Author Archives: gerard oosterman

What Not To Wear (for men)

01 Tuesday Feb 2011

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By Helvi Oosterman

When popping into Pigs Arms for my daily pink drink, I have been alarmed by the gear you blokes wear at this watering hole. Room for improvement?  Yes, yes…

First of all you should know that the wearing of narrow-legged beige shorts with sandals and the knee socks is only permissible for very old blokes residing in Queensland. As we know it’s no use trying to change old dogs’ habits…none of you here of course do fit into this ‘too-old-category’.

Thongs should be flung out, not only for the aesthetic reasons but also because they give their wearer a funny walk. Whilst you are trying to keep them on, you have to carefully throw your legs about without bending your knees…not a good look!

Coloured shirts with white collars make you look like a nursing sister, even if you obviously aren’t. We gently leave Mr Turnbull to wearing his shirts, he’s suffered enough already. Most likely we have Lucy to blame here.

If you happen to covet a navy blazer adorned with ‘gold’ buttons, stop coveting!  Only dapper Italian males can wear them with panache. They have enough nous to pair them with grey flannelette trousers, and to throw a pale blue Armani shirt and a subtle silk tie by Hermes into the mix.

Tapered- down- wide-at-the-waist tough denim from a discount store is best left to elderly carpenters and country plumbers. Clearly to be avoided after hours…

Now we all know that President Bush had a knack of wearing cowboy boots with flair; he has the bandy long legs and the right kind of Texan gait the boots demand. Still, any shortie trying to add height by stepping into them should be stopped immediately.

Head-to-toe R M Williams gear is not making you look like a wealthy land owner, rather it gives you away as a city slicker who has recently purchased a minor hobby farm and who has not yet had time to dirty his hands on a hard-to-start tractor or on an obstinate generator.

Fluoro work wear is designed for folk in hazardous occupations, not for idle Telstra blokes heating their billy cans for morning tea break on the roadside. Nor is it meant for unemployed youth hanging around shopping malls.

Teaming trackie pants with black dress shoes is also verboten, and very long and very pointy shoes can only be worn by rebellious teenagers in black pipe jeans. I’m personally very tolerant and give my blessing when it comes to eccentric Finnish groups like the ‘Leningrad Cowboys’…

Red woollen jumpers, so loved by English gentlemen and by our own Curry Colonel, usually matched by equally ruddy faces, are best replaced by other colours; say navy, camel or even forest green. They are more complimentary to too-much-Shiraz affected gobs (sorry about the bad choice of words, I did not want too much repetition).

White shiny suits are a must, but only if you are an Albanian pop singer taking part in the Eurovision song contest. Long wavy black hair and white shoes are allowed to compliment the outfit. For everyone else, even for Bob Hawke white shoes are an absolute no-no, no matter what Blanche says.

White, black and sand coloured canvas loafers are highly recommended though, for young and old as suitable summer footwear.

Shortish navy or khaki elastized waist, drill shorts, worn by likes of Paul Hogan and Steve Irving are only passable on young well  built swimming pool maintenance workers. It also helps if they have short blond hair and a wide smile and if they wear acid/bleach damaged Blundstones to boot!

No Grey Food for E M Forster

23 Sunday Jan 2011

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Helvi Oosterman

Forster was returning to England from somewhere exotic, maybe India, on the boat train, sitting in the dining car, he’s waiting for the breakfast to be served. He wrote about this episode later in Food and Wine magazine; it was 1939.

“At last the engine gave jerk, the knives and forks slid sideways and sang against one another sadly, the cups said ‘cheap, cheap’, to the sauces, as well they might, the door swang open and the attendants came out crying  ‘Porridge or Prunes, Sir? Porridge or Prunes, Sir?’ Breakfast had begun.

