with a sustainable/paleo focus. We had planned to visit the Brett Whiteley studios in Surry Hills but it got too late. Next time. Less is more.

We picked Sunday, the only totally rain-free day of the four days, to go to Pearl Beach. We walked from one end of the beach to the other looking out over northern Sydney and Pittwater Basin. We tapped back into that slow, leisurely holiday vibe and swam, sunbathed and read the papers watching pelicans flying overhead.

Dodging the rain, we managed a couple of bushwalks over the weekend too. We got a bit lost on one of them and negotiated a steep slope by slithering down on our bottoms, collecting a few leeches in the process. Like sticky, super-glue sticky slugs, leeches cling to your skin or shoes and take some prizing off. Yuk! On another walk we laughed at a laryngitic-sounding kookaburra surveying his territory, as we enjoyed views out over Brisbane Water.

Nicki looking out over Brisbane Water

Nicki looking out over Brisbane Water

In between bushwalks and outings I enjoyed reading on the deck with Maya cuddled up close by. I started Ruby Wax’s A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled while, for once, feeling anything but. In her inimitable humour and with soul-baring honesty she explains really clearly what mindless rushing around and constant multi-tasking does to our bodies, brains and neural pathways. I decided to follow her 6-week program and started then and there by attuning all my senses to the birdsong on Nicki’s deck. Let’s see what happens when life speeds up again back in the Metropolis and world of work!
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Continental Confusion, Krakow and Commissions

Hello, I’m returning to my blog after a long gap. In August, I went ‘home’ to England to see my elderly parents, family and friends – more about that in future posts – and returned to Australia via a few days in Frankfurt (ahh, Europe…) at the end of September. I came back suffering the usual dose of continental confusion! Where is home, what is home, where do I want to live/retire? Those long-haul flights don’t help; they merely intensify the feeling of distance between Australia and everywhere else. When I first get back, I remain suspended in some kind of limbo, my head and heart still in my mother’s kitchen while my physical self has landed on Australian soil. Sometimes it’s a schizophrenic existence having two parallel lives across a large divide. But I am glad to say I’m feeling far less conflicted than when I first returned.

There’s nothing like springtime blossoms, a beloved dog with floppy spaniel ears, a bunch of fabulous friends and a busy new job to anchor me back here. I’m now a month into my new job and it’s varied, fun and stimulating but busy, client- and deadline-driven so I don’t always have much juice left over for blogging.

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That was what was such a treat when I was away; how I relished keyboard-free time without the constant need-to-know pull of social media, without deadlines, word counts and writing commissions. Seven weeks without my mobile ringing – can anyone remember what that is like?! I only went onto international roaming a couple of times: once when I spilled red – very red staining to purplish blue – fruit tea on my sister’s brand new carpet and missed the train to Margate as a result; and the second time when the return train from Margate was delayed due to a trespasser on the line.

This trip was more luxurious than previous European trips. I travelled Premium Economy which, although nothing like as comfortable and pampered as Business Class, was well worth the investment in terms of the overall travel experience (in fact I got a great price as my itinerary involved a hop-skip-and-a-jump 10-hour layover in Hong Kong both ways and a stop in Frankfurt). The food is a bit better, the seats are longer and wider and recline further than in economy minimising sleep-sabotaging episodes of neck slumping, and, with fewer people, there’s more air to go round.

I also ditched Airbnb accommodation in favour of hotels as, frankly, I am over shared bathrooms and kitchens and self-catering. Lovely as the spacious attic room in Krakow (November 2014) was, when I ran a bath it leaked all over the floor as the tub needed sealing with silicone. Then the window-less broom cupboard-sized shower room stank of damp. You get the picture.

No, this time I stayed in a boutique hotel in Margate with funky chandeliers, sea views, great food and cocktails, and in Frankfurt I went to a family-run hotel just outside the city complete with pool, spa and sauna, patisserie, chocolate shop, fabulous restaurant and flirtatious barman! Again, that’s another story. But don’t get too excited…

Frankfurt's Eiserner Steg or Iron Bridge - complete with lovers' padlocks

Frankfurt’s Eiserner Steg or Iron Bridge – complete with lovers’ padlocks

Anyway, back to my November 2014 visit to Krakow, a gem of a city packed with history and interest. And full of museums. Hence my travel feature commission titled ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’. I ran around Krakow in an adrenal whirl packing in as much culture, caffeine and culinary delights as I could in the three days I was there. No time for luxuriating. Hopelessly conscientious (I was a bit of a swot at school…), I visited all bar one of the museums mentioned in my article. So I was particularly pleased when my article was finally published last month in travel magazine Get up & Go. If you’d like to read it, click on this link:http://emag.getupandgo.com.au/?iid=130929#folio=62

In flight from a pest-ridden house…

About two weeks ago my Airbnb guests got back to find the contents of my food cupboard in a plastic crate on the front doorstep and several of my jumpers in the freezer. As you do…

The preparations aka Military Campaign for my extended trip overseas to spend all important time with family began about a month ago. I needed to finish up two jobs – one of them a maternity cover contract with high expectations and ambitious KPIs, organise my travel plans and get my house and garden in order ready to rent out – a job in itself.

