Monthly Archives: November 2010

11.3 Are you for real?

17 Wednesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Mark

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The Bremer Valley

Writing. Is writing a skill or is it just a means of expressing ones thoughts? For example, is writing really a way of expressing one’s inner self?  Do you self talk? I do. I find it helps to have a good self talk. Yes, I ask myself all these painstaking questions. See I’m an inquisitive bastard when it comes to myself. So I say “Hey Sandy, what are you doin?” “Nothin much” I reply to myself. “Who ya gunna vote for?” “Dunno” “What ya havin for tea?” “Food, I suppose” I’ll reply with total disdain.

So yeah, I have deep and meaningful conversations with myself constantly. In fact it helps me pass the time. Time you ask? Time only occurs when there is motion. So I have this theory, lets just stop moving and we can all live forever. Right? Well maybe not and it goes without saying that this theory has some serious flaws. But who gives a zark, not this broken down parish priest. Anyhoo, that’s another story.

So writing is a group of letters that one strings together to form a sentence. But a sentence can also be a punishment, a verdict, a conviction and condemnation. So if I write a sentence am I condemning myself by verdict to convicted punishment? Gees arse, all these rules with words, this is worse than maths.

A day at the office with Hung One On

I’d like to tell you a story. A story of a country drive. For us city dwellers, the lovely Belinda and I, we need country drives, believe me, I mean I’m a priest after all.  So here goes…..

The valley stretched out before us, gradually disappearing into the distance that concluded with the looming mountain range. The sun was kind to us today as usually here in the deep south the summers are hot and dry. Today is cloudy and  rain is falling, gracing the ground with delicious nutrition for the soil.

The road, gravel of course, winds through the hills and vales crossing brooks trickling with water. Livestock dot the paddocks interrupted occasionally by crows and magpies searching for a feed of insects.

We pass numerous homesteads enwreathed by trees that provide both a windbreak and shade. Most have abundant outhouses and some farm machinery some of which are beyond their use by date.

We ascend to the top of the small mountain as the wind starts to lift. We stop and admire the 360 degree vista. We watch the rain clouds drift across the valley creating a patchwork quilt of colours and textures that stimulate the senses and purgers the soul. The wind and rain make us cold to the bone.

A vacant rotunda sits in the park. We dine under its protective roof on antipasti, dolmades, olives cheese and crusty bread. All washed down with a glass of wine. It doesn’t get any better than this. This should be everyday, should I wish for it to be my groundhog day?

Driving back home our colloquies diminish and we let the music stop on the CD player. This allows us to cherish the sounds of the rain and allow our senses to absorb the beautiful smell of water and dust and the birds. All of us enjoying the effects of the rain.

Our thoughts become reflective as we re-live our day, out in the country. We’re returning to the concrete jungle. The noise, the traffic and the congestion. This doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong it’s just the countryside makes me feel so free and so open while the city closes me in.

The drive continues as we wind down through the hills and back to town. Other motorists are unaware of our relaxing trip and our connection with nature. The other motorists kept their aggressive driving styles while we idled through the streets in relax mode.

We return home to find nothing had changed except ourselves. Forever now, a memory of the Bremer Valley, the vista, the winding roads and the diverse  bird-life.

Life’s like that I guess!

The Florist

17 Wednesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Sandshoe

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Picnic 2.3

By Sandshoe

Corner walked down the hill to The Castle. Black was outside on the cement driveway entrance with the Balloonettes in the sun. Corner wanted something. Black was himself wondering what he should do about the day. He looked straight up at the sun.

“Oink,” Corner announced. Hardly customary. “Oink,”  rejoindered Black and added an oink. “Oink!”  To be fair. To be fair Corner needed to be given a lot of field. He wouldn’t get it if Black was suddenly off the jokes. Like a lot of night club operators and day-time saloon frequenters, Black was good for the jokes.

Corner was an isolate.

“Seen the other boys much?” This was Corner at his best. Corner was a drama queen short of a John Paul Young. Mind you he had one in the old vinyl record hold-all at his mother’s place. Love is in the Air. “Mind if we go in?” he enquired looking meaningfully at Black. They went to school together.

“Naah,” stretched Black and uncurled from where he had dropped into a half-squat/half-crouch position with his arms resting lightly over his blue denim knees.

“Those jeans aren’t tight,” laughed Corner. Black growled and laughed an easy laugh. “You never change, Corner,” he said, stretched, scratched and yawned. “They’re spray-on these days. Left me short a week’s.” He followed Corner through the entrance to the house. The bare wooden boards without any treatment and no finish on their surface to make a conventional floor looked like a consignment of recycled and untreated timber. Freshly delivered and stacked dusty. The sound they gave off when walked over was a strangely comforting subdued tread. Evidence the plain room, empty other than for a couch, had begun with considered design. Love. Money. “Get on with it. You here because you’re a space or here because you want something to do. You can get these girls who live here some help. Dunno what you blokes do.” Black, lean and tense could look pretty well annoyed when he was useful and he flushed angry. It was all a game.

Corner saw the keg and acknowledged it by walking over to it and giving it a slap. ‘Nice to see you fellers are into the good stuff, eh?” Here was ritual. “Do y’want a taste,” scowled Black. “I’ll get you a glass. Spose y’re gonna tell me y’re on the day.”

