home in the redlands – sillysocksonfriday

I’m an old country boy

An old friend came to town from up North and said let’s catch up somewhere.

We decided on a 10 a.m. brunch in a cafe near the central station and his flat. I am somewhat of a hermit and get lost easily, so hate going into the city.

I have never worked or lived in a city except Salisbury in the 1970’s, which was really a large town with mild traffic in those days. Then 10 years ago in Australia, I commuted by train to an inner suburb from an outer suburb for 2 months – I still shudder…

Timetables were checked and the way to the cafe (just 7 minutes walk) and I had my phone… so girded my loins.

Only had to wait 12 minutes for the train (better early than never..). There was a seat near the door, pity about the school trip into the city. Young people can chatter!

Got to Central station without mishap. Found an exit, hobbled down stairs … left or right? Go right … oops! should be heading to Ann Street, which is the other way. More stairs… Just as well I had allowed an extra 10 minutes to find my way.

There are a lot of people in a city; why are they all on the same pavement as me?All looking purposeful and calm, politely sidestepping my hesitant shambling amble.

Ann Street, go right to Edward Street – easy peasy, only 100m to go, cross to the left, down the hill. Hmmm! better check my phone map. It says destination 9 minutes away – I’d thought it was 7 from the station..? Carry on and find a landmark to check if you are going the right way.

Can’t read street names on map; Yikes! it now says 11 minutes from destination!

So back up the hill I trudge, past Ann Street. Now 5 minutes late and at a wiggly crossroads where my phone map says cross left then right then do a wiggle and you are there. Confused I gaze about seeking clues…

Ting! A message no doubt asking where am I. My friend knows me well. It says: “Do u know where you going? There is no signage but in the snazzy building at the bottom of Jacob’s Ladder behind the revolving door!“

I look up and there across the road is a revolving door. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland searching for the White Rabbit. I found him behind the revolving door.

We had a good old friend reunion, which was reasuring. I almost envied his cool equilibrium about visiting the city, but remembered he had worked in Durban City for many years.

Finding my way back was easy, I even found a shortcut by reading the signs. Waited only 7 minutes for a train and had remembered to go to the loo, so there was no stress.

I am so glad I am a country boy, so glad that I will not be around in 50 years when it will be like a city everywhere, unless you travel miles inland … for a while.

a butterfly muse

I sat on my stoep yesterday and was honoured with a fly by of a black butterfly with turquoise dots on its wing edges.

It flew around the kumquat tree, glanced at me, I hope, then went on in a whimsical, unhurried flight.

It was perfect, a flimsy beauty filling thirty seconds of my life, then gone forever.

Beauty, like time, does not stand still. A portrait of a beauty captures some essence but not all. A photograph though true, lacks life.

Beauty happens to you, it is a moment, like happiness, then will pass leaving a memory and a want for more.

Self indulgence

73 is a good number, but I am not there yet. Being but a step away is sufficient justification for self -indulgence.

Warmed by gentle signs of affection from the my nearest dearests and those afar, I feel free to indulge.

But, lest anyone think that I may neglect my responsibilities, I have done the washing up, emptied the bins, watered the flowers and inspected the lawn for dog poo (none); however, I did note it needs a cut – but not today!

To my delight I found a new scarlet amyryllis bloom, the second this season; a solitary deep red nasturtium smiled at me – I thought they were all done, and my birthday gardenia has spared me an extra bloom on the appropriate day.

On the kitchen bench are massed ingredients for the Christmas cakes baked by herself. Such a rich panoply: ginger, prunes, fig jam, candy peel, dates, apricots, currants, cherries, almonds to accompany the usual eggs, flour and milk, all stiffened with a cup or two of sherry and a dash of whisky to preserve it. Renowned as an invigorating health food the cake rarely makes the new year.

I had black berries and yogurt for breakfast and plan a mango soon. For lunch I will have a glass of wine (maybe two?) and some snorko’s (pork sausages, a little weakness of mine). Supper shall be feesh and cheeps at the Lighthouse.