I was doing pretty well, even if running on adrenalin, and found it a good opportunity to test drive some of the time-management strategies suggested by Brendon Burchard of the Performance Academy (as mentioned in my last post). To share a few of them: he recommends not checking any social media for the first hour of the day and, instead, focussing on what you need to achieve. I found that to be so simple and effective in freeing up and clearing my headspace. Because, as he points out, the minute we tune into the emails and messages we’re taking on other people’s agendas and demands, and we lose our focus. I put my phone on airplane mode before I go to bed and leave it like that until after breakfast. He also advocates dividing the working day into 50-minute blocks broken up by drinking water and stretching. And, importantly, ditching the social media and screens again at the end of the day and finding some time to meditate or do something that gets us into a less thought-driven and more grounded space before bed.

But then I discovered critters in my cupboards. I was getting ready for a meeting with my new boss (I have an exciting new job starting later this year) when I Googled ‘how to get rid of moths’ and up came ‘how to get rid of moths in the pantry’ and ‘how to get rid of moths in clothes’. My initial search was prompted by holes in my jumpers but then I realised, with a sense of panic, that the worm-like creatures lurking in my food cupboard and on the ceiling were pantry moths – well the larvae anyway. I’d never even heard of pantry moths before, let alone seem them. The hour that I had set aside to compose myself for the meeting was spent frantically chucking out dry foods – the larvae get everywhere even under lids of spice jars. Some were even inching their way across foil sachets of Miso soup while others were hanging out in the rice noodles. Yikes! I scrubbed the shelves and left them clear for several days – hence the food that I had not yet inspected being relocated to the doorstep – until I blasted them with barrier spray and then set up tent-like moth traps that I bought in the hardware store. Fingers crossed that they don’t stage a comeback when my guests move in a week after I leave.

A pantry moth larvae

A pantry moth larvae

My sister has been through the whole saga of moths in her clothes and instructed me to wash all my jumpers and then put them in the freezer for a few days before placing them into individual plastic bags. Sounds simple enough but not when you’re working 12-hour days, getting ready to go overseas AND have about 50 items of wool in your wardrobe. At the time of writing, my departure is about 12 hours away and I am just cycling the last woollies through the freezer and into vacuum-packed bags. The trouble with these critters is that they are discerning and choose the highest quality wool and cashmere, leaving aside the more ordinary sweaters made of acrylic and other man-made fibres, damn them. And, from what I read, they can graduate to other areas of the house and tuck into rugs, linens, towels and curtains. Perhaps I will come home to find my house full of holes like a piece of Swiss cheese…

Just some of my many woollen items

Just some of my many woollen items

deep-freezing my jumpers

deep-freezing my jumpers

One of my mother’s favourite expressions is ‘what a pest!’ meaning what a nuisance. Now I know just how much of a nuisance. My house and garden seem to be ultra attractive to pests. Mid-packing I’ve just zipped out and zapped my lemon tree as some kind of leaf mite was chomping its way through the leaves, then I noticed a bulge where a gall wasp had set up home, and THEN I came back inside and there was one of those European cockroaches crawling across my kitchen tiles. As you might know none of this has anything to do with cleanliness. Regular readers know that I’m a bit of stickler when it comes to cleaning. So maybe it’s payback for something I did in a past life – who knows?!

Needless to say I have not talked about bugs and beasts in the detailed house manual I have prepared for my tenants. But maybe I should have; listening to the science program in the car the other day I learnt that having a pet spider in the house is a great way of keeping other creepy crawlies at bay as the spiders eat them for dinner. The program gave spiders a very good rap.In one of my more Buddhist moments a few years ago, I did allow a Huntsman spider to live in the corner of my study window. The only trouble was that, after a few months, lots of tiny black dots appeared in the web and I realised they were babies. Did I really want to share my house with about 30 spiders? Needless to say I had to dispatch the spider and its babies to the next life. There’s a limit to this co-habitation thing; I’m finding the Airbnb guests enough.

But now it’s my turn to take flight and be a guest myself. By the time this goes out, I’ll be on my way to England to spend precious time with family and friends especially my elderly parents. And true to the original meaning of the word holiday(s), as in holy day(s) – a rest from the daily grind – the blog and are going off air and taking a break to rest and recharge away from the keyboard, the emails and all the stuff I do in my day job! That way I’ll be more available for my family and for new adventures. We’ll be back in October. Stay tuned.

Never a dull moment

It’s been a long time between blogs but here I am again. There’s a lot happening in my world – from a potential new job to Airbnb visitors (the first since Easter), getting my shower fixed, my car serviced, my teeth filled, quite a bit of work and deadlines, deadlines, deadlines (luckily I am a big forward planner) as well as lots of family stuff and overseas phone calls. My father’s health is not so good but, on a brighter note, my 16-year-old Melbourne-based niece is somewhere – beyond the reach of phones and social media (sounds blissful to me!) – in deepest and darkest Peru doing a World Expedition Challenge, one of my London-based nieces is preparing to walk the Camino de Santiago with her boyfriend, a friend of mine has just been on a food odyssey to Hong Kong and Vietnam, another is doing the whole massage, cocktails on the beach and party thing in Bali, while my friend Simon is wandering around Europe. Everyone is on the move in one way or another!