“I’m on.”

A women’s voice, tired, slurred and floated in a whine from somewhere above them. “You black egg, don’ give arse sucker any of piss.”

Black ignored the directive. “C’mon,” and he got a glass off the bench that was covered in a towel and on it a batch of clean glasses from various hotels. “You don’t want one of these?”

He poured the glass full to its top and, extending his tongue out of his opened mouth, licked the rim in a seductive circle like a lover offering the first challenge of a new partner, never taking his eyes off Corner.

“Pffftt, not me, is the woman here?”

“Who and why? Dammit, don’t… .” Black was looking as if he would reach out and take hold of Porker like a wriggling piglet and carry him outside around the belly. Black never looked threatening to anybody other than his enemies.

Corner responded quickly and stepped backwards towards the door he had entered the premises through. “The women with the Australian accent.”

Black was on the tips of his toes and moving almost like a cat when a cat scampers sideways in war play. His legs were stiffened in a manner he adopted to sustain his athletic balance and momentum in a challenge directly aimed at the man who had become, again, his adversary. “Why!” he demanded, starting, his face suffused with the characteristic black of the experience of his rage. “You don’t want to make any mistakes, Simon.”

Corner had exited the door and was on his way off the property. He was no equal to Black. He hesitated, eyeing the ‘Balloonettes’. The young women giggled. One was braiding another’s hair. The third painted their client’s fingernails on a hand extended at flat rest on a river rock. Where the women had moved to sit cross-legged by it on the ground. They had been able from there to witness something of what happened in the house when Porker and Black had gone inside.

“Come back here,” demanded Black. He was taking off his silver skull ring and sliding it with one hand flatted into the fob pocket of his jeans. Corner whirled. “Keep your hair on, Black” he managed to hiss in time as his opponent drew close enough to hit him, “She telephoned the Station she left that black leather coat in a phone booth.” Black pulled up sharp. He rested back at ease on the heels of his sneakers, “Whaa, man? O, you’re a sleaze. Phone booth. Why didn’t you say so. She’ll be looking for that. Gee, that was stupid. Here. Give me your details so I can get her to ring you. Geez, you should say.”

“Don’t worry, Black, it was you I came to see. She knows where we are. You know she knows where we all are.”  He smirked, cocky again. “That’s all, but tell her I came to see her.”

Black didn’t say anything. He was surrounded by the women and fussed to join them by the rock so he could braid the hairdresser’s hair. Corner swung the height of the drive. He had a distinctive lope.

“What would you be?” Siratha, the talented beauty artist now having her hair braided asked Black. She had sat as pretty as a picture on the rock and was still. “What would you be if you had not been… what you are?”

“When I went to Sydney I was running that brothel in a week, it was when I first realised what I wanted to really be. It doesn’t matter now. Give me the band. Here. Have mine. I never got around to it. Business. I was only 16. It doesn’t matter.”

Siratha stood and faced Black where the sun was a rivulet of sheening over the face of the bodice of her gown. Tiny metallic trinkets sewn by her into the fabric played at the sun. She lifted the hem of her skirt and extended it in a drape as a dancer would to make a curtsey. She bobbed. Straightened. “Say what would someone be if… they weren’t a bank robber,” she giggled in a rush of infectious laugh and stood closer in response to being waved by Black to him so he could tidy a strand of hair. “I will tell you as long as you don’t laugh,” he said, grave. He stepped back.

“I won’t laugh,” she giggled, and he frowned so she stopped.

“A florist. I would have liked to have been a florist. That seems to me to be a perfect, lovely way to make a living.” The pealing laughter of the three women as they scampered and rolled on the excavation dirt to collect it in their hair and rough house each other as they rolled caught an eventual echo that was returned them by their play. They lay entwined sharing the liberation of their philosophy and the warmth of the earth on their skin and in the dirt in their hair. Black had left to go to the shop.

Sandshoe

10/11/10

Beach and the Video

16 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Uncategorized

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The Pigs Arms welcomes Mel

 

The Beach...

Sitting on the red sand, false hope at waves and shark sightings within my braggart persona. Finding my pants lack legs I stand and chase the elegant Harrods mirage to find nothing but a tree stump, chock of woodworm and a large egg with no hints as to origin or future hope of hatching. Shall I scramble? Shall I scamper? I sit and contemplate pants lacking legs and discuss my future with the woodworms, leaving the egg to rest in hope of becoming something new and big and slightly special.

 

Being warm I discovered the missing clothing appendage. I walked toward the big old green chair stolen from Le Cornu’s foyer and jumped aboard to enjoy the view, Wow, Atlantic Video within paces, think I just may, huge range of retro media. As I leap from the Le Cornu’s monument, I contemplate a name change due to massive overdue fines at every video store in sight upon boarding a Sea World helicopter. Yes, lucky I collected mail from all boxes at the stereotypical cream brick apartment block I call home. At once I settle on Nguyen Ng. Feeling lucky I carry heavy duty hair ties for faux slant eyes.

