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Ellery: 2000 kilometres from home and still in his natural habitat

Aubrey: babe in arms (and wool)

My house is a fantastic mess. 

We arrived home last night after a whole day's travel back from the Grands' place in the Gippsland hills.

A beautiful week of family and pottering in the country. And the chance at last to introduce the Grands to "the little fellow who doesn't drive and doesn't sit up yet", as described by his big brother.

It will take us another day to return to the island and unpack our monthly groceries.

This next week begins a new chapter, as we bid farewell to our au pair and welcome winter. I am more than a little daunted by the task of wrangling the big kid (who I am having the hardest time with lately, but that's another post) and the house on my own.

Mustering deep breaths and positivity ...

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This week's portraits taken at Whisky Bay and Port Albert.

new years day, forest's edge, binginwarri

renew

 

Just back from a bush Christmas at Binginwarri, which is usually very breezy and contained. This year it became a nest for visiting cousins, kidlings, uncles and friends, and some lovely, overdue catch-ups were had. It was also the first meeting of K and the relics. And K and half the family. Naturally he got the big thumbs up, especially from the older-female-contingent (I'm not sure they’ve seen a bloke wash and fold laundry in… well, I’m stopping right about there).

We made a few easy trips beyond the bush block… a lazy lunch of fish and chips at Port Albert with Cousin B and her bloke M, where we watched their Small Z plop around in the shallows. We also made a much-delayed inaugural trip to the Celia Rosser Gallery in Fish Creek, where Mum scored a very collectable banksia print for her birthday, K scored a personal hello from The Celia, and I scored a $5 teapot from the Fish Creek Op Shop which was having a sale. A visit to our WWOOFer friends up in the Strezleckis provided mucho inspiration for our land/house building dream.

New years was a scorcher… the extended tribe milled about the barbecue before some wild weather from the west rolled in and provided a stellar full moon light-and-cloud formation. Back on the verandah, the bubbles flowed, the sparklers spitzed and the party-poppers provided instant rainbow moustaches for those who’d outdone themselves on the fizz (ahem).

My long-lost brother and his partner also made a visit late in the piece. In fact, the family stuff ran so long that we ran out of time for a sail on Westernport and a quick-stop in Melbourne… so we’ll be scouting for cheap flights soon to remedy that.

It sounds kind of busy, but there was still time to slow down and enjoy late afternoon walks along the Hedley Range in the syrupy sun with butterfly escort and curious cows. Frogs provided a pobble-bonk soundrack for the evenings. We picked paths over goannas, echidnas... and dreaded tiger snakes. And picked alpine strawberries at the front door, wild forest mushrooms on the bush block, and wild plums down the road... mmm! Inspiration for the new year.

Wishing everyone a wonderous 2010 with much love, health and merriment. x

dear universe

I barely know where to start. The past few weeks have been chockers. A three-week intravenous hit of culture and people I love. Between mud-camping at Woodford for the Dreaming Festival, Melbourne to see friends whilst dosing on food, Dali, design and high-street-retail love, and Binginwarri to gather wild mushrooms, chase wombats and get trounced by the relics in the Winter 2009 Pictionary Play Offs, I’ve barely been home.

Or alone.

And now that I am both, I’m feeling kinda sad.

I’ve been given a fair bit of prodding in recent months to think about the shortness of life. Today another good soul passed away. I am sending warm thoughts to his family and friends. And acknowledging life, the precarious privilege.

Dear universe, I am paying attention.

score one, the regions

Last night the relics shouted me to dinner and a movie. Which on its own would be notable, given the extreme notability of any type of cultural excursion I make these days.

But this occasion belongs in the realm of Wonderful.

By some bizarre act of mercy, Son of a Lion came, for one night, to Yarram’s Regent Theatre. Which despite its potential arthouse allure (balcony seating, pressed metal ceilings, Bud Tingwell photographs on the walls) generally only shows crap.

Not only is Son of a Lion not crap, it is a beautiful story with stellar acting, gorgeous one-liners and a brilliant soundtrack. (And the story of its making by an Aussie paramedic is facscinating.)

That this subtitled flick featuring jellaba-wearing Pashtuns shooting guns and praying to Allah in Al Qaeda country screened the day before it’s national release, in the land of dairy farms where ‘F OFF, WE'RE FULL’ bumper stickers prove your manliness, was unfathomable.