Apart from changing jobs I’ve been aiming to keep myself moving by making enough time for exercise – it’s that whole work/life balance thing. Mind you, some of us have it relatively easy compared to the work culture in other countries. My Singaporean guest, an accountant, tells me she regularly works from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Yikes! I find it essential to make time for both exercise and free-fall soul-nourishing time where life just is without the phone beeping, the chit chat, the dashing off to cafes for catch-ups and social interaction. Time to move and time to just be, and sometimes a bit of both.

To that end Saturday mornings are now sacrosanct for a bit of cardio activity. Unlike many of my friends and colleagues I don’t go to the gym or have a personal trainer but I am a big believer in the outdoor gym. Bertie and I take off to Hampton Beach in good time on Saturdays. There are plenty of steps and slopes leading down to the beach so we intersperse jogging and walking with running up and down the slopes. Bertie loves it and scrabbles up the banks like the true working dog he is. I might not go as fast as him but I do get my heart pumping and it feels good, clearing out any stagnant energy from the week.

Then this week I bought a new bike –well, not exactly new, you know me… I found it in the Op Shop at work. I do already have a bike and I haven’t sat on it for about five years so it’s looking pretty neglected. But the difference is that this pre-loved bike is a classic ‘sit-up and beg’ model – so no back-ache-inducing forward tilt – and comes complete with a wicker basket on the front. All very Brideshead Revisited. Funnily enough, before I came to Australia I visualised myself riding along the beach path on just such a bike. I do believe that we can visualise certain things into being.

If the new job doesn't come off...

If the new job doesn’t come off…

Once I’d bought the (bargain) bike, the luck continued. I texted my dog-walking friend who has a Subaru Outback on the off-chance that he and his car might be in St. Kilda sometime soon. Nick is a glass artist and it turns out he works in a studio just around the corner every Wednesday. Bingo! So me and the new bike popped round at lunchtime and were able to watch him glass-blowing and sculpting. I was amazed at how malleable the glass becomes at high temperatures – Nick was making a giant acorn and welding on the stalk. I was in awe at the dexterity with which he worked. What a skill!

Adding the stalk to the acorn

Adding the stalk to the acorn


Apples and acorns and foil-wrapped potatoes for lunch

Apples and acorns and foil-wrapped potatoes for lunch

With the bike delivery scheduled for Friday, Bertie and I skipped off between work and a bit more work to the beach – not for cardio (hardly a goer in Wednesday work clothes and wellies) but for a gentle walk as the last rays of afternoon sun swept across the sand. As an added bonus, we met a pure bred Field Spaniel (Bertie is half field spaniel/half cocker) called Grace. We compared notes about our dogs’ behaviours and tendencies. We agreed that as working dogs, our spaniels need plenty of exercise – they need a job to do – and that they are hugely greedy and prone to pinching food off the kitchen bench. But we adore them.

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Bertie is the most delightful boy but he is quite a handful. If he gets onto the scent of something or is scared or curious he’s off like a shot and barks up a storm. We were in the country a few weekends ago and got up early to go out walking in the forest. It was rather magical – a bit misty with rain dripping off leaves, lichen and moss clinging to ancient tangled branches with no sound other than the birds and the occasional rustling in the undergrowth. Until a wallaby appeared from nowhere and Bertie took off in pursuit. It ended in a stalemate with the wallaby looking bemused on the far side of a gully as Bertie barked furiously! He’s scared of ironing boards, skateboarders, wheelie bins and now wallabies. Oh and he barks at the TV if there’s a wildlife documentary featuring birds.

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Nature programs aside, we’re both in need of a bit of down time so tonight it’ll be a case of SIT, DROP AND STAY… in front of the TV.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

How often does one spend a Sunday in a church hall observing a skeleton sitting in a chair? It sounds like something from the Mexican Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) but our skeleton was not of the once flesh and blood variety, but a model – although we did dress him up to look like a cool dude – used for educational purposes.

I was, in fact, in a Feldenkrais workshop. I’ve written about the Feldenkrais Method before: pioneered by Israeli Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1940s and 1950s, it’s about developing awareness of how you move, exploring ways of letting go of the holding patterns in your body and reconnecting your movements into a fluid whole. I am a big fan of Feldy as we call it.

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The workshop was all about how to sit more comfortably, be it at the computer, on the plane, the train or in a theatre or cinema. Many of us spend far too much time sitting, which can put a lot of strain on our back, neck and shoulders. I was particularly happy to spend a day tuning into my body and relaxing the muscular effort having spent five hours in the car the day before.