 

and the Video, courtesy http://www.starpulse.com

“Okay hero, I seek, Robin Hood Men in Tights, you have on your shelf?” “Sure, never seems to rent out longer than 15 minutes at a time” comes the reply. “Ah sooo – methinks it sounds too good, thank ye sir so much”.     Smile on face I loosen the hair, mmm, normal eyes, so Aryan, yet in a special red headed fashion.

The Royal VN Your Majesty...

Limping across the ochre terrain I locate my pants legs across the windscreen of the VN, well thank God, nothing worse than burning your hands on the plastic economy class steering wheel.

TTG at night, well sort of...pix fotosearch

On to Adelaide. Tea Tree Gully here I come, stun gun and clothesline at the ready. Hey how is it going matey? What do you what… stun gun. Clothesline confines the man to his faux leather home theatre lounge. Hey smarty, big tough man – feast your obnoxious brain on this. Sets the DVD player to repeat –“Nooo, surely my cells shall fry”. “That’s nothing shaghead – tomorrow I’m making you sit through the entire Wogs, Kings of Mykanos [sic]”. He he. Don’t mess with me boy Mel wins.

Mel Nov 2010

VIVIENNE’S Summer Suggestions

16 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in The Dining Room, Vivienne

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GADO GADO

Prepare the Sauce:

To do enough for a meal for two:

In a small saucepan heat just enough oil to fry half a chopped onion and one crushed clove of garlic.  Don’t overcook it – you need to stay with the pan for the whole process.

Add chilli powder to taste (half a teaspoon say) and juice of good half lemon.  Smash an anchovy up and add to the mix.  Then stir in crunchy peanut butter (about half a small jar) and a few teaspoons of brown sugar.  Stir well and cook on slow heat for a little while.  Taste it.  When you are ready to have the Gado Gado for dinner, add a very small can of coconut milk to the sauce and mix well.  I prefer to serve the sauce warm up.

Gado Gado mix (the food to go with the sauce)

Hard boiled eggs (quartered), lightly blanched beans, raw cucumber pieces, cabbage (cut chunky) and carrots sticks.   I think bean curd (tofu) would probably go well with this so add some cubes if you like tofu.  I do believe you can use whatever vegetables you prefer including potato and perhaps the stalks of broccoli.  Arrange decoratively on an oval plate.

You can either dunk the vegetables in the sauce or pour it over.  I prefer dunking.  (Dedicated to Gerard)

PEANUT SAUCE FOR SATAYS

Version one:  same as for Gado Gado but add 2 tablespoons of tamarind and some sambal badjiak and a couple of splashes of water.

This is to go with beef or pork satay which is marinated in dark sugar, crushed garlic, salt, soy sauce and a little cummin and a little oil.  Cooked over charcoal.

Version two: Roast 200g of unsalted raw peanuts for a few minutes, cool a bit and rub off the skins.  Blend peanuts in blender and add 3 red chillies, 3 garlic cloves, salt, one chopped onion and a little oil.  Mix to a paste and then add enough water to make a workable consistency.  Heat mixture in a saucepan, adding a little more water for right consistency.  Taste and if desired add more soy sauce and lemon juice, or salt.  Serve hot with chicken satay.

Comment re Satay dishes:   my favourite one is Malay  which I do with lamb and I don’t serve it with any peanut sauce at all as it just doesn’t need it.  I’ll give you the recipe another time.

LAMB WITH EGGPLANT AND CAPSICUM

For the vegetables

  • One large eggplant cut crosswise into slices 1 cm thick.
  • 75 mls olive oil
  • 2 large red capsicums halved lengthwise.
  • 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh oregano
  • 1 fresh red chillli, seeded and chopped  (or use chilli powder)
  • salt and pepper – grounded – to taste.

For the Lamb and sauce

  • Splosh or two of virgin olive oil
  • Cut lamb rump from the leg into four or so thick slices looking like backstraps
  • ground salt and pepper
  • 80mls of dry red wine
  • 4 – 8 teaspoons of cranberry jelly
  • half cup of chicken stock.

To cook vegs – brush eggplant with little oil and grill both sides.  Cool and cut into long strips.  Do the same with capsicums but remove skin and then cut into long strips.

In a heavy frying pan heat a little oil and add vegies and herbs and chilli and stir until well mixed and almost falling apart, then season to taste and  keep warm on a separate plate.  Add a little more oil and sear the lamb, season and cook to your liking for a few minutes.  Remove to a plate and keep warm.  (Handy if your oven has a warming tray.)

With the remaining juices in the pan, heat and stir and get all bits nicely mixed and add wine and jelly, stirring until melted, then add stock and reduce till saucy consistency.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  I often add more jelly.

To serve, cut lamb at an angle and arrange on serving plate.  Add vegies and sauce and serve at once.

SMOKED TROUT SERVED WITH PICKLED WATERMELON RIND

To Make the ‘Pickled’ Watermelon Rind

You need watermelon with a thick white rind.  Slice off the green skin and make sure that no red melon is left on the rind.  Slice it up into pieces about 1cm by 3cm.  Simmer the pieces in pot of water until just a little soft.  Drain.  Prepare a ‘pickling syrup’ of a little white vinegar (a good dash), cup of hot water, about 3 teaspoons of sugar, 6 slivers of lemon skin and about 4 cloves.