Somewhere, there may be a nap …

That’s how I like it these days.

Yellow

Autumn is a yellow season.

The sketch is of sunflowers we picked from a farm field.

Who said farming can’t be appreciated by many? I don’t mean just the produce, but the intrinsic beauty of crops in the field.

An enterprising farmer recently opened the sunflower fields for the public to enjoy.

Thousands of people left their city homes and travelled over 100 kilometres to walk about the fields, smiling and posing and picking sunflowers while avoiding bees. The entry fee was not hefty.

Pop-up food and souvenir stalls abounded: I had a very fine, cheap hamburger and some unremarkable gin in grapefruit juice.

One could glamp in luxury tents, wander through a maze in the sunny fields, get married amongst sunflowers or take a helicopter flip to photograph the fields.

I half expected a March Hare and a Queen of Hearts to appear – it was a sublimely pleasant experience!

On the same yellow road: Autumn is the month for the flowering of Golden Penda trees which almost outnumber flamboyant trees in our part of the world.

After good rains (which we have had) the trees burst out in yellow sprays of flowers, which have copious nectar. This attracts the honeyeaters which include the rainbow lorikeets, who become besotted and wild, seeking out more and more.

I have written before about the cacophony of Austraian bird calls. In this season, the noise starts before dawn and continues into the heat of the day. Gangs of the electric green, purple headed birds speed from tree to tree, shrieking their critique of the nectar quality for all to hear. It is almost oppressive.

Aren’t we lucky?

Another view of Spring 2021

As is my habit I breakfast in the morning sun on the patio. It is fresh and I don’t switch on the radio, as I want to hear the birds.

Next to me is a kumquat tree with bright orange fruit and new season flowers, which have that lovely citruscent. One of the day’s decisions is whether to turn the fruit to marmalade – I think I will.

The lawn is patrolled by spotted doves and magpie larks. The local magpies pass through to ensure their territories are being respected. They viciously attack any magpie intruders.

A pair of magpie larks,called peewees, are frequent visitors. This morning one of them walked past my chair as I read on the patio after breakfast. I glanced at her and she stopped and eyed me over, then as I was not an obvious threat or interest walked under the table.

She emerged on the other side hopped up onto a chair and then onto the table, only 4 feet from me, looking for morsels. She then stopped, looked at me and sounded her ear piercing tweetshriek. Who knows: maybe defiance, or just a joyful greeting?

In the foliage around the bird feeder, where the pyton often hangs out, crested pigeons kerfuffle frequently – their libido goes through the roof in Spring. Rainbow Lorikeets pop in occasionally, but don’t linger.

Less frequently, we are privleged with glimpses of King Parrots and Pale-headed Rosellas and the occasional galah and cockatoo.

In the syringa tree, figbirds and blue eyed honeyeaters search for flowers or berries almost every day. Noisy mynahs squabble and shriek on the move like gangs of unruly children released from class. Their noise is often pierced by the harsher scrapescreech of the noisy friars who pass by.

Finally, there is a sweet pair of Lewin’s Honeyeaters, who bathe in a patio gutter that needs fixing, carelessly splashing and spraying. They chatter happily as they flit through the trees, playing catch.

Life is not too bad, if we stop and listen to the birds.

Bubbles and veg

I will confess it now – I am beginning to feel guilty about eating meat. My daughter has become a vegetarian over the last few years, for taste not ideological reasons. My guilt arises from ideological, specifically environmental reasons. I still love eating meat except for the inner organs like liver and tripe.

I guess my brothers and most of my African friends will stop reading this in disgust….

One Wednesday MC offered to make lunch for me – I rarely refuse such offers and sat down to a vegetarian meal, feeling slightly challenged. To give me a little impetus in order to meet this challenge without flinching, I cracked a bottle of bubbly after a pre-prandial lager.