A work colleague and other fellow fundraisers who were spending a weekend in Woodend (near Hanging Rock for those not so familiar with county Victoria), invited me up to join them for a day. Now, I had imagined that the person living in Woodend would be doing lunch and had taken some special biscuits and some chocolate as a present.

As it turned out I joined them halfway through a day out and caught the end of a farmers’ market at Trentham, about 25km further on from Woodend. As I bought some olive tapenade to add to my contributions to the lunch I was looking forward to, Bertie cocked his leg on the tarpaulin covering the stall. Luckily the lady didn’t notice so we continued merrily on our way on as he sniffed around for scraps and barked loudly at other dogs.

Our hostess and tour guide for the day bought some live chickens to add to her brood, and then we stopped at the bakery for coffee and refreshments. This would have been the ideal place to have lunch but I was advised to hold back as we were heading to a winery where they served cheese platters. What’s more vanilla slices were promised for afternoon tea.

After the coffee (chai in my case), we ambled round the various shops – giftware, New Age, vintage (we’re talking Edwardian and Victorian with pince-nez, lace-up boots, corsets, crinolines and outfits that wouldn’t look out of place in a Jane Austin film) and other quirky stores. Poor Bertie had to put up with being tied to various lamp posts when sunny paddocks beckoned just outside the township.

Retail therapy accomplished – I only bought a loaf of spelt bread from the bakery – we popped back to the house, a wonderful rambling building up a long driveway, to drop off the chicks. Part country chic and part scruffy, the house was once a coach house and had an observatory dome for star-gazing, a spacious verandah strewn with wisteria seed pods (did you know that wisteria belongs to the pea family?), a large garden and tennis court.

The winery was yet another 25km in the other direction and so it was close to four o’clock when we got there. At this point I realised that I’d have to drive straight home from the winery thus forfeiting the vanilla slice, but I was consoled by the thought of the cheese platter – my stomach was startling to growl with hunger at this point.

The winery looked elegant in the autumn sunshine, the late afternoon rays glinting over the lake. But our business was inside in deep comfy sofas positioned around the fire. I looked around and saw wine lists and bottles lined up for tasting sessions, but no sign of food or menus anywhere. “Oh no, they don’t do food here,” said our hostess, “just big dinners cooked by well-known chefs that sell out months in advance.” I pretended not to mind (in other words I ate my words…) as the first sip of sparkling Pinot went straight to my head.

I spotted this in the ladies' room at the café

I spotted this in the ladies’ room at the café

At 4.30 p.m. I got up to go knowing I had to get back to Skype my mother (my father had been very unwell the previous week and we were long overdue a chat) and to attend the Feldy workshop on the Sunday. Before I set off I devoured hunks of the spelt bread topped with the salted caramel chocolate that I had originally bought as a gift. Not a bad combination as it happens! I did my best to keep the journey home interesting by listening to a German Berlitz CD and singing along to Hayden’s Nelson Mass, but I was a little weary and stiff from sitting by the time I got back. And I felt a little cheated of culinary comfort.

So what a treat it was on the Sunday to play around with different ways of sitting more dynamically, making circles with the pelvis (a favourite Feldy exercise known as the Pelvic Clock), connecting the head and pelvis, freeing up the thoracic spine and the ribs (the thing about the rib cage is just that, many of us keep our ribs rigid and imprisoned rather than free and flexible) and bending our torsos sideways into C shapes. Another exercise we did was getting up from our chair all the while imagining a pair of spectacles attached to our behinds; the idea was to get up in such a way that we had to tilt forward. That’s the fun of Feldenkrais – it’s a way of freeing up bodies and minds to move with greater ease. I’m still feeling the benefits after a long day at work today. Yoo Hoo!

A bit of fun – the Liebster Award

My grateful thanks to Chloe who writes a fascinating blog about life in Georgia (https://itstartedinoxford.wordpress.com/one), for nominating me for the Liebster Award, an initiative started by the blogging community to promote and share favourite blogs, giving them increased exposure. Chloe’s blog is a great read and gives a very visceral feel for living in a country that was once part of Soviet Russia. I highly recommend it.

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Please see the last section of this post for how the Liebster Award works if you are a fellow blogger. In nutshell, the person who nominates you asks you 11 questions and also asks you to provide 11 random facts about yourself. I thought 11 ‘About Me’ questions was quite enough so cheated and didn’t provide the random facts! As the nominee I, in turn, nominate 5-10 of my favourite blogs and ask them 11 questions. And so it goes on.

So here, dear readers, are my answers.

1: Where is your dream travel destination?

Europe, Europe, Europe – plonk me in just about any city in Europe and I’ll be happy. OK, so maybe not somewhere like Preston in Lancashire (sorry Lancastrians, no offence meant)… Although I live in Australia, I love to visit Europe whenever I get the chance. I aim to explore a new city every time I return to see relatives in the UK. In recent years I’ve visited Krakow, Copenhagen and Zurich. Give me cobbled streets, cafes with newspapers on racks, church spires, Royal palaces, Baroque, Rococo, Art Nouveau and more. I love the history, culture and elegance of everything European.