This is cheap to make as you get to eat the watermelon and have a byproduct.  I store in a large well cleaned empty vegemite jar.  One cup of syrup will do about two jars worth.  Put syrup in jar and add the pieces of rind.   Okay to eat the next day but better after a few days.   The rind should taste a bit sweet.

I first had this with smoked trout 30 years ago at a wine and food group’s outing beside a river up the mountains.   It was totally glorious.

The Smoked Trout

First catch your trout ……  ha ha.   Seriously though – where I live you can catch and smoke your own and right now the fishing in Lake Hume and the rivers is so good.  But, better still is the fact we have the best smoked trout available at Butts Smokehouse – you can buy it whole or skinned and filleted.  Arrange trout on a platter with little bowls of the watermelon rind and those little crunchy bread squares or water biscuits.    This is a great starter to a casual lunch party picnic and goes so well with a crisp white wine.

Sydney Festival Ticketing Debacle

15 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Cricics, Critics, Everyone's a Critic, Emmjay

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John Malkovich wouldn't cop it for a minute

Today the Festival of Sydney Ticket sales opened.  Or they are alleged to have opened.

Today I tried unsuccessfully for two hours to buy tickets to the Festival of Sydney.

Phones….  just rang through…. or gave a message that they are overloaded and to call back  later.

Luckily we have the web site ….. ahahahahahaha …

So when I logged in and waited for the site to open at 9:00 – and got in the queue to buy a 5 event multi-ticket (value over $1,000 for – FM and me and a couple of our Sydney mates) at 9:02.  I sat and watched my browser update every 30 seconds for OVER TWO HOURS.

Point A.    Then ….. Eureka.  Lucky me !  I’m in, Yay !  Click on John Malkovich – just a pic and some words.  No booking.  Hit continue.  Can’t continue.  Go back.

Point B Try JM’s second show.  Aha ! Tickets.  Select A Reserve.  Select 2 tix.  Sorry, due to overloading, please try to submit the request again.

Web cleverly forgets the class of ticket and the number wanted.  Enter that again, and again and again…. No wonder the site is melting down.  The design is stupid beyond belief.

So – try another show – Smoke and Mirrors at the Spiegel tent (see last year’s review at https://pigsarms.com.au/2010/02/03/not-extremely-festive-this-year-my-fault/ )

Go Back to Point A.

How about Paul Kelly ? Go Back to Point A.

“My bicycle loves you “? Go Back to Point A.

Phillip Glass ? Go Back to Point A.

Emmylou Harris ?  Go Back to Point A.

Emmylou Harris again ?

OK, you’re good to go.  We’ve reserved two tickets for you – for twenty minutes.

Go back to Point B No, you’ve got to be kidding.  Go Back to Point A.

Time’s running out fast on the two tickets I do “have” so head for the checkout just in case.

“Sorry you can’t check out because you don’t have anything in your shopping trolley !

So I just gave up !

I can understand that the Festival is massively popular.  But this is no surprise.  It’s not the first festival.  It’s been going for thirty or forty years for Pete’s sake.  2011 would have been our fifth in a row.  And thanks to the wonders of web technology we now have a virtually unlimited array of ways to NOT go to the Sydney Festival.

Moreover, why is it impossible to scale the ticket selling websites to meet this huge spike in demand – or maybe just let people say what they want and process the orders first in, first out and get back to punters with an offer.  We can seat you here ….. want it or not ?

But getting people to sit online for hours, trusting that their internet connection or browser session has not secretly gone guts up – is just bullshit.

I simply do not understand the point of festival multi-tickets.  If you buy for three events, you are supposed to get a 10% discount and for 5 events, a 15% discount.  That is, if you can navigate the mess that is laughingly called the ticketing system.  What is the point of offering discounts when the ticket lines are a mile long ?  I suppose for one of the more expensive tickets, ten bucks or fifteen bucks off is a good deal – but not if you have to line up for hours to get it – maybe, maybe not.

Moreover, why the hell does the ticket office open on a Monday when many people are supposed to be at work ?  What’s wrong with opening it on a Saturday – that way punters would have the whole weekend to waste, lining up.

Somebody out there does have a clue !  The Opera House Emailed us directly offering Malkotix.  Snavelled two.       Main event covered and looking forward to seeing him in the flesh – after the wonderful Steppenwolf production at STC a few months ago by his Chicago colleagues.

Now – anyone for Paul Kelly – the hard way ?

We are sorry. We are experiencing technical difficulties while attempting to reserve your tickets.

Click the Shopping Cart or Event Listing links above to go to the schedule to start a new order. If you continue to receive this error, please contact Customer Service or try again later.

Bowral’s St Jude with Barbecued Sausages Fund Raiser

14 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

≈ 45 Comments

It’s all quiet at the Southern Highlands Front now after a couple of manic and hectic months aided and relieved by Coliseum’s take away Pizzas and Royal Hotel special pub nosh of $10.- rump Steak with chips and salad. Helvi, as always, remained a beacon of serenity, sanity and calm.