   That cry still rings in my memory. It is an epitome—not, indeed, of English food, but of the forces which drag it in the dirt. It voices the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, prunes clear him out, so their functions are opposed. But their spirit is the same: they eschew pleasure and consider delicacy immoral. That morning they looked as like one another as they could. Everything was grey. The porridge was in pallid grey lumps, the prunes swam in grey juice like the wrinkled skulls of old men, grey mist pressed against the grey windows. ‘Tea or Coffee, Sir? Rang out next, and then I had a haddock.   It was covered with a sort of hard yellow oilskin, as if it had been out in a lifeboat, and its insides gushed salt water when pricked. Sausages and bacon followed this disgusting fish. They, too had been out all night. Toast like steel, marmalade a scented jelly. And the bill, which I paid dumbly, wondering again why such things have to be.”

Some breakfast that was. We all have been faced with inedible food at times, and Foster’s brekkie has made me think of what has been my most horrid food experience.

If I had been forced to swallow the doughy dumplings mum sometimes added to her otherwise excellent pea soup, I would now have to say that it was that soup. Luckily  my darling sister loved the dumplings and allowed me to slip them on her plate when no one was looking.

Having to eat raw oysters for the first time and at a rather formal lunch was scary and somewhat tricky, but a good white makes many unwanted things slide down easily. Then there was that dreadful cook in my primary school, and her even more dreadful food… I think that was IT, and only some warm school milk to assist you to  get it  down.

What about you, was it tripe, brains..or a crocodile steak?

Those curves, those lovely curves

21 Friday Jan 2011

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After having taken Milo for his twice daily walk I have come to notice that many large blocks of land in our neighbourhood have been converted to multi dwelling town house developments. The original houses are still there but the gardens are now occupying those strata titled town-houses. Most have between 3 or 8 townhouses depending on the size of the original block or the size of the town houses.

In deciding the one we would finally live in was not easy. It is rare that simplicity is maintained and with most of those developments a kind of faux Edwardian or some other English past era is emulated in the ‘style’ of the architecture.

The idea of living close to shops and a place that is not tizzy with a feel of something approaching simplicity and honesty in a dwelling is not as easy as it may sound. We did finally find something that had all those attributes and at an affordable price. But what might have clinched our choice perhaps more than anything was that the driveway into the complex had curves. Now, this for me might well be a throw-back to Dutch Vermeer’s lovely curving, poplar lined country-laneways of the past but both of us seem to be drawn to curves more than straight lines.

 Our previous stay in Moss Vale’s complex of many town house also had a  curved look about it with the different dwellings being somewhat staggered making for the eyes a rather pleasing type of village vista.

Anyway, on my walk with Milo I noticed that many of those town-house developments have rather regimented gardens with ram-rod straight driveways which for us are immediately off putting.

 But, does the curved line hold up to being more pleasing than a straight line? After all, the beauty of a woman is also part curvaceously determined, is it not?.

But what about a man though. He is rather Eckish  ‘rectanglish’ is he not? Is he less attractive? Could it be the curves in his mind that makes him alluring to the female?

Still, a woman’s mind is often very full of curves and round a-bouts as well. How does one explain that then?

As always, there are so many more questions? Where are the answers?

Of Proust and Penguins

18 Tuesday Jan 2011

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By Helvi Oosterman.

I’m standing in front of our floor to ceiling book cases and I don’t know where to start my weeding; we are moving to a smaller place and I have to select which books to take and which not. I have three milk crates on the table: one for daughter, one for charity and one for the cottage. The ones I want to keep can stay until we actually move.

I take books out at random. ‘The End of Certainty’ by Paul Kelly is the first one. It was a birthday present from Allan, who passed away far too young at fifty. His beautiful hand writing makes me choke at the loss of a dear friend and I want to keep the book. ‘In the box’, says the boss who hasn’t even read it. The next one happens to be a slim volume by Marguerite Duras, a French writer who used live in Vietnam when it was still Indo-China. I start reading ‘Practicalities’; beautiful short essays about life, love, writing, Paris and wasting time. I feel I’m not wasting a minute re-reading this and not sticking to the task at hand: I have to keep this one;  it’s only a slip of a book.