2: Dogs or cats?
Dogs every time! Just ask Bertie. In fact, we’ve just got in from a walk and he barked like mad at a couple of cats who had the ‘temerity’ to remain on the pavement as we approached.
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3: Do you have any hidden talent?
I think I’m a frustrated actor. I recently went to an interactive Murder Mystery dinner – see the picture below – and had a lot of fun playing a character called Ursula Eades-Jones who was big in the suffragette movement – the play is set in the 1920s!

That's me in the middle

That’s me in the middle

4: Can you speak any foreign languages?
I speak passable French and I did a degree in German and Spanish, both of which are a bit rusty nowadays! However, I try to keep them going by watching foreign language news on SBS and going to the French, German and Spanish film festivals.

5: What is your favourite type of flower?
I adore roses!

6: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Ooh, well. Perhaps retired from the formal side of work with a published book or two under my belt…

7: How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

A one hundred and ten percenter, funny (as in ha-ha, not peculiar) and all heart (when my busy head is not running the show, that is).

8: Tea or coffee?
Tea – there are so many wonderful teas to enjoy from caffeinated ones to herbal infusions. But you can’t beat a good English Breakfast!

9: What are you currently reading?
Autumn Laing by Alex Miller which is (and I quote from the ABC website) “loosely based on painter Sidney Nolan’s formative years with his patron, muse and lover, Sunday Reed, and explores the doomed affair between an artist and the woman who aspires to change his life”. It’s beautifully written and an engrossing read.

10: What’s the first thing you see if you turn your head right?
A framed poster featuring two Scottie dogs and advertising ‘Black and White’ Scotch Whisky.
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11: If you have any pets, what are their names?
Bertie is my two-year old spaniel. Love him to bits!!

Now, that’s quite enough of me!

I am nominating the following blogs for the Liebster Award. No offence taken if any of my nominees don’t wish to take part. I hope that you are anyway happy to be nominated!

http://annemadelinedesigns.com – Anne marie
http://ryanlanz.com/ – A writers’ path
https://serinssphere.wordpress.com/
Kiwi Bee at https://kiwibeeblogger.wordpress.com
http://dailyinspirationblog.com
https://kelzbelzphotography.wordpress.com
http://freshfieldgrove.com.au/category/blog – Farmer Fi
http://whattohavefordinnertonight.com/ – Harriet
https://paintintoacorner.wordpress.com/ – Sara
http://markbialczak.com/ – Mark

The Official Rules Of The Liebster Award (non-bloggers do not need to read on..)

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:

1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.

2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)

3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.

These are:

1. What is your all-time favourite film
2. What does your ideal Sunday morning look like?
3. Town or country or both?
4. What is your favourite meal – feel free to share your recipe!
5. What would you do if you won the lottery?
6. Arts or Science?
7. How would you feel if you had no TV, phone or internet access for a week?
8. Most memorable travel adventure to date
9. Favourite drink – alcoholic or otherwise
10. What world issue most concerns you today?
11. If your fairy godmother could grant you one wish, what would it be?

4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.

5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)

6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.

7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)

Budget living and bargains

You get what you pay for I thought as I walked into the Airbnb place I had booked in Torquay (my sister always thinks of Fawlty Towers when I mention Torquay but I am of course referring to the township at the start of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia).

After an almost constant stream of Airbnb guests since the first week of December and having started a new job the week before last, I was ready for a break, one where I was the guest. For $65 a night and dogs (Bertie) allowed, I guess I shouldn’t complain but it did look and sound nicer in the description and pictures. In fact, it was definitely more Fawlty than Five Star: the kitchenette and bathroom were more or less one and the same with the sliding door to the toilet and shower jammed at three quarters shut (I’m glad I was alone; I’m bladder shy at the best of times); the mini bar fridge froze my salad; and a laundry trough sink doubled up as the place to wash teeth, hands and dishes. It reminded me of a unit I rented in 1770 (the place not the year!) in Queensland where it was the same situation in reverse. I had to do the dishes in the hand basin. And in both places I had to unplug the kettle before I switched on the toaster. See what I mean about the Fawlty-ness?

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The bedroom was OK in a very no-frills way with views over the nondescript garden of scrubby grass and a Hills Hoist washing line. It was all rather cobwebby behind the bed, the cupboards in the same brown wood as the toilet door were also jammed, and a sad sedum with leggy roots sat in a glass bottle on the window sill. Never mind, I got to work and doctored the bed as I have a Princess and the Pea sensibility when it comes to mattresses. So I padded out the firm mattress with a spare duvet and the egg box foam topper I had brought from home.

Spot the sad sedum...

Spot the sad sedum…

You may laugh but there are legions of people out there who struggle with mattresses when travelling from home. I did a Google search on it and found my way to Tempur Pedic travel toppers that roll up into a handy bag. For a mere $599 plus shipping I could have one delivered to my door. That’s not financially feasible right now so the $15 egg box topper from Kmart was rather a steal.

Thanks to therapy in the form of the first episode of Series Five of Downton Abbey and a lighting a nice candle to brighten the place up – not to mention my homemade salad (before the minibar got to it) – I nevertheless felt like I was on holiday, albeit one more akin to camping.