Yesterday, our first day of some time off. ‘Quality time’ as popular parlance prefers to call it. Popping into the local C&E St Jude’s church long awaited and well heralded fund raiser it gave us the first opportunity to meet and savour the locals at; I suppose one of their favourite haunts, the local church.

We sauntered, somewhat worse for wear, but with the church’s age old cypresses and huge conifers shading us, giving us respite from multiple trailers haulage of personal stuff, such as obstinate settees, thousands of spoons and hordes of as yet un-shelved milk crated books, between ex- farm, Moss-Vale and a final resting place at Bowral. (See Mount Calvary post)

There, at St Jude’s, the usual face painting, lucky dips and stalls of hopeless superfluous household goods were for all to buy and boost the congregation’s coffers. There was a 1989 computer with the keyboard welded to the screen, a handy cabinet with pull-out drawers for cassettes and many transistor radios with pull-out antennas. Even, and surprisingly for C&E terrain, a bottle opener in the shape of a lewd naked woman. Many video tapes of The Sound of Music and King and I. Lots of Jane Fonda’s girth and weight reduction tapes with coloured manuals.

In between all that, Helvi with her usual eye for another book, found Susan Kurosawa’s ‘places in the heart.’  ‘Thirty prominent Australians reveal their special corners of the world.’ All for half the cost of the barbequed  sausages.

The most fascinating stall was the barbequed sausages  stall. There they were, all staunch church goers, comfortably retired previous airline pilots, store managers, investment advisors and above all,  a sprinkling of ex Liberal premier bureaucrats. Now all aprons and gloved. An all male sausage team.

There was stacked a descent mountain of white Tip-Top bread which one bloke was buttering with no-frills margarine, another doing the Barbequing, yet another collecting orders and the fourth man the money. As usual at those kind of affairs, chaos reigns supreme and we all know this is totally peculiar to doing things the ‘English way.’ Why would it be any different in Bowral? This is what gives fund raising and community markets its piquancy and cultural originality.  If anything, Bowral is probably the place where Barbeque sausage fund raising chaos is continually honed to even higher levels than ever before.

On the table where the bread was being buttered, there were different relishes, including a green tomato, a normal sun dried tomato garnish as well as the obligatory mustard and barbeque and tomato sauce squeeze bottles.  The problem was there was just one knife. Each time someone wanted a garnish from the glass container, the buttering had to be stopped in order for this single knife to put to use extracting the garnish.  The tomato plastic bottle was empty. Of course, no kid worthy of any salt, age or description would buy a sausage roll without tom sauce. The paper towels had run out. No worries, a box of tissues would suffice. The tissues would be eaten as well, solidly stuck to the white bread. The whole affair was done with total bonhomie and not a single complaint. We bought two sausage rolls with the green relish and tasty tissue.

  A wonderful day for everyone.

The Collectors

14 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 24 Comments

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ironworker(sm)

Story and photographs by Lehan Ramsay

Yamashita#2(sm)

One of the Carpenter Guys took me to take a look at his house. Every inch filled with treasures, enough room to roll down his bed. Stamp album after stamp album, scroll after scroll, gilt covered whatnots, religious icons. Some of these things looked to me like they belonged in a museum. I suspect that the Museum Guys are not nearly as resourceful as the Carpenter Guys.

All the Carpenter guys seem to have a love of old things. They would pop around while the Carpenter Guy was working, look at my recycle-shop tea-room cabinet, say Oh, the doors don’t match, and move on. Any time we came across some old sheets of newspaper they would whip them off. Unwise customers at the markets were impressed by anything wrapped in old newspaper.

murata(sm)

Carpenter guy got half of the scrolls I found in the cupboard. We unrolled them on the floor and his great knowledge all-at-once deserted him. I don’t know anything about scrolls, he said. You choose one, and I’ll choose one, and… I  have not yet forgiven him for it.

The Carpenter guys let me have the wood from an old house they were dismantling, dragged it over and dumped it in the yard. Inside the pile I found the black lacquered counter of a sushi bar cut in two. The kind of sushi bar you use your fingers to eat with. I wiped it down and found a shelf for it in the house. I watched them take the house apart until they found an old teabox in the foundations. But I never saw what they found inside the box. And then they quickly brought in the bulldozers and all the rest went off in a truck full of splinters. I saw the tea box still lying there and brought it home for tools.

niwashi(sm)

You can ask the Roof man to fix chimneys, but you can’t ask him to build things, people will be annoyed. You can ask the Concrete man to build a fence at a pinch. But even I know that you can’t ask him to take a look at the floor. The Carpenter Guy has to do that. If you want to put charcoal into the floor you will need the Carpenter Guy’s permission. And then you will need to drive to the Volcano and talk to the Charcoal Burners up there.

But no old house is comfortable without charcoal. When they pulled down the old house built on the old hospital three doors down, I asked for the gates. Everyone who knew anything pulled the charcoal out of the foundations. By the time I learned about it none was left.