On the bottom shelf, out of sight are my yearly diet books; I have bought one every January, new year, new me. Easy goodbyes to all; from Atkins to Scarsdale to South Beach. I count only seven;  many of them have already left the house to end up fattening girl friends’ book shelves. Then I pick a stack of yellowed old Penguins, Mishima, Kawabata, Hermann Hesse and Böll, which have escaped the previous throw-out. They are like very old friends now;   I put them back on the shelf.

I’m not doing too well, and I decide to take a break and walk to check the cottage collection. I find that most of them are results of previous culls, books that I had not chosen myself. Even so I managed to bring back an armful: a book on Finnish art, a long lost one of V.S. Naipaul and ‘By Way of Sainte-Beuve’ by Marcel Proust.

I have spent some hours by now and not much to show for; maybe the best thing to do is to tackle one shelf daily until the job is done. We have time;  we haven’t even put the house on the market yet. Husband walks by and looks at the empty boxes, he can see that I’m getting a headache and am close to tears: Maybe I can help tomorrow? This is not what I want;  he’ll only leave his Patrick Whites and some boring stories about Aussies migrating to Paraguay and maybe George Perec’ s  ‘Life, the User’s Manual’. ‘You can help with the cook books and the gardening ones’, I say as I have already promised to give them to family members; I have enough recipes in my head by now and my new garden will  be very small.

Oh no, I have totally forgotten about dictionaries and other language and reference books in the office and all my favorites in the bed room!

Milo moves out

17 Monday Jan 2011

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Helvi Oosterman

Milo moves out…

Milo is a dog who knows what he wants. When he turned into a grown-up dog, when he stopped being a puppy, he decided that he was ready to sleep outside. It was more exciting to be out there with the wombats, kangaroos and the occasional blue tongue lizard, and all the weird Australian birds.

The cold did not bother him; frosty nights of Southern Tablelands did not drive him inside. He popped in on Tuesday nights to watch The Inspector Rex, but only if the little boys happened to be visiting the farm. The old sofa on the big verandah was his bedroom. Surrounded by many cushions, which he nightly arranged into a cosy bed, he was off to doggy dreamland only to scratch the door in the morning to be let in to share breakfast with us.

When we moved into a new home and surroundings, we thought it best that for time being he’ll sleep inside. The huge floor cushion made of an old Persian or Afghan carpet, bought in Byron Bay, became the base of Milo’s new bed. He made clear it was too rough even for a rough-coated Jack Russell, and I had to add one of those large European style pillows for softness. He now had a proper double decker, and he was happy.

There is a right time for everything, and when we discovered that the Bowral’s more humid warmer weather had  brought the fleas, which we never had in Brayton, Milo had to move out, or at least sleep outside. We bought a little Doggy House with a blue roof and over-hanging eaves to keep the rains out. Hubby and other family member were doubtful about this house moving. I knew that it would be successful. The time was indeed right and Milo was ready to sleep away from us again.

Yesterday our old neighbours visited us with their three year old daughter. It was a warm day and we had the doors to the street and to the garden open for a breeze. As we were all talking excitedly, happy to see each other and to share news, we did not notice that Hannah was not around anymore. We rushed upstairs, checked the bedrooms, the front and the back garden…no Hannah.

And then, there she was, crawling red-faced out of Milo’s little house…

Dinner for Two at the Back of St.Jude’s

15 Saturday Jan 2011

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Finally the weather had settled into a benign dryness, even a promise of sun lurking behind the clouds. The Brisbane floods were receding with Insurance companies licking their wounds, and the ABC news back to normal and the cricket.  Here in Bowral the last of the grandkids, sated from helmeted Razor skating and vanilla ice cream with Milo chocolate topping were returned to their homes. Thank you kindly and a glorious return to freedom!

The idea fermented over a few days was to have a nice outdoor dinner for two. You know the kind to restore post Christmas madness and a rekindling of marital glow with the need for some restoration. Time to take scaffolding down, remove the smelly ham bone, clean the fridge and book the car for a pink slip.