Although the place lacked frills and finesse and had no views, it was a case of Location, Location, Location! It was situated right across the road from the beach. So the minute we arrived Bertie and I dashed down to the dog beach and both swam and lay in the sun. The next day the temperature dropped from the mid thirties to about sixteen degrees and we had thunder and lightning. Not to be defeated I headed to the op shop to hunt for an outfit to wear to a Studio 54 themed party. After a bit of rummaging I found a silk and satin LBD and a pair of fringed cowboy-type boots. I reckoned the boots in particular looked more 70s than noughties. Amazingly, they were in my size, brand new (with the original price tag still attached) and really comfortable.

The next morning – still cold, breezy and wet – I was walking Bertie on the beach and realised ‘we’ must have lost his ball the previous day. Not to worry Bertie, I said. We might well find an old ball somewhere. Minutes later we found an orange and blue ‘chuckit’ dog ball and thrower lying in the sand. I looked around but there was nobody to claim it so I picked it up, much to Bertie’s delight.

It felt like I was having mini lottery wins, and to celebrate I went for breakfast at Mobys, a most delightful cafe on the esplanade. Earthy, friendly and quirky with lots of different nooks and crannies, I sat on a sofa on the deck with Bertie by my feet, ordered a delicious egg and bacon sandwich and pot of English breakfast, and read my book. Bliss!

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By lunchtime that day I was visiting a friend in the next door township of Anglesea. After lunch at the General Store, we called in at the Baptist’s Second Store where I found a lamp for my guest room, a table runner and a coffee table all for $30. The coffee table is one of those varnished brown jobs. With a light sand and a few coats of chalk paint I plan to transform the LBJ just as I did the drop-leaf table that my neighbours passed on to me a few months ago. Then – yes there’s more – when I got back to Melbourne a friend told me that his daughter was having a garage sale on Saturday morning. He mentioned that there were bar stools for sale amongst other things so I was there by 8am. The bar stools look great in my kitchen. Possibly a wee bit high but I’m not tall so that suits me. Taller and broader guests will simply have to sit side saddle! Convinced I was on a winning streak I bought a lottery ticket on Saturday. Needless to say that didn’t come off – not yet! Better stick to the day job.

Armchair travel

The beauty of being an Airbnb host (and I am not writing a promo here!) is that you get to meet people from all over the world and share stories, meals, laughter and life experiences. Living in Australia means that most overseas travel is medium to long haul; you certainly can’t nip off to Europe for a weekend. So bringing a flavour of those countries and customs into your house can be the next best thing.

I’m always fascinated by different customs and ways of living: toast with jam no butter (my Italian guests); toast with peanut butter and jam (the Americans); eating toast and bread off a slice of kitchen paper rather than a plate (the Americans); rinsing a clean cup before drinking out of it (the Chinese); shoes off before coming into the house (the Malaysians); and – no surprises here – wall to wall pasta with pesto (the Italians).

I asked the first people to enquire about my room lots of questions before accepting their reservation. If guests have not completed their Airbnb profile or got reviews from previous hosts, it’s a bit of a blind date. So I gave Cinzia and Giulia the third degree! After all they were due to arrive in the early hours of the morning and let themselves in to my house. Needless to say the sisters, who hail from Sulmona in the Abruzzo region of Italy, were warm-hearted and very easy to get to know. So much so that I soon had an invitation to go and visit next time I am in Europe. I’d never heard of Sulmona, the birthplace of the poet Ovid, but am now excited about exploring this small medieval city surrounded by mountains and packed with historical interest. I can just see myself sitting in one of the bustling squares, sipping a glass of wine and people watching.

Cinzia and Giulia kept very late hours and didn’t get into the Australian habit of eating early – no ‘When in Rome do as the Romans’ for them – but we did manage to share a meal together one night. They cooked a rich and flavoursome mushroom risotto and I made baked peaches with almonds.

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As I have written previously my American tandem-riding guests, Dan and Vicky, were also a lot of fun. They were with me over Christmas and New Year and we went out for a special dinner on Christmas Eve, shared downtime around the house with Dan helping me with lots of ‘honey-dos’ (see xxxx), and took in a few movies and beach walks. They invited me to their home in Denver, Colorado, next Christmas and – to cut a long story short – I am saving up. Too bad that Bertie won’t be able to come too.

Last week I had my first Chinese visitors and what a delight they were. Chester and Janice are first cousins, both twenty years old. Janice is studying in Sydney and Chester came over from Guangzhou (he taught me how to pronounce it properly as Guanjo) to check out Monash University. They sometimes got into a bit of a linguistic tangle and would dissolve into giggles, which I found most endearing. They were extremely quiet and considerate around the house and cleaned the kitchen so thoroughly that I could hardly tell if they had eaten or not. What’s more they gave me a beautiful blue and white Chinese bowl with a picture of a fish, a symbol of abundance.