Gan

11 Thursday Nov 2010

Posted by in Sandshoe

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Untitled (Rorschach) 1 Gilles Balmet

By Sandshoe

11/11/2010

I’ve not had a happy life she thought and so she brought to the Gold Coin Dinner at the Community House where we occasionally met at the coffee machine and exchanged pleasantries a gift of a volume of Schubert.  She said she would never use it, not now she had Cyril to worry about and he is a real worry she had added, making a ‘schcking’ noise with her teeth and fleshy lips.  She always had on the same blue cotton frock when our paths crossed. Her hair was a practical length.  As she handed me her brown envelope I could see her entering a music room to sit for an exam in pianoforte and being quietly sensible about placing the tip of her toe behind her left foot to bob a greeting by a bend of her knees before seating herself on command to be ready for instruction from that examiner.  I could see the examiner was a tall, slim woman in a brown frock of a soft flowing matertial that draped across one arm rest as the skirt was caught in a sudden movement to resume her seat between examinees. In the frame of the afterthought I realised I was transposing an image long forgotten in an imperative to forget. I had not known even she played the piano.  I heard the rattling of the beads and the rustle of the Mother Superior’s gown at the door of the same room, my memory and imagination playing their tricks like a counterpoint of melody underlying a rhythm being played in the immediacy of the coffee urn’s tap being turned on and off as patrons came to pour their complimentary cups of coffee and tea and pour their milk so the contents of their cups overflowed onto the stainless steel tray of the server.

We sang a duet together years ago when I was new to the community and my voice gnarled for her in a twist of sentiment to find the notes. No accompaniment. Had there been an examiner sitting behind a desk abutting the adjacent wall facing us the verdict would have been cutting. The duo applicants were equally unsure of their tune.  Through what had been for me years of an ordeal, I had faithfully practised before examination periods and lulled into an annual state of false security when I passed.  Notes come to me at rest. They fall into my mind after they have been struck and are resonant.  The years since I played them have left only these, my aftersongs.

“I thought you would like this.”

A pattern of fingers moved notes across bar lines turned into an arabesque of blue cotton. She maintained a sway when she conversed and her hands waved like stubs. She never stilled. Her lips splayed wide against her smile. The thick grey hair held by a clip was a withdrawn drape. The voice behind her was a wisp.

“I was the superintendent at the Gaol.” The thin old man was telling that story to his table companion he had been standing beside patiently where they waited together to take their place filling a cup with a choice of their hot drink. I know that story as if it is my alter ego. It moves in. At the end of a sideways glance reminiscent of a thief checking the lay of his land, the habitue smirks. He leans forward and confides he “did the last of them”.

“That was me,” he said. No-one else heard. He was cunning. I knew the words as a bare wrap of a suit of thinly cut tweed like dry bone as I was supposed. When he coughed it was mean and thin. He cleared his throat and lent backwards to where I had moved behind him so any of his words could blow into the air and not my ear if he addressed me.

“Of course, it wasn’t actually me. I didn’t do it. I was just the Superintendent.” He laughed like a thin cotton sheet falling off a line, soundless. He told me I could see execution worked.

The hubub of a gold coin dinner is cacophonic; the emotional stress of attending and attention to what is said is a tragic drama. The dischordants clatter in a tray of spoons and knives like women with screechy toned voices attracting vacant spaces around their persons in public places. Women with large shoulders from the weight of heavy loads and stooped and thin like fragile paper shapes.

Kent lurched across the narrow space between the tables and the coffee machine. His mouth fell open in an expanse at me of a loving grin of elation and saliva fell out on his jacket front he wiped in a brusque movement of laboured co-ordination. His control lapses as rapidly and he swings on his toes, hesitates, rocks, rests, looks away from anyone he is in conversation with as if by way of an emotional gathering of his internal strength… he either returns his attention to a companion or reverts to his transport of his awkward body across a room, around a corner, to undertake and complete tasks.

“I’m not working at the Church anymore,” he told me as he reached for a cup. His speech was a gruff heehaw I learned to understand. I handed him a cup and he cocked his head with a frown in his eyes and then laughed‘HA’ because I grinned at him. His mood is a natural volcano. He took the cup and peered into it to see if it was clean, grimaced, shrugged his shoulders and heehawed to me he worked in the place for a long time now and if they didn’t like it too bad. He was getting married he announced or so it sounded. He clouded over. He had been irritated by the bureaucrats. He was looking dark enough.  I stopped what I was doing where I had adjusted the trays by moving used cups and mugs into a plastic bucket. I economised the remaining cups onto one tray. The noise was thunderous in the room. I may not have heard properly Kent said he is getting married. He might have said he is married. He could have said he will never get married. I bent my head forward and tapped on my ear, looked up and bellowed as best as I could, looking puzzled, “Did you say you are getting married?” I swooped my head forward as close as I could in his direction and tapped again on my ear. He yelled into my ear he was getting married. The crescendoed noise battered me.  I hauled the mugs to the servery bench. I was only avoiding the executioner.  Every time I was face to face with him across a table or found him behind me in a queue for a doughnut I wondered should I tell someone about the executioner.