--

I am further impressed to be able to label this post 'bingi' AND 'movies' (who woulda thought?)... and possibly creating a new category for my recent favourite list discovery: Stuff White People Like. (Think sushi, indie music and threatening to move to Canada/New Zealand.) I don't think there's a post yet for Middle Eastern Tribal Culture!

nuts

I’ve just returned from two days at Churinga, where the Relics and I lunched last week. Churinga’s guardians are part of the WWOOFing fraternity and had invited me to come back for a bit of hands-on. I was told I’d be planting walnuts. Naturally, my rose-coloured urban brain imagined me begloved, kneeling in dirt, sunshine beating down, digging a few holes with a trowel and asking, ‘What next?’ with the satisfied glow of a woman who has just planted walnuts.

Naturally, it wasn’t like that at all. What it was like, was plotting an entire orchard of walnut trees. No, cancel that. A plantation of walnut trees.

Two of us spent the best part of one and a half days measuring and staking out where 50 walnut trees should go on a very large, steeply sloped, bracken-covered plot of land. We couldn’t even get a proper line of sight since there were trees to be felled. We got 26 in the ground. There were no trowels in sight. Clearly, I still have a way to go on this urban to country curve.

But for now, you can call me Walnut Queen.

inspiration and anti-kindness

Last week the Relics and I made an inspired house call. Up through the hills of Jack River went the little van, dodging wallabies and wedgies*, to Churinga: 85 acres of bush and home to a couple of Landcare-Greens renegades.

The vegie garden overflowed with artichokes and mountain pepper and raspberries and garlic and chestnuts and warrigal greens and rosemary and kaffir lime and grapefruit. Its views and bounty made me green. After a tour of the river, during which we released an anti-kindness**, witnessed the pulling apart of the turbine which provides them their power (!) and stuck our heads in on the nearly-complete cool storage cellar and fire bunker… we were fed an amazing home-grown lunch in a house made from reclaimed materials! Warmed by a glass of red and a kick-ass woodstove with a fandangly system which pumps hot water underneath the concrete floor!

We left with a heaving bag of lemons and grapefruit and John Ralston Saul's On Equilibruim, which is kind of like brain-citrus: a little hard to get down but good when you know to just approach it in small bites.

I have been invited back next week for some hands-in-dirt experience.

--

*Wedge-tailed eagle, an Australian bird of prey.

**A small native mouse. I suspect this is not its real name but this is what I repeatedly heard.

oh glorious productivity

Yesterday was about the most productive day I have had in aeons. After dropping the pee-anywhere cat off to the vet bright and early, I had three whole hours to fill before my knitting class. After a quick look in the opp shop (and another el cheapo woollen jumper score), I headed to the Federal Coffee Palace and plonked myself by their open fire. With laptop and caffeine I proceeded to work like a madwoman. At home, despite being stationed behind a closed door, my day would be about one part work to two parts tending fire and sixteen parts engaging with domestic life that refuses to believe in my ‘absence’ (a Snuffle-upagus case in reverse?). Then there’s time spent in the thrall of the kettle, which, thanks to its perch on the always-on woodstove, graciously affords a constant stream of little breaks. (Much like the always-on internet.)

FCP is my saviour. I did a full 'Bingi day’s' work in two hours. I will come back often. So what if it’s a 40km round trip? So what if they don’t have wifi (actually that’s a good thing, since internet access would’ve thwarted my blitzkrieg). At the very least, I will move my homebound workspace to the big caravan on the property.

But that’s not all. Yesterday I also finished my beanie – my first knitted project EVER! (Every time I enter her orbit, my knitting yogi apologises for starting me off on such a not-quite-straightforward project.) See here.





On the whole, I'm quite chuffed. I'd like to wear it with the roll-up bit rolled down, but because it's got a bit more headroom than I can use, wearing it like that makes me look Smurf-headed. So I plan to tweak the design and make another. After I finish the scarf I also started yesterday.

ding! dong!

The orchids are out, the wood ducks are a-nesting, the mornings are lighter. This can only mean that winter is on its way out. Ding dong to that! Both rain tanks are full and I harvested my first handfuls of coriander – planted from seed aeons ago – for a bowl of pho ga. Small things worth celebrating. I thought I would do so by sharing some recent finds/surprises:

1. Cousin J’s home-made bircher muesli, replicated by me but not as good as the original. Oats, dried fruit, water, fridge. Genius!