With wide-eyes and a faint air of forlorn hope, she presented a very daunting veggie looking meal – I felt my teeth growing longer by the minute!

Couscous with spiced eggplant and lemony yoghurt – how greenie, hippy can you get? I girded my loins with a second glass of fizz and tried to smile as I had my first tentative nibble …. Sapristi!! It was bloody marvellous!!

I finished all there was and licked my plate clean.

Somewhere in my post prandial euphoria I was dared to eat one vegetarian meal a week. I accepted with the boast that I would cook the next one and the Wednesday Lunch Club came into being. We present a meal alternately.

Herself declined to be drawn in – she has had some experience of my culinary skills. Some of my faithful blog followers may recall this culinary foray: https://sillysocksonfriday.com/2017/02/17/fishcakes/

I have not been known to avoid any opportunity to indulge my self – so my vegetarian offering was a seafood paella, cooked on the braai. If I say so myself it was pretty toothsome – my guest agreed, although this may have something to do with the bottle of her fav strawberry fizz.

Week 3 was cunningly designed by MC to indulge my longstanding craving for a burger: Lentil-Chickpea Veggie Burgers with Avocado Green Harissa

Bubbles were now mandatory and afternoon appointments were cancelled.

On Week 4, I indulged a hankering to try a platter of Tomato slices with Mozzarella Cheese and a Balsamic Vinegar dressing. Not bad …

If my brothers are still reading their eyes will be bulging.

MC was feeling the pressure, so she tried to sway me by unorthodox tactics in week 5. Veggie Wraps: Pumpkin, rocket, beetroot, capsicum, feta (plus marinated beef strips for some). One has to keep an eye on these vegetarians – they will go to extraordinary lengths to further their cause. We committed to become purists – no meat henceforth. Sheer love kept me from declining the offering, which was yummy.

I felt that a strong response was called for in week 6 and I was feeling nostalgic, so went for a double whammy: Pasta salad with peanut butter sauce followed by tapioca pudding with coconut and mango. (I couldn’t source sago – beloved frogs eggs of childhood). MC was highly complimentary

Week 7 was different: Miso soup, Edamame, Okonomiyaki (vegetable pancake) with Soba noodle salad and light cheesecake topped with fresh strawberries. Ah so desu ka! Domo arigato! おいしい Well done MC!

Week 8 was today and I fretted all week. Fortunately, Herself was in charge of the Commissariat and found all the ingredients for Green pesto minestrone soup followed by gingered Junket (more nostalgia). Declared to be even better than my last effort.

I freely confess that I have enjoyed every one of these meals and I now spend more time reading vegetarian recipes than following Donald Trump in the news!!

Wednesday has become a gleaming beacon day – the food and the company are excellent. Time with my daughter is gold.

I urge you all to consider vegetarianism … in moderation, perhaps.

Should you care for the recipes I am quite happy to include them in my next publication which will be an omnibus of short stories, rants, poems and recipes from sillysocksonfriday – I bet you can’t wait, y’all!

Passion

I hope that this title got your attention. Getting sneaky is how we get buy!

This is about resurgence of my passion.

My pre-passion mulling over period came to an abrupt end when I buttered my toast this morning. I was smiling in anticipation of a great gobbet of our New Zealand made lemon curd on top. Never smile at a crocodile, it will get there first! The cupboard was bare! I had to make do with Anchovette fish paste.

This obviously called for immediate action to avoid any further disappointment.

We are blessed in Queensland by an abundance of passion fruit; so many that even friends and neighbours are full up. So I have essayed into beneficiation – Clem Sunter’s answer to South Africa’s reliance on primary industry; Australia should consider it.

I sprang into action: to Google for a recipe and the cupboard and fridge for ingredients.

Now Baby Boomers men will understand that the challenge before me was of some magnitude. Particularly we who originated in the Dark Continent were not equipped with culinary skills of any sort. The more progressives had mastered making a cup of tea and operating a toaster quite successfully.