Sticking to the dinner for two though, I bought fresh salmon, Dutch carrots and some firm potatoes. This was going to be a simple yet delicious dinner. We already had the wasabi, the soy sauce but not an adequate wine to justify this momentous occasion of marital rejuvenation for 2011 and a surging revival in conjugal bliss with the eventual sharing of sweetness and goodness trickling down throughout the entire community of villas and townhouses here in Bowral.

“Dan Murphy.” This, as always, the last stop to a totally trustworthy agent of at least able to supply the necessary imbibing ingredients for any event, let alone the dinner for two at the back of St Jude’s at Bowral with fresh salmon and firm potatoes.

Like always we are inexorably drawn to the Dan Murphy’s bins of specials. The specials are often euphemistically called ‘bin- ends’ or line –ends.  Whatever, they give a hint of bargains to be had, even though through bitter experience, the bargain might often be a bottle that has peaked, just as inexorably. Never the less, a Dutch gene that seeks to save and find magical bargains is often embedded forever in those born and tainted with ‘The House of Oranje.’ J’ai maintiendrai ‘is our motto engraved on coats of arms and the guilder.

 So, both Helvi and I now deeply bent over the many bins of specials, featuring mouth-watering discounts. We finally, and with a resurgence of patriotism, perhaps  linked to those suffering from floods in Queensland where everybody is now ‘shoulder to shoulder’ and to ‘the last man’ working to clean the mud, decided on a bottle of ‘Billabong’.  A true Aussi oy, oy, oy number.

Reduced from $18.90 to $9.99 and a nice little 2009 date to boot. A red with ‘light oak characters to be served with roast beef and vegetables,’ it said on the back and at the bottom. We were delighted if not reckless as well. A red wine with salmon is a bit brave, but what the heck. This was all for rejuvenations and re-kindling, remember? I should have continued reading.

Anyway, the carrots with greenery hanging out over the sauce pan were boiled to perfection. The potatoes micro-waved for 13 minutes. The fish grilled for 7 minutes in total with its flesh a roseate pre-pubescent pink.  Helvi glazed the Dutch carrots with some Mimosa honey. I had uncapped the wine an hour before but with metal screw caps now omitted to get a sniff of the cork. No wonder Portugal is up the spout now that cork is gone and screw caps are in.

Helvi had set the table outside with a colourful table cloth; there was a hint of perfumed evening air, cicadas giving a free concert. All was ready for the resurgence and rejuvenations. We clicked our glasses and gazed into each other’s eyes. It was all getting very French and we both took a deep and meaningful sip.

Oh, the wine, that bargain at $ 9.99. In small lettering below Billabong Red and in brackets.

(De- Alcoholised) and lower still, “0.5% Alcohol.”

“ f#@cking hell.” You f@$%c*ng cheapskate.

Tonight we avoided the special bin-ends, walked straight past them.

Raging Rivers

13 Thursday Jan 2011

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Between all the tragedies being played out amongst the floods and raging rivers all over the place, I wonder what, in a panic and totally bewilderment, we would salvage after the dreaded midnight knock by police to evacuate.

On the TV, that horrible medium, not a moment of peoples private miseries or anguish, could be spared from the ever vigilant public stuck in the comfort of their reclining easy chairs. Did you too hear those inane questions from ABC journos; “how do you feel the flooding will affect the people,” it was asked?  Oh, they will be delighted!

There it was, for all to see, people loading up their possessions. Some just carried a suitcase, others loaded up their cars, boats and trailers, with chairs, foam furniture (perhaps from Clark Rubber,) dogs, cats and even a galah. I saw a floating device with what looked like a big fridge on top of a matrass. A couple of men were clear headed enough to load a treasured wine collection with some white wine bottles sticking out. Was it a good sauvignon Blanc or some dreadful heavily oaked chardonnay?

What really took the overall price for a moment of Chekov, amongst all that misery, were a couple of girls wading through the rising waters carrying a huge mirror. ’A mirror,’ now that was really something you would miss.