2. Yacon: like a crunchy, super-sweet potato. Perfect for my fave fast food: bowl of steamed veg.

3. Kangaroo simmered in a dashi-soy-mirin-sake combo with stir fried vegies and brown rice. How did I get into my fourth decade (ARGH!) before tasting dashi?? Probably the same way I left it until my second last day in Vietnam to discover jackfruit.

4. A 100% Shetland wool jumper in the throw-out bin at the opp shop, 50 cents. Hooray for the regions.

5. A sheath of dusky meringue light falling on the peak of St Paul's Cathedral with the boldest, thickest rainbow I have ever seen arcing over the building's side. Lines of people taking photos. Me? No camera! One of those 'I don't have my camera so I'll just have to appreciate the moment' moments.

6. The tax office rocks. These words are a meaty surprise, no? They have just rescued me from taking another slice off the top of my acorn stash. Never before have I witnessed the heaving cogs of bureaucracy work so swiftly in my favour. Never.

7. Someone I used to work with has packed up his family for instalment two of We Do Love to Sail Around the Med. Their modus operandi seems to be work for six months; sail for six. I do like it very muchly!

8. Natasha Pincus interview in the winter issue of Dumbo Feather (call me a nerd if you will, I'm rationing my reading to prolong the joy) which has made me think even more deeply about callings and creativity. Anyone seeking Purpose Angst resolution should read it. Though it may cause further angst. But you’ll be much better informed. Or something like that.

9. Always smile when there are cameras around. You never know when a previous employer will stick your mug on a website banner.

10. Who the? What the? Gggghhh! Mwow. I was dreaming about moths and celery stalks...



How cute is he with his face all twisted like that? And I am posting this after cleaning two puddles in one day... one of which I unwittingly pushed a broom through and walked in. Ick! Either I am extremely forgiving... or I find this photo highly amusing.

a name for swollen knuckles

I may have been harping on about the cold. In case you missed it, my first southern winter in six years has been debilitating to any kind of forward momentum. (Except the forward momentum required to repeatedly reach into packets of chocolate covered Butternut Snaps.)

My acclimitisation has been made more tricky by certain household philosophies concerning wood and fossil fuel consumption. Philosophically I am the Queen of Conservation. I recognise the forests of timber required to keep the house warm. I try to participate in its getting. But I am physically struggling with limiting its use.

Since my return to Victoria, I’ve been the owner of several extremely swollen, extremely tender, extremely blue knuckles. Which have been recently accompanied by an itchy skin thing. The knuckle thing has been an on and off concern for a few years, but never this bad. Thinking I’d acquired a nanna disease to go along with my nanna hobbies (oh my god she can knit and drink beer AT THE SAME TIME), I trundled off to Melbourne to see a rheumatologist who did a good job of channeling House. With powers of deduction executed at the speed of light, I left with the happy verdict: not arthritis, but a legitimate aversion to the cold which manifests in swollen joints and chilblains. Raynaud’s disease – repeat, DISEASE – can be managed by maintaining one’s core temperature and avoiding exposure to the cold.

Let me say it another way.

I paid a very large sum of money to learn that after donning my indoors attire of beanies, scarves, multiple layers of thermals and armies (not quite fingerless gloves-not quite socks for arms), I have a medical reason to make greater use of the household’s available heating systems.

I also suspect that the management of my DISEASE might also require a minimum daily intake of chocolate. Chocolate being the food of choice for mountain climbers and extreme cold weather adventurers and all.

cousins rock*

Oh. My. Lordy.

You know your whinings about cultural/financial states have reached a new kind of pathetic when your cousin who has just returned to Melbourne after a long expat stint and is living with one of her relics and her lifelong housemate who she left back in Queensland send you a care package. With really expensive wine and six ‘every day’ wine glasses (one for every day of the week minus one dry day), Ethiopian organic fair trade chocolate, fluffy polka-dotty bed socks, Full Terry socks – exactly who is this Full Terry? – latest editions of Grass Roots and other “vego-leso”** reading material and incense specially brewed to ward off depression!

The booty came in a big box, masquerading as a water-saving shower-head. Naturally I paused to consider last week’s flurry of internet trawling but couldn’t recall ordering any shower-heads. Come to think of it, I can’t recall ordering anything online since Operation Tightwad kicked in.

My reaction upon knifing open the box went from befuddlement to glee to guilt: "This is not a shower head. This is wine and chocolate! I am not worthy!"