Might I mention the guitar teacher who wanted ‘a beautiful woman’ to demonstrate sexual acts on and with (‘NO HOLDS BARRED! IT MUST BE FRANK!’) in Sex Education Lessons For Community. Might I refer in passing to the man of senior years who demonstrated for me a point of conversation how shapely his legs still were regardless his advanced years by unzipping his fly and dropping his jeans onto the floor in the kitchen next to the forgotten Tai Chi class in full Saturday morning swing on the other side of that roller blind divide. The flushed and agitated male and female Council staffers who had regrettably to be advised they could not attempt pulling rank again to urgently occupy the main community lounge by hiring it (for their sexual liasion) by the hour. It seems irony to me a Community Centre would not cook a cabbage (Pooh, smelly, the retired woman with the drinking problem thought drawing a stipend to run the kitchen and who else would keep it going as she had she declared bustling past me red and swollen. I think she was right.).

Complex Disabilities Youth was being emptied out of their bus when I called in the next day to collect the Schubert I had forgotten on a shelf (the first time I attended the address as a co-ordinator I identified the group’s name from a brochure). A cycle of wailing and crying alternately begins as these regulars are parked in the Hall and their carers feed them. The teeth of one young man protrude. His outsize and rigid face has the appearance of a type of cooking or industrial utensil for straining scree from a wash. One arm is lightly secured with a leather strap to avert his harm. I savoured in my imagination as I touched the Schubert that I could see the composer inscribing a delicate tracery of rests over treble and bass lines with a quill end. He is calling a student’s attention to apparent gaities of notes. A face popped out of the office. “Come here,” Gan hissed. He had turned his chair in reverse fashion to call out for me. I followed his wheeling advance forward again towards the desk. He spun the wheels into place. “I just want to say I’m not happy,” he began. He hung his head at the end of the denouement, took off his large black-framed glasses and cleaned their glass with a clutched handkerchief, and returned them to his face. “I imagine you are often unhappy with all the things you have to put up with,” hoping this kind acknowledgement I responded, “Maybe I can help you with something.”

“You surely know.”

“No.”

“I’ve been sacked.”

I am guarded. “That was impossible I thought.”

“So did I unless I shot someone. Fat chance. Blow me down you didn’t know. You didn’t?”

I placated him. I did not know and he had felt unnecessary anger at me I saw abate. His face was easy to read as it flushes red in response to all major emotions. Anger, surprise, excitement, shame, …

“It’s because of the way I smell.” He hung his head. “Can you check the lounge is cleared out of everybody for me? They had Court in there today. Be a darl.” There was that delightful gap-toothed grin.

I tapped on the door of the lounge. “Come in,” called a voice to my surprise. Its owner was standing looking down at his shirt over which a large biro stain had spread from its left breast pocket. He said, “O, hello.”

“Yes, I remember you. You’re, aren’t you, Juvenile Offence?” I did not know his title. I glided like any ambassador to a stance of ease at comfortable distance, “Is the room alright still? It’s not noisy?” I could not forget him rushing in the door of the Centre to the window at Reception and blowing my mind with an earnest supplication he wanted to be shown the room. To ensure it was suitable.

“Yes, it’s great” he said, dabbing at his shirt and looking perplexed, “it’s a pity about this.”

“Yes,” I offered, accustomed to debriefing the Men’s Group facilitator , “I wonder if I might be able to help by getting some kitchen paper. You could fold it and slide it into your pocket, and maybe tape some onto your shirt. Between the shirt and your suit coat if you are putting on your coat. If you have to go back to your office.”

He looked at me and stared, thoughtful, looked down and frowned again, “I have to go back to the office. You know I haven’t had this happen for a while. The last time was in the pocket of my trousers.”

I felt myself startle. I believed it did not show. He gazed over at me calmly. He continued with the same sincere gravity he demonstrated throughout this entire trivial exchange, “You know I have worked something out over the years that serves me well.” I noticed he was my years, mid-range 40s. It seemed confirmation was required I was attentive.

“Yes?” I supposed he would divulge a profound insight. About community, law.  I looked eagerly forward, reserved. Professional. I revelled in memory of debating lawyers in Political Science.

“I fill a bucket with water. I have that on stand-by. I pour detergent through the shirt fabric in another bucket and I turn it over. Pour more detergent through. Makes a mess if it’s a lot of ink.” He held a distinguished stance, he barely smiled, but his eyes appeared to with a fact more important to him than leaving this workplace and going home. “I can deal really with this stain. I have solved this. This is not a problem. Easy.” The thought occurred to me he was relieving me of anxiety. “I am glad to know that,” I offer, “Will I get you some paper from the kitchen?”

“No,” he said. He gazed in my direction.  “I’ll pop my suitcoat on when I go up to the office. No-one will know. Don’t worry.” He took his suitcoat and briefcase in one hand and extended his other to the door in a courteous gesture. I demurred I would leave him to see his way out. I would secure the windows.

By the time I bade him good afternoon and the windows were closed, the curtains drawn, I saw Gan had left the office. He wrote a cursory note to say goodbye. He had to go to Rainbows. I saw him struggle with the aloneness of the trek to the car park where for four years and in the main city preccinct for 19 he had battled the weather since his schooldays to catch buses and in subsequent years manipulated the folding up of the wheelchairs into the car he had used (it was bought for him by a service club) to continue to pursue his career in community. See you later, Gan.

 

 

by Sandshoe

 

Julia Gillard: Her Welsh political heritage.