In my retirement I have taken steps to avoid stagnation by writing blathering blogs and amazing autobiographies. But now I have experienced… YES, I will confess – a new passion which has brightened my life appreciably.

I am talking about the kitchen arts: those that our wives and daughters absorbed from an early age from their mothers and grandmothers. Whereas when Mum was cooking, boys’ focus was who got to lick the bowl and the biggest slice; girls noted utensils and spoon sizes, pot size and the advantages of butter and how to whisk eggs… the list is long.

So, Dear Readers (those who are still with me), you may agree that the challenge facing me to ensure never having to endure another disappointment in much anticipated indulgence, was great. It may even have daunted some.

By googling “passion fruit curd” I was blessed with about 4,230,000 articles… I read the first three and being health conscious, I chose the one with only 1/4 cup of sugar.

The recipe required in addition:

4 egg yolks

6 tablespoons of unsalted butter

juice of 2 lemons

1/2 cup of passion fruit pulp

What could be easier than that?

Huh! Have you ever tried to separate egg yolks from the limpid, runny stuff, without getting egg shell in the mix? … and pips out of lemon juice after it has been added to the sugar?

What’s a double boiler?

What if you have no unsalted butter AND no whisk, which you discover only after you have started mixing the stuff …

In my passion, I took the bit between my teeth and combined pulp and sugar and warmed it over a bowl in a pot of boiling water (ingenious, I know).

I managed to separate most of the yolks and whipped them with the lemon juice (only a few pips remained) and I mixed it with the passion fruit, then added the cubes of butter slowly, while whisking the mix until they melted…To demonstrate my nonchalance at my new found prowess, I made a cup of tea and sterilized an old coffee jar at the same time. Multi- tasking I believe it is called.

A prime aspect of this curdling process is whisking, which is required to be continuous. Imagine my horror when someone knocked on the front door! I had to remove the pot from the flame, attend the inquiry (can I clean your gutters ?) and dash back to resume my whisking.

New-fangled culinary technology does not faze me – I even managed to take the temperature of the cooking curd as I whisked.

Once it reached 160 deg F, I whipped it off the stove and jarred it! I tell you now whisking for about 20 minutes requires perseverance and some endurance.

But I did it … and I got to lick the bowl and the spoon.

I am passionate about cooking …

Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise. *

*Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sursum Corda*

(*Lift up your hearts)

I get up just before the sun to walk Lulu. My Dad called staying in bed after you wake up ‘scugging’, – I am not a scug.

The first few minutes are mostly muzzy: where are my shoes? Fill the bird feeder or the bird shrieks until its fed, waking herself… why am I doing this thoughts begin seeping up….

Then Lulu woofs and I go to her room and she kisses me and bounces around making soft growly joyous sounds.

As we step outside the cool freshness is sublime.

Morning skies this week have been blue with high wispy wind clouds tinged pink by early sunlight. This morning they were swollen, lowering grey with a hint of purple. Maybe it will rain.

At the end of the street, two stone curlews freeze and pretend invisibility. Lulu suspects something but is not sure.

We are heralded by the butcher birds who whistle and chortle from tree to tree. The kookaburra leads us across the park.

Under the big gum tree that is shedding its winter bark and displaying its new pastel green skin, two crows are examining something on the path. They shout squawk off but flee as I approach. Their interest was not a blue tongued lizard as I had thought, but an Australian wonder: a squirrel glider.

Such a pretty little thing! It hopped towards me miaowchirping as if to say thank you, pleasecanIwalkwithyou. I said No and herded it to a tree waving away a persistent crow. It scrambled up and was soon safely out of sight. A lovely little animal – I have not seen one before.

We walk on under a fig tree quivering with breakfast birds and past the silly ducks that think I am a feeder. I am not.