You see, I, dubious cousin that I am, have not called J to support her through the return to Melbourne in winter and moving in with a relic phase. I, dubious cousin that I am, even got a twitchy lip when she called last week to chat to Mum and not me... it was amidst the swathes of bubble wrap that I realised she had called Mum to check our postal address.

[pause for emphasis]

I feel like someone who drank an awful lot, made a right ass of themselves, forgot what an ass they were because they drank so much, then got a really bad hangover and whined loudly about it til someone bought them a year’s supply of Berocca to shut them up.

I love the care pack. I am so not worthy. J and L: you can ride on this for a very long time.

--

It’s been cousin-central around here. We just spent a lovely weekend with my Long Lost Cousin, her boat-building beau, their cute little z and my uncle. There was food. There was wine. The Wombles theme song even made an appearance. Read about it on boat-building beau’s blog or b's blog... (exactly how did two people with a small child beat me to blog it?).

Well that’s it for a bit… I’m wambling off to Melbourne for a few days to imbibe by a fireside amongst fellow editors, stalk the Slow Guides publisher, drink wine with old friends, run amok at festivals and trawl op shops and bookshops.

*housemates, partners and babies of cousins rock too, it just didn't fit so well in the title.

**kudos to J and L, this is their genius catch-all for minority groups like vegetarians and lesbians.

week one update

I’ll start with a small clarification, since my thought loop (a few posts back) went directly from a gripe about Life After Desk to an apology to Members of the Household – the link between which was probably not sparklingly clear. Probably because my brain seems to have frozen over in the struggle to continue functioning through my first proper winter in six years.

For some time now, the relics and I have been nudging the maximum duration for successful offspring/parental cohabitation. Noted through excessive grumbling, sniping, etc and aggravated no doubt by my growing frustrations with Life AD. Hence the cartwheel from general gripe to apology to MOTH. Which then kind of tumbled with a half pike into a competitive bid to calm domestic relations.

So, now that is all clear, an update. All MOTH willingly entered the competition, though with not quite the enthusiasm or robust start I imagined. Day One began with strong winds, a power outage and Domestos-clean floors. My hard won Domestos-clean floors, the icing on the previous whole day's cleaning binge. I crawled out of bed in the dark and got the woodstove burning. The elder relic arose and (in the dark) fetched buckets of water from the tanks. Creeping through the kitchen like an overgrown hairy Vietnamese woman, he promptly spilled a bucket all over the kitchen bench, chairs, chair pillow things and... my Domestos-clean floors. And every inaccessible, unlit crevice within a three metre radius. (And, since my bread-making efforts began, I have been astounded daily by the inordinate number of flour/water/seed-retaining crevices in this kitchen.) Naturally, this was followed by much grumbling and mop/bucket action by us both. Then, instead of giving up like any normal person and retreating to his cornflakes, he went to fetch wood (still dark), and shimmying back through the house, dropped a log... sprinkling bark and log dust all over my increasingly un-Domestos clean floors.

Since he had not yet read and accepted the invitation to compete – and I was still too bleary-eyed to be aware of the date – we turned a cheek on the morning’s grumblings.

I'm loathe to admit that the household has turned many cheeks since then. Grumblings have continued with much the same frequency and force, but are now followed by earnest murmurs from at least one MOTH of "but the competition". We are all supposed to be judges in this quest, and as we are each reluctant to annoint anyone else a loser, our lenience in this regard indeed reveals highly sophisticated diplomatic skills.

See? Silver lining, or what?! I have stores of positivity! Stores, I tell you!

apologies to MOTH

I cringed as soon as I clicked publish on the last post. I know, my whingeing is unbecoming. And repetitive. Thankfully, I’ve moved on. But not without a (very lame) apology to the household.

(See how I hold myself up for public ridicule in an effort to repent? Well you will, read on...)

[queue trumpets, dervishes]

Open Apology to Members of the Household (MOTH)

Sorry sorry sorry
for shooting bristles and splinters
‘Tis the devils within and the lurgies of winter

I’ve laundered my manners
and found a stash of good cheer
In fact, I’ve got stores to last me the year!

Well may you say:
“This sounds grand on the page,
But the terminally impatient can’t wait the next rage”

“That sounds like a bet!,” I decree
“Let’s see if we can spend a month sans hostility”

I’ll corral my opinions
not shout at computer bumblings
While reciting serenity mantras to his rants and mumblings

And you’ll save multi-part technical questions
for when I’m done juggling pots,
serving dinner and offering wine suggestions

He’ll be all joy
Delighting blackbirds a-twitter
And rejoicing the cat when he misses the litter

The victor’s due?
A fine pinot and a block of dark* too!