I don’t know what I would take, perhaps just some old black and white photos that I store in a small box. You know the sort of things that one sometimes peer at and wonder what happened to it all. Did it all pan out? 

 Would I take a passport, banking details? What about some books, my tin toy locomotive?

I don’t know but we had some lovely garlic prawns last night. What else could one have done?

Pig’s Arms Psalm No 5

07 Friday Jan 2011

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The weary traveller

January 7, 2011 by gerard oosterman

 

Dare the weary traveller

Still walk on seeping sands

Those shells still echoes and haunt oceans

Driftwood like remnants of life

The wind still giving howls

The leaves melt into moss

Mountains’ silent glaciers

But witness to decline

Dogs remain to bark

Noontide follow mornings

Spiders spin and weave their webs

Glistening morning dew, so magic

Forever last the setting sun

On yellow gum and rocks of gold

But will the weary traveller

Still walk on seeping sands?

A Pox on Advertising

06 Thursday Jan 2011

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Here in our compound of 8 villas/town-houses there is just one post box which has ‘no-junk’ on it. This is rather surprising because each week now we get a bundle in one package of about 12 different advertising folders. They are colourful brochures singing the praise of many different bargains to be had for the canny shopper. They run the gamut from Big W to The Good Guys and include such mouth-watering shopping venues as Fantastic Furniture, Dick Smith, IGA and even good old Woollies.

Did you know that SUPER IGA this week has, wait for it: Whole Economy Rump for $ 5.99 a kilo and it includes 200% guarantee on freshness & quality. Now, I ask you, how could anyone resist the 200% guarantee? But it gets even better. They have Peters Overload ice cream at $3.99, Minties at $1.99 and a 2 litre tomato sauce and 2 litre Barbeque sauce at both for a mere $3.99. Can you imagine 4 litres for $3.99? The mind boggles. I simply can’t imagine rushing out and get 4 litres of sauce to squeeze over food. I am not going to live that long, neither would you want to suffer that fate.

And that’s just the beginning. Cop this. At Fantastic Furniture, just for you, and as advertised, the magnificent Dallas Chaise in ‘living fabric’ reduced from $ 399.- to $299.- included 5  year structural and 10 years foundation guarantee. It’s all too much. I’ll just have to lay down on my own battered Euro Chaise and rest, rejoice in all those bargains.

Seriously though, who in earth studies those brochures? I must admit I have always felt a terrible bout of weariness coming on when it comes to anything with advertising. I just don’t get it. Do people really look at TV ads or newspaper ads? I must confess to having peeked into a Real Estate window when we were looking for a place to live. Mind you, I probably would look that up on the computer now.

When the kids come over they watch The Simpsons and they now know how to get to that channel.  Apart from SBS we never ever watch a commercial channel. SBS has ads but I never really know what they are advertising because my eyes are on automatic when faced with advertising and just glaze over, and I take a nano nap.

I remember going to Moscow many year ago. It was heaven, not a billboard or ad in sight. No shops either. On SBS’s I love watching global village especially when it features continental Europe.  It’s pure bliss seeing street scapes without those advertising hoardings so familiar here. Do Europeans buy less because advertising is so much more modest? It is all rather puzzling. I do think much man made architecture in Australia could be improved by making advertising subject to some sort of control.

Any trip along Sydney’s Parramatta Rd almost results in the need for a rehab, or a solid bout of counselling. Nothing in the world could possibly get any uglier. How can addicts to alcohol or drugs remain clean when visually assaulted everywhere they go? Trying to get repeat tourism to Australia the best thing would be to get some kind of aesthetics committee up and running and try and introduce standards in public use of advertising space like they do in most countries that are more sensitive to the world of vision. After all, why should we have the freedom to visually insult so many locals, let alone tourists, by imposing ugliness in the form of hoardings and screaming advertisements?

Anyway, Coles Beef has No added HORMONES and No added COST to you.