Two water dragons stretch their necks, frozen to bathe in the morning sun.

magpie goose

Three magpie geese waddle away from us as we walk down to the bridge.

purple swamphen Lulu tries to ignore the purple swamp hens (pukeko in New Zealand) who gallump across the path on their long feet and the bush turkey scuffling on its mound of leaves which it uses to keep its eggs warm.

Back up the path, we meet Harry a big grinning chocolate Labrador for a sniff and a smile. Then home again.

Let us give thanks and praise.

Dignum et justum est. It is right and just

Raucous cacophony

Australian birds are numerous, many are garishly coloured; they are not very shy and when together frequently create a raucous cacophony. It seems to have rubbed off on to a number of Aussies too!

In the early morning we are stridently informed by the blue ring-necked lovebird that there are insufficient sunflower seeds for breakfast.

No sooner is the feeder topped up than rainbow lorikiets chase him away and colonise the feeder in a mass of scarlet, electric green, purple, orange and yellow, squawking and crooning.

A sudden intensified chattering and shrieking from the local noisy miners indicated that there might be a snake about. Sure enough – coiled on a branch above another seed feeder is our local carpet python. Still a youngster at about two metres and the thickness of a pick-handle, his brown paisley camouflage makes him nearly impossible to see.

The noise attracts the attention of a family of sulphur crested cockatoos who perch in the trees about the area, grinding out their harsh shrieks.

To make matters worse this attracted a flock of correllas, which circle above like helicopter gunships, adding further creaking shrieking.

Finally, the local crows croak by adding their indignant comment to the whole affair.

The noise is a raucous cacophony.

The snake slumbers on, unperturbed; none are brave enough to engage.

Eventually they all get bored and move off, leaving only the Lewin’s Honeyeater which chatters on all day every day, a Spangled Drongo and the crested pigeons (kuifie duifies) which are practising for Spring because the sun is out.

Later, my wife who has been trying too sleep after a night shift, is awoken by a crow and a butcher bird on the verandah, arguing over a dazed spotted dove that had taken refuge behind a pot plant. I rescued it and had to go inside to avoid the close attention of the persistent and clearly hungry butcher bird.

So much for the stillness of suburbia – it’s worth its weight in gold!

Bollemakiesie

The young can make us young again too.

As is our habit we braaied at the weekend, well on Easter Monday. It was our usual family gathering with dear friends and some visiting rellies from across the ocean.

Somehow there was a slightly more festive spirit than the norm which seemed to make the beer and fizz go down easier.

We were a somewhat eclectic crowd with some in their sixties, fifties, forties, thirties, three dogs and a four year old sprite.

Normally a fairly shy child, on this day, she was filled with the energy of a March hare and the command of a Ringmaster. While we chatted and kept up the level of our liquids in the early stages, she inspected the toys and her dolls house, engaging the dogs in a number of role plays. A bit later, I noticed the dogs had gone missing. I found them in the dolls’ house, waiting patiently to resume the game.

However, the young queen bee had moved on and was engaging the adults, commanding their participation in a number of exercises and role plays, including catch-the-grasshopper and a tea party.

Her timing was impeccable and her enthusiasm and commands were charmingly irresistible. The new activity at Playschool was yoga so all were instructed to participate in yoga exercises. Peer pressure enforced participation, which should have been more wisely considered in some cases.

Head over heels (bollemakiesies in Afrikaans) were the exercise for men and all surrendered their dignity to roll around on the grass in pairs. The last pair included a grandfather who was proud to have been in his primary school gymnastics team and remembered well his star turn of a somersault over a wooden horse…

His bollemakiesie was very well executed, symmetrical and straight. However, the total effect was spoilt by the unfamiliar pressures on reasonably airtight gaskets. The resultant lapse of the system was quite a blast.

A nervous glance sideways revealed that it had not gone undetected.. two people were crying and the dogs were trying to run away…

Growing old does not prevent infection by the rashness of youth, it merely impairs the ability to maintain dignity and integrity while under its spell.

My granddaughter is quite a lot older and wiser now.