*Victor may nominate alternative booty to similar value, but as you see, I expect to WIN!

Rules of the competition: hostility includes, but is not limited to, any grumbling, mumbling, growling or detectable ill-will in the company of, or in the audible or visual range of other Members of the Household (MOTH), whether directed at MOTH or not. This includes inanimate objects. Multiple winners and multiple losers allowed. All losers will furnish or contribute to furnishing booty for all winners. In the case of dual victors, the total pool of booty shall be doubled and split equally between each victor. In the case of a single victor, the nominated booty or alternative of similar value shall be awarded. Entry to the competition is limited to MOTH, is not required of MOTH and may proceed with two or more MOTH. The competition commences on 1/7/2008 and closes at midnight on 31/7/2008.

Told you it was lame.

wifi-underful

I am writing this post, with not undue glee, from the warmth of my bed!

Which is in a completely different room to the modem!

Ha!

The household recently acquired a wireless router and today, in a rare feat involving the weakling part of my brain devoted to computers (‘devoted’ being perhaps a tad excessive), I managed to install the beast and get it champing.

Haha! Again!

Meaning I can once again use my laptop without constantly shuffling between it and the household ‘mothership’ computer which has the sole internet connection. ‘Tis also the end of timeshare arrangements!

Our impending transition to the wifi world had been delayed due to bugs in the ‘mothership’, which after much hair-pulling and time-wasting I surrended to the local tech guy. We picked it up yesterday. After a total system detox, it's looking good. So good that I attempted the seemingly (for me) impossible.

Did I expect applause? I might’ve, considering the blunder-in-the-dark methodology I apply to any technological challenge. But the household merely pouted about the new look and feel of the computer stripped back to its original self.

I give it a day or two, til they discover that emails can be checked whilst perched over the heater. Or for that matter, from bed.

suggestibility

suggestible (sah-JEST-abul) adj: Open to suggestion, esp hypnotic

It’s one of my finest-honed weaknesses. For those who may not know me so well – despite the general dearth of non-spam comments around the traps, earth stories has lurkers(!), bless their bashful cotton socks – I am one of those people who is easily led. And for some reason, all roads seem to lead to all-night orgies of indulgence and inevitable regret.

We’ve had visitors at Bingi for the past couple of days. Mighty fine ones too. They came brandishing such calibre of reds and cheeses from the Koonwarra provedore, that, well, it would have been downright rude not to reciprocate with some proper knees-up action. Both nights.

I didn’t claw out of bed til 9 this morning and then required ‘some time’ for my head to stop beating.

And I’ve been trying so hard to keep a normal working week.

Then of course the laptop bugs came out to play (again) and the rest of the day/week/attempt to sustain life beyond desk, etc went up in a poof of expletives and simmering growliness.

Etiquette and tech challenges aside, even the status quo poses continual thrusts and parries re my suggestibility. I’m secretly toying with re-naming the parental abode. I think ‘bar relic’ is very laneway/rooftop… I also like 'bar bingi' but don't think it will quite fly with the Liquor Licensing Commission.

Perhaps I can claim to be simply enjoying a very Mediterranean diet. I’m sure Michael Pollan would approve.

hooray for wild foods (ode to the fungi-licious)

Over the past couple of years I’ve heard grand tales of wild mushroom harvests at Bingi. Of platefuls of black-eared goodness gathered from the forest. Of such quantities that after eating them fresh, stewing and freezing, stewing and freezing, the surplus was (horror!) given away. Each year I’ve salivated from afar. So naturally, I’ve dreamed about mushroom season since arriving here... two months ago (more horror!). I was convinced the first fungi would flourish the day I uprooted for Tassie. And that I would again be left pouting. By the grace of the wild food gods, I was wrong.

Enter, my current lust, the forest mushroom. The season has burst, big-time. Every afternoon for the past four days I’ve been mushrooming. Yesterday’s bonanza: two trays of too-good-to-be-true, russety helmets:

Days have vanished in ode to the ‘shroom. Aside from the ritual gathering, there’s been much daydreaming about how to eat them. On stoneground wholemeal pizzas with thyme, pinenut and pecorino was a good start. Now, for the perfect soup recipe...