Fantastic, I must rush out, go to IGA for the 4 litres of sauce and 200% fresher Economy Rump then of to Big W to snap up the 5pack of Bonds hipsters.

The Fellatrice and Milo

05 Wednesday Jan 2011

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The Fellatrice and Milo.

In Bowral there is a nice cul-de-sac which is closed to traffic and open to pedestrians. It features a number of cafes, decorator’s shops and a travel agent. One of those shops even sells the very fashionable Marimekko dresses together with a kind of what years ago could be called ‘haute couture’ items, keenly sought after by those on the cusp of advancing years and with comfortable wallets…

Its main feature because of the banning of cars is that it is one of those rare flukes of a successful bit of public space that works extremely well. The council had the foresight of having planted some deciduous plane trees ensuring shady retreats in summer and lovely sun in winter. It also has comfortable seating and even has a sculpture donated by our own artist Bert Flugelman, who lives in Bowral. He is the one who gave us the sculpture in Martin Place Sydney. Apropos, This sculpture, ’The Silver Shish Kebab,’ was heavily criticized by Frank Sartor and has since been moved to Spring Street.

The cafes have been given approval to have seating arrangements at the open space as well as in the actual cafes. Waiters are routinely seen to walk across to serve the many locals and tourists with their chosen fare.  There are those fold up umbrellas to supplement shade and in winter gas heaters ensure outside al fresco dining all year round.

The place just works perfectly and with a bit of imagination one could be in a square at Bolzano or even Paris.  Musicians and a flower stall on most Saturdays give it quite a buzz and finish the picture perfect.

We had just arrived with Milo on a lead when I needed to go to the CBA’s ATM also located there, handily enabling tourists to withdraw cash and hand it over to the shops or cafes. I am always surprised at the magic when the money comes out, unbelievable really, so modern and electronic with receipts and balances print out. I handed Milo to Helvi while pinning in details. She decided to just walk on, possibly to see if Marimekko dresses were visible in the shop. You just never know!

Suddenly, a large and brown dog shot out from somewhere and got stuck into Milo. A terrible killing was just about to happen. I rushed over but remembering my brother’s micro surgery on his hand when stopping a fight between his bull terrier and a German Sheppard, decided not to get my hands anywhere near those ferocious looking jaws of this large brown dog. The fight might not have lasted much more than a few seconds but it seemed much longer. The two dogs were rolling against a pram with a baby. The mother screamed and onlookers were aghast. By this time the large brown dog owner had got up from her table. A young man from one of the shops came out and without further ado picked up Milo, just like that, still on lead and put it in my arms. Almost a gift at the foot of the temple of Zeus, I thought. He had curly hair.

The mother of the baby and the woman with the brown Rottweiler-Labrador were by now facing each other like something out of Quo Vadis. “How dare you have this dog not on a lead the mother shouted? “”With my baby nearly being tipped over” she added furiously. The owner of the dog with deeply rouged lips shouted back with a somewhat fish and chips voice, “My dog never does anything”, “he just wanted to play”. “Play?” “You’re as rough as guts” the mother retorted. I could see some logic to that as the dog-owner had not only those thickly shaped and deeply rouged lips as if in the past she might have practised as an experienced Fellatrice, she also spoke as one. It could well be that the ferocious dog was a remnant of those days, offering protection in case of an unsatisfied and cranky limp customer. Who knows? Perhaps she was a directrice instead, perchance in a very respectable retirement village, maybe called ‘Braeside,’ for retired pilots, of which Bowral seems to house so many.  I might just be unnecessarily cruel and prejudiced.  Even so…Poor Milo.

We then walked on to post a Christmas card to Finland but glancing back, the fight was still going on between the baby’s mother and the owner with the large brown dog and deeply rouged lips. I knew the mother had the backing of the bystanders. It is amazing that dog owners always seem to take the side of ‘their’ dog and that ‘their’ dog could never ever do anything like biting other dogs, let alone capable of killing, even babies. Shit does happen.

Milo walked on as if nothing had happened. Nose to the ground and the lead taut as always.