They cooked Western style while they were here and made me, an English woman, American-style pancakes with maple syrup one morning. As I said in my Facebook post, it was yum without the cha! To return the compliment, I cooked dinner one night. A friend asked me if I had included rice in the menu. That would have been ‘Coals to Newcastle’ so I made rack of lamb with quinoa salad with feta cheese, spinach and cherry tomatoes.

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They found the salad ‘interesting’ and the lamb delicious but are not used to eating such a big meal at night. Their parents’ business is in dry foods that go into special medicinal soups. As anyone who has visited a Chinese herbalist or doctor will know, cold straight-from-the-fridge foods are a no-no, as is iced water. Warming teas, soups and rice-based meals are the go. I learnt that there are special soups for women who have had a baby, women who have just menstruated and much more. But this was a ‘when in Melbourne’ occasion and we broke all the rules. We started with a celebratory drink of Scotch whisky and soda on the rocks, ate pinkish lamb with the’ interesting salad’ (cheese is not common in China and quinoa probably non-existent) and then finished with a special dessert they made out of cooked tapioca, coconut milk and mango.

We used to get tapioca pudding at school and we all struggled to eat it, complaining that it was like frog spawn. It’s true that the tapioca pearls do have a spawn-like appearance and they are somewhat gelatinous. But I really savoured the feeling of the cool jelly-like baubles in my mouth on Sunday night. Mixed with coconut milk and mango, it was the perfect dessert for a 33-degree summer’s evening.

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It was hugs all round when they left the next morning and I got to eat the tapioca pudding leftovers that night. This week I have a Malaysian mother and son staying. Who knows what we might eat, do or learn from one another? Meanwhile, I’m doing my best to take off my shoes before coming into the house!

Stories of Moving and Migrating

I’m always fascinated by other people’s stories: where they come from; their cultural heritage; and the experiences that have shaped how they think and act. Last week I attended a talk at a local library, “Migrant Stories: Arnold Zable in conversation with Rose Stone and Rita Price”. For those that don’t know Arnold, he is a published and much-loved author, storyteller, educator and human rights advocate. I love how he described story-telling as the most inclusive of all art forms. That’s so true; all you need is a voice and the confidence to let your voice be heard.

The first speaker/storyteller, Rose Stone, certainly had no issues with confidence. At 93 she has a remarkably strong voice and great sense of humour. She came to Australia aged 16 as the war in Europe loomed. She migrated from Poland, where her grandfather was a tailor. Alone and with no knowledge of the English language, she went straight into a job at a Jewish factory where she spoke Yiddish. She learnt English phonetically, going on to do her HSC later in life and then joining a U3A writing group.

She shared a wonderful tale from a collection she has written. It was about her father or grandfather (my notes are incomplete) expressing his distaste for the chicken soup served by his wife on the Sabbath. And not just as a one-off but a few Fridays in a row. It transpired that the kerosene lamp – perhaps part of the Shabbat table decoration – was dripping into his soup. The way she wove together the characters, the food, the flavours and the humour was masterful and very much in the folk tale tradition.

The other writer, Rita Price, was born in Melbourne to Sicilian parents, who came to Australia after the war seeking a better life. Her parents bought the Princes Pier Cafe (sadly no longer) in Port Melbourne. Rita’s book Cafe at the Edge of the Bay celebrates the first fifteen years of her life when her parents and grand-parents ran the cafe. Interestingly, they served Australian food – pie, steaks and chips – rather than Italian-style food. She recalls that her parents had very limited English but could read, write and add up, and her grand-parents were illiterate but great story-tellers.

Arnold compared the immigrant experience to a play in Three Acts. Act One is where the person lived before they migrated, Act Two represents the move or ‘the rupture’, a momentous decision which can be a journey in itself, and which often originates in horrific events such as the Holocaust or current day religious and political persecution. Act Three is about assimilation, the rest of your life. For some this is the hardest part and they never cease to yearn for their homeland.

I migrated to Australia from the UK ten years ago motivated by a sense of adventure and in search of a new life. I had been through a tough patch and the only thing I was escaping were the demons in my own head! How lucky was I to move here by choice, at a time of fast and reliable e-enabled global communications, knowing that my decision was reversible. Nevertheless, I did move to the other side of the world alone , and it was rather a blind date. Although my brother lived here, I didn’t have a job, man or private income to get me started!

The first few months were hell. Shortly after moving to Melbourne, I dreamt that England and Australia were geographically joined at the hip and that you could easily drive from one to the other. Clearly, I was homesick and missing family and friends.

I arrived in winter and struggled to find furnished accommodation (my furniture was on the High Seas). I ended up renting a sunless flat with an oven that wouldn’t turn off, taps that dripped endlessly and a vacuum cleaner that belched out more vomit-scented dust than it sucked up. Then there was the married man (a friend of friends in the UK) who hit on me: “Would you like to have an affair?” he asked point blank. And this hot on the heels of dinner with him and his wife where they waxed lyrical about how they first met and got together. He and his wife ran a B & B in the CBD and he had taken me out to lunch to discuss whether I was interested in providing occasional weekend relief. He gave me a lift after lunch, and so we were driving along Beach Road in St Kilda when he popped the question.