In my love-state I've been marvelling at the perfection of wild foods: nourishment superior in every way to the tasteless offerings of industrial agriculture. These are poor-man’s truffles. Picked and eaten same day. I walk and breathe fresh air to gather them. Consequently I meet the locals (who invite me to extend my rounds to their paddocks). No carbon emissions, chemicals, fertilizers, cleared land, water diversions, embodied energy or waste. And what was that about a free lunch?!

Am fully aware of my near-delirium over the mushroom thing. (No, they are not magic.) As with most little joys, there is a flipside. Given my current, subversive, sucks-to-the-dominant-consumerist-ideology thinking – and to further illustrate the complete bureaucratic stupidity of the current paradigm, in case you needed more evidence – I will add that gathering wild foods from public land is illegal. In fact, gathering anything from public land is illegal.

Rather than coil and rant about the abject wrongness of this, I will continue to simply appreciate that which graces the roadside!

[Disappears down a dirt road in full swoon.]

gfr and regional identifiers

Have returned from seafaring to discover a new resident at Bingi. Its doors are usually pretty well oiled by visitors – one even slept in ‘my’ bed while I sailed.

[Note subtle inference that bed is not actually mine, as I have been reminded on occasion, but for visitors, and I am merely squatting.]

Anyway... accustomed to visitors and all. But I didn’t expect to return to the likes of…



Note bullet holes. Indeed. GfR is the blackbird assassin’s new pin-up boy… for target practice! I laughed so hard I had to scrape myself off the floor.

Today I opened the local paper (I know, what kind of heathen am I becoming?) to discover that I might almost be considered a Yarramite. Almost. I'll stand up for being a Melburnian, a Victorian, former Brisbanite, even a Bingin-warrior... but I can't swallow this one. Thank god for the thirty-odd kilometres between us and Yarram, which keeps me from being classed as imitation breakfast spread.

Oh, have also been asked to post a retraction to the egg defacing practice. It is not, as reported, an aid to right-way-up stowage, but is rather a canny device for identifying the older eggs in the basket. Which, naturally, elevates the practice into the realm of ordinary, reasonable behaviour for a sexagenarian. Yip. Watch this space for a retraction regarding age brackets.

blackbird pie and the broad bean emancipation

*Warning: contains reportage of violence*

The relics arrived home last night. One was in a foul twitch after visiting the vegie garden this morning. I’d been keeping an eye on things as instructed. I’d watered, I’d reinstated dislodged fencings. Unfortunately I’d failed to detect the uprooting of large swathes of newly planted (and in my defence, very tiny) broad bean seedlings. For which I felt due remorse … though this diminished somewhat during the unabridged, technicolour, all-singing, all-dancing screening of 101 Reasons Why Blackbirds are Bastards.

Blackbird wrangles are well entrenched here. But in a Tom and Jerry / Coyote-Roadrunner kind of way. (I’d never actually seen anyone use a slingshot, outside of cartoons, until arriving here.)

While ‘discussing’ the problem with fellow vegie gardeners in Melbourne, the unnamed relic was promptly furnished with air-gun and ammunition.

(Which are now, uncomfortably and probably illegally, in the house. But this is small fry...)

After this morning’s little fracas, Operation Blackbird Pie: The Broad Bean Emancipation, took flight.

Tacticians don’t appreciate the realities of advanced weaponry until they become groundsmen. I'm not going there, suffice to say it was not pretty.

The day ended with one enemy casualty – whose corpse now hangs in the apple tree as a "warning to others"… hello, UN War Crimes Tribunal? – and the complete moral depletion of the friendlies.

I can’t believe I’m related.

survivor binginwarri

Five weeks of the rural life (the longest I’ve been in one place in ten months) is slow slog. You would think it’d be all knickerbockers and sunny afternoons lolling on a green with a glass of fizz.

But consider: a 40km round trip for the weekend papers and 80km for a DVD. I’ve moved onto survivor footing, planning infrequent tactical swoops for all outside needs.

Have also rediscovered the library since money angst urges delayed gratification; not to mention delayed haircuts (I’ll go without: experience cautions against submitting to ‘the regions’). And you can forget bubbles. I’m talking myself round to top-shelf cask wine for non-cooking purposes. Broad horizons and all…

Then there’s the daily drudge of being rejected by editors far and wide: seems the thoroughbreds have staked the greenest turf and there’s scant room for newcomers.