09 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Politics in the Pig's Arms, Susan Merrell

≈ 25 Comments

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Four Ten Pound POMs

By Susan Merrell

Although I’ve never met our Prime Minister Julia Gillard, her background is so similar to my own that I think of her as ‘our Julia’. It’s how she would have been known to those closest to her in the vernacular of South Wales from where both she and I hail and where, for a time, we lived seven miles apart before both our families migrated to Australia – mine two years after hers.

In the Australian vernacular we were ‘ten pound Poms’. But ‘Poms’ were the English and although used to refer to people from Britain generally, we Welsh knew we were different and that applied particularly to politics. For when England and Scotland voted Conservative last century, Wales never did.

The Welsh novelist and humorist Gwyn Thomas, who hailed from the Rhondda Valley in south Wales once explained to an interviewer that he was born with socialism running through his veins and that it would take the efforts of a whole blood bank to shift him to the right. As for Gwyn Thomas, so it was for many of us.

Although Ms. Gillard hardly had had the time to absorb the political context in Wales before her fifth birthday, her parents, nevertheless, were well versed and clearly imbued Ms. Gillard with this commonplace Welsh political outlook judging by her own rise through the ranks of the Australian Labor Party via the union movement.

In Wales, it was the issues of the coalfield that created the political mindset that has lingered even through shifting paradigms. Coal miners were some of the most exploited and oppressed of all workers even though the mine owners were the some of the richest men in the world (and yes, they were mostly all men).

Welsh miners became militant. Having nothing worth conserving, political conservatism was never a viable option. They organised and unionised to improve their sad lot. They embraced socialism and the Labour Party and they took the rest of Wales to the political left with them.

How ironic then that one of the first issues that Ms. Gillard faced as Prime Minister was the mining super profits tax.

For she was born in the shadow of the docks in Barry built by David Davies Llandinam who was one of the richest men in the world thanks to the ownership of South-Welsh coal mines. He built the docks in Barry to ensure a cost-effective and efficient passage for his coal, in preference to relying on the nearby Cardiff docks.  Davies’ super profits must have been huge!

But it’s not the entrepreneurial Davies – who had risen to his position of wealth from a very lowly beginning (his father was a sawyer) – that Ms. Gillard has identified as her Welsh hero, but one Aneurin (Nye) Bevan, who was one of the architects of Britain’s ‘Welfare State’.

It was our Nye that designed and implemented Britain’s National Health Scheme as part of the 1945 Labour government of Clement Atlee.

Bevan’s move to political prominence in Britain was very similar to Ms. Gillard’s, firstly through the union movement as an official of the very powerful South Wales Miners Federation and then latterly through the British Labour Party.

Yet Bevan often found himself at loggerheads with the unions later on his career, deracinating him from his own union roots as a miner. Did Ms. Gillard’s winding back of the ‘super profits tax’ similarly deracinate her from her natural constituency?

The major difference in the trajectory of both careers resides in the fact that Ms. Gillard was successful in wresting control of the party away from her predecessor and gaining the ultimate political power in Australia whereas Bevan never succeeded in Britain.

For Bevan alienated many in his party. He was authoritarian and difficult.  The press dubbed him the ‘Tito from Tonypandy’ (invoking the authoritarian leader of the then Yugoslavia, Marshall Tito, and Tonypandy where a miners’ strike provoked Winston Churchill, then home secretary, to controversially send in the army to quell it). Hugh Gaitskell, the politician who was the Labour Party’s preferred leader in a two-way tussle against Bevan nicknamed Bevan a ‘Cymric Hitler’.

So are there lessons for Ms. Gillard here?

With so many changes of leadership in our two major national political parties lately, there ought to be.

So, our Julia, heed the lessons well. The legacy of the militant Welsh miners is yours too.  Pob hwyl i chi (Good luck to you.)

 

The Mount Calvary model with Chrome handles

05 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

≈ 45 Comments

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Glad to hear you are still all passionate about the Pig’s Arms. I suppose in between reading all those lovely little snippets of wisdom, art or trivia you all have time to reflect on many things including life and what it is all ab0ut.

Well, I sure hope there is more to it than moving boxes, bed heads and filling drawers with knives and forks.

We still haven’t found the wheels underneath our settee yet. We had taped them together in order not to lose them but we have. Also my corn pads have gone on walk about again. Still, my toothbrush is safe and waiting for my teeth in a special metal container..

Sorry if I have been a bit slack with  responses but we are busy and are also having our grandkids over. At the moment one of our daughters and her son are here and we had some lovely pizza. One regular ‘meat lover’ and one regular ‘Italian”. You just phone up and after 20 minutes they are ready to pick up in a carton box with a nice Napoli-bay scene printed on top of the lid. Inside, apart from the pizza of course, is a special little spacer to prevent the lid from sticking to the hot molten cheese. I wonder how many years it took for that little invention to appear and who was the genius? Talking about carton boxes. I wonder why Ikea hasn’t come out with a fold out coffin a la the “Mount Calvary” model. It could come in a flat pack with its own Allen key. The chrome plated plastic handles neatly packed in its own little bag tucked in between the bottom and top board.

Here an old one for the friday evening.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA

Cheers,

Gerard