Manipulative and hugely chauvinist, he took my (equally point blank) refusal badly. I was glad to get out of the car and went into Safeway to do my groceries, pretending nothing had happened as I filled my basket with broccoli and other veggies. The next day the stress caught up with me, and when my computer froze for the umpteenth time as I was searching online for jobs, I threw it across the room in a fit of frustration. That was the end of my (luckily second-hand) computer but only just the beginning of Act Three of my story, which, I am happy to say, got a lot easier as time went on.

Holidays and Honey-Dos

I learnt a marvellous new word courtesy of my American guests over the Festive Season, namely honey-do, a chore or task performed by one’s partner, husband or significant other around the house or garden as in “Honey, could you do x, y and z?’

My Christmas holidays were much busier than I planned. In addition to the emotional tripwires that creep up on me every Yuletide (missing family and traditions in the Northern Hemisphere, end of year fatigue, a bit of the Bridget Jones Blues, and this year, midlife angst about my career and earning potential or lack thereof), I seemed to be very much on the go, which, of course, is one way of avoiding the difficult stuff swirling around in my head.

What with Airbnb guests (yes, we’ve had lift off and I’m on my third booking), parties and social gatherings, gardening, cooking (including special home-made dog biscuits for Bertie), cleaning, buying new fans, returning faulty fans and choosing new models that actually work, household honey-dos, dog walking, grooming and shampooing and a LOT of chatting, I got into a rather over-stimulated spin. Then this week, the week I had set aside to mellow out and finally relax, I started to look for jobs (a job in itself), and then yesterday got locked out of my house.

Giulia, one of my first Airbnb guests and now a temporary flat-mate, locked the screen door as she was unable to close the front door. I had left it on the latch so she was doing the right thing by securing the property. What she didn’t realise is that my screen key came off my key ring a few weeks ago and has remained on the kitchen bench ever since. All a learning curve: Note to self – be clear about screen door with guests and make sure everyone including me has a full set of keys!

It’s been a new thing for me having not just one but two people in my house (the spare room is twin-bedded). Most of the time it’s fun having congenial company and ready-made dinner, movie and dog-walking companions, but there are times when I need to slink off to a quiet corner and read or simply NOT talk.

Dan and Vickie hail from Colorado and are cycling across Australia on their beautiful custom-made tandem. Amazingly, the whole bike (see picture) can be disassembled and fitted into a couple of cases. They started their Australian journey in Sydney before riding down to Melbourne and around Tassie. They came to me in preparation for the next leg of their journey to Adelaide via the Mornington Peninsula and Great Ocean Road. From Adelaide they are following the coast and crossing the Nullarbor to Perth. Not a trip for the faint-hearted!
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They were with me for a couple of weeks and we started out by having dinner together at an excellent Turkish restaurant on Christmas Eve and finished up with an evening spent building self-assembly fans. As you do. Dan is a star honey-doer and helped me prune tall shrubs, take the bins out, hammer down rough nails on a couple of carpet dividers, rig up a way of keeping the laundry (Bertie’s bedroom) ventilated on hot nights, search under the washing machine for a missing pearl earring and much more. He even helped me word a difficult text. How nice it was to have a house husband!

Breakfast at the Sandy Beach Kiosk with Dan and Vickie

Breakfast at the Sandy Beach Kiosk with Dan and Vickie

Had Dan been here yesterday I wonder if he’d have found of way of opening the screen door without the key! As it was I had to drive to the Monash Campus (not my favourite place owing to a job from hell last year) where Giulia is studying. I do have a local honey-doer though – my brother. Like Dan, he’s practical, solutions-driven and likes a challenge. On Wednesday just as the mercury hit 35, my air-conditioner failed to work. As luck would have it my brother was passing by and came in to investigate. I was ready for the worst – last time it went wrong and I called out a service guy, it cost in the region of $800. Just what I don’t need on top of the midlife career crisis! After tinkering with the inside controls, Tim went outside and turned the unit on and off in an effort to ‘re-boot’ it. And it worked and is still working. What a star!

Then, last night, I decided to have one last look for the missing pearl earring. I lost it about a week ago when I had come in from walking Bertie. I heard it drop – a soft drop – while I was in the laundry but there was no sign of it anywhere despite Dan’s inventive use of a coat-hanger to sweep under the washing machine. I bought the earrings back in 2009 when I was on Thursday Island. They are high quality pearls and I love them. So you can imagine my delight when I re-checked the pocket of the jacket I had been wearing. There was the missing pearl in the inside pocket. I didn’t even know there was an inside pocket.

It’s been a funny few weeks and I’ve been rather topsy-turvy but I’m now Girl with Two Pearl Earrings and a Functioning Air-Conditioner and am counting my blessings! What’s more, last night I chanced upon one of the most stunning sunsets ever. Enough to lift anyone’s spirits!

Sunset on St Kilda Beach - 8th January

Sunset on St Kilda Beach – 8th January