At least domestic life beckons… I’ve a nimble wrist for sweeping possum poo off the deck.

---

This week the relics trundled off to Corowa for a spell. I must state upfront how much I appreciate being housed and humored. But this respite is tonic.

At the risk of becoming homeless, I shall demonstrate:

Invoking the essence of Homer Simpson, one talks in faux foreign languages in an attempt to scramble telco voice recognition technologies.

Then there’s the drawing of chicken faces on eggs - rationally defended when questioned, as a way to identify which end of the egg should face up in the basket.

And the miserly bombast provoked by anything that gets in the way of a timely bowl of cornflakes, anyone on a ‘success’ spiral in the western economic context, and anyone elected to represent anyone else who (misguidedly) opens their mouth.

Cuteness or regression?

Either or, I empathise with the sentiments. Mostly. But after five weeks my internal monologues threatened to turn a shade of vicious that would insult a tourette’s sufferer.

Thanks be to the despicable entrepreneurs providing us with satellite internet, my link with the outside. Without which I would be... in danger of becoming an egg-defacing hermit prone to anti-authoritarian tom-foolery.

the new peasant economics

Why is it that time and money exist on parallel planes? It’s like some evil economic quantam scale where you invariably have a rude abundance of one and a dearth of the other. It's also like a Snuffleupagus and Mr Hooper scene (never the twain shall meet). Whatever, the imbalance is stress-provoking and anti-life.

Since joining the ranks of daytime gadabouts (ie, adequately furnished with time), I’ve noticed a peculiar change in my activities...

Fire. I am besotted with it. After rousing from bed and feeding the cat, my first priority is to light the woodstove. Throughout the day I feed it, poke it and monitor its behaviour like a new mother. This is because it is both a brilliant heat provider (do you know how close Gippsland is to Antarctica?) and the cooker of our hot meals. Hail the woodstove. You are my new god.

Tools. The pyro preoccupation has led to a parallel interest in the chainsaw. Yes! Last week I wielded death in my hands, surviving Chainsaw 101 and Kickback 102. I figure it’s probably good to know how to use the thing, just in case wood supplies here run low. Which is not likely to precede melting of the polar caps, but anyway…

Bread. As noted previously, I’m on an upward sourdough curve. After mastering the folding in and low-knead techniques, I’ve cracked the flour:wet ingredients ratio. Breakthroughs that resulted in a loaf which doesn’t digest like stone. Next assignments: Tibetan barley bread and ginger bread…

Herbs. While the elder relic plays in the vegie garden, I’ve begun my ‘I will never buy herbs from the supermarket again’ campaign. Cuttings from E going well. Seeds sown but yet to sprout. The sun’s return would help. (I might have also thrown a bunch of random vegie seeds in a pot – my competitive streak lingers despite the change of postcode/lifestyle.)

Handicrafts. Object of my fascination Mystic Medusa promised an answer lurking in a clogged-up cupboard. To offset further goading from one of the relics, I began sorting through boxes of old school/uni work. The mega-deed ended in a craft session (and a disturbing flashback to my youth) as I sat on my bedroom floor making notebooks out of photocopied waste. If the question was whether I will ever need to buy another notepad again...

All other incarnations of food not already covered. Have swanned into role of house chef. Food prep enthusiasm has returned in full, courtesy wads of time to dream and create. Of recent note was a black-eyed bean, tomato and spinach curry with minted yoghurt and coconut rice. Didn't sound all that appealing when I tried to describe my vision to the diners. Verdict? They did rave. And I would serve it with girlish glee to a table of me and David Wenham. In other food news, an order for lamb roast has been received for mothers day.

<$ Since I’ve been watching it like the woodstove, I’ve noticed how much of it I waste. I’ve been paying monthly salary packaging fees since last September… without actually earning a salary! The car also caused acute haemorrhaging last week – I still can't talk about it but have regained my composure after a weekend of wine and 100 kinds of dairy that I can blame on visiting brother and T. And of course, every single recurrent expense I have was recently ‘adjusted in line with CPI’. Bah! Grrrr!

All these activities have been bubbling alongside the vision quest, which of course is to (*closes eyes and clicks heels thrice*) creatively fund my continued existence in this new part-time, fire-starting, tool-wielding, cultivating, crafting, baking mode (where creative = on my terms and legal).

Gordon Bennett! I’ve joined the peasantry!