Author Archives: Therese Trouserzoff

An Accidental Poodle

23 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 68 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Story and Photograph by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

The giant poodle barrels into me head on, smashing my glasses into my face. I’m in pain, I can feel dripping down my face into my eye, and I’m sopping up blood with tissues waiting for the flow to subside. There is a two centimetre cut above my eye where my glasses have stuck into the flesh. I was about to take the dogs for a walk and the carpenter is next door preparing to work on my floor, so I go up to the corner and see him, tell him what has happened, ask if he doesn’t mind walking one of the dogs and I’ll leave the door open for him. The taxi company says it’ll be fifteen minutes, but when I say I’ve had an accident a taxi arrives almost immediately. I’ve dragged the garbage bag outside, even with the sting of my face I’m irritated that I won’t get the garbage out.

The taxi driver calls in to find out where the hospital is. It’s a public holiday and I was not aware of that, and I’m relieved to hear that all the things I had planned to do I couldn’t have done anyway. We drive off to the hospital, it’s really an orthopaedic clinic. The driver is preparing to drive off, but the cleaner at the door says they don’t open until 9, I can sit and wait. I don’t want to sit there until 9. I could just as well sit at home and finish the coffee on the table, smoke a cigarette. So the taxi driver takes me home again. It was an expensive way to find out which hospital I needed to go to, but at least I know now. It’s a hassle to find these things out.

I drive back to the hospital, walk in. But I’m still upset that the emergency list for hospitals has me arriving at one that isn’t open, and I’m unhappy. The gasp when I walk up to the counter in my shoes, having missed the signs, to go back and take them off and return to the counter and be told to go back and get the slippers. And then there’s a questionnaire on a clipboard, and then a fuss about my health care card, it’s expired and I haven’t noticed. You have to pay the full amount in cash they say, and I storm back to the door and put my shoes back on and shout at them that this is not the way to behave when this is an emergency patient! I go home and dig through drawers, find the envelope with the card in it, drive back to the hospital again. They were going by the book, they didn’t expect me to walk out, and they also didn’t expect me to return. This time they’re very efficient, I’m very efficient, they’re sorry and I’m sorry and we’re all apologetic in a professional kind of a way and completely synchronized in our determination to reach a satisfactory conclusion together. I get taped up, bandaged up, and we part on warm terms.

The taxi driver says that everyone calls an ambulance these days. The hospitals don’t pay a lot of attention to people who turn up in taxis. So people call ambulances, even for small things, and the ambulances are over-stretched and not coping. I don’t like the idea of taking an ambulance. I wouldn’t have gone at all except it’s my eye and I wouldn’t like to damage it. I’m bothered to be dragged into the medical system.

The Castle: Episode One – The Florist.

22 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 37 Comments

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-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 can resist, 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 Corner 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 woman 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, startling, 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 Corner and Black had gone inside.

“Come back here,” demanded Black. He was taking off his silver skull ring and sliding it with one hand flattened 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

21/11/10

The Florist

17 Wednesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Sandshoe

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

,

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

VIVIENNE’S Summer Suggestions

16 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in The Dining Room, Vivienne

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

, ,

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

≈ 71 Comments

Tags

, , ,

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.

The Collectors

14 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

,

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

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

, ,

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

Tags

, ,

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.)

 

Good Afternoon – Address to the Poor Club

04 Thursday Nov 2010

Posted by in Politics in the Pig's Arms, Sandshoe

≈ 51 Comments

Pic borrowed from the Conservative Wahoo

By Sandshoe

Good afternoon, my name is Louise.  I am a member of the Poor Club.

The members of the Poor Club are the dregs of society. [Rabble rousing Cheers]  I first became a member [Rabble rousing Cheers] when I belonged to the Rich Club. [Rabble rousing Boos].  I heard about the Poor Club [Rabble rousing Cheers] at a dinner at the Rich Club [Rabble rousing Boos] and the next evening when I got home from work [Boo] I wrote to the Secretary of the Poor Club [Cheer] to get her to send me the form I just knew I would have to fill in to apply to become a member (Yeaaaah! Clap).

Thank you all for the welcome. Reserve your judgement for when I tell my story. The Secretary found my telephone number in the telephone directory to verify I exist. She said she would ring me because that is less costly than replying by snail mail (or by a fancy French letter, she joked) although she said straight off I did not qualify to be a member of any Poor Club. She said the gilt edged linen finish stationery I wrote my letter to her on with the matching envelope, not to mention the classic Indian Ink and a fountain pen flourish at the finish was fishy. And she wanted to know how could I afford postage.  I didn’t like the idea of being rejected and I lied.  I said the stationery and the pen was a box set I won (I ignored the query about postage).  She asked where and I said it was a door Prize at my Church and she hung up on me.  I even wondered if she was a Christian, which was silly of me.  I wrote another letter using a dozen different biros as if they were all old ones that kept running out.  I didn’t even put a postage stamp on the envelope when I sent this second letter.

She was really nice when she rang back. And she even said she found a trace of butter on the butter wrap I used for stationery.  I could be a member.  It was that easy.  That’s how I found out lying can get you anywhere (but best to be blameless and tell the truth when you think you can get away with it, really!)   When I told her because I thought she should know that I belonged to the Rich Club, she said she didn’t believe me.  Why would I apply to join the Poor Club if I belonged to the Rich Club.

That’s a good question, Many ask it. Friends, neighbours, family as well. Why would I apply to join the Poor Club if I was a fully paid-up member of the Rich Club: a Diamond Status Pass Card holder at that.

It’s simple. I felt deprived. When I heard about the Poor Club and I only belonged to the Rich Club, it was like I was missing out on something more important than anything.  I got to thinking. In the Rich Club it’s money, money, money. If belonging to the Poor Club means no money, no money and more no money, I knew I needed to be there, find out what it is like.  If those people are still alive, I wondered, I wanted to know how they do it on nothing.  If I had nothing, I would kill myself.

My grandmother said, the poor have got spirit. My grandfather said Grandmother didn’t know squat. Faith, my accountant said, the poor have got faith that one day they will learn how to balance the books. The building manager said it depends where they live. If they have a roof over their heads, it doesn’t matter where they live, and three square meals a day, her husband thought. And so it went on. I had to find out for myself the answer to something obviously nobody knew for sure or could agree on. How can the poor get by. How do they live when others in the same situation kill themselves.  This is the enquiry that means I stand here before you now, making a petition, now, of the Poor Club. It’s a triumph. The poor live on thin air and hope. [Huzzah. Bravo.] Inclined deprived of chance to the ingenuity of genius.[Loud Cheers.]. I cannot do other than consider the well-to-do Beauclerk, that fashionable wit, who despatching a letter to the Earl of Charlemont claimed of Samuel Johnson ‘confined’ to the Isle of Sky (sic) he was reckoned ‘obliged to swim over to the mainland taking hold of a cow’s tail’.