Winter turns a corner.

It was 5 o’clock on a darkening Monday evening. I was in the local library doing some research, called browsing, with one eye on a book and the other on the high window that looks over Victoria Street and beyond. Outside, the north-west sky was a giant black cloud crying its heart out. Beneath it was a grey veil of rain stretching from Footscray to Broadmeadows. The cloud moved nearer and the downpour hit the library like thunder. The street outside turned that intense storm colour, a kind of seething yellow grey, like reflected lightning. The lights in the butcher shop and the shoe store across the road pixillated and a flash of red was a raincoat running for cover towards the shopfront verandah.

By the time the rain stopped and the black cloud had rumbled east towards Heidelberg and Kew, it was almost dark anyway. I walked home in the cold wet dusk to the white house with the perennial borders. The pelargoniums are still in flower. Or again. They never stop.

*

Oh look, Al Gore is back in town, visiting from the other side of the world to tell us to turn off a light. Being a politician he's doing it diplomatically:

"I don't want to interfere with Australian affairs -- or at least I don't want to be caught doing it," he said.

Thanks, Al. Goodbye. Ah, Al: that’s the road to the airport. You didn't fly here, did you? If a balsa raft was good enough for Thor Heyerdahl ...

*

It's that critical time of winter, a kind of seasonal hump day when you think to hell with all this heavy food.

So to hell with all that heavy food, just for a night. Let's try something lighter. How about some nice fish steamed with garlic and ginger with fresh greens and aromatic rice? Not a bacon bone or a potato or a shank or a jug of gravy in sight.

Steamed Tasmanian salmon with a trio of greens.

I wrapped two slices of fresh salmon (skin on, the flavour is better) in foil with a splash of tamari, a teaspoonful of grated fresh ginger, a scored garlic clove and two spring onions sliced on the diagonal into one-inch strips.

While that was steaming, I set some rice to boil - a cupful of basmati with a tablespoonful of red rice. The red rice on its own can be a little heavy but mixed with the white makes a nice change. Then I quickly cooked a bunch of pak choy - washed and sliced - in its residual rinsing water and a dash of sesame oil, with the rest of the bunch of spring onions complete with their green sections, once again diagonally cut, and a dozen snow peas thrown in with a minute to go. A squirt of oyster sauce to finish it off.

Fish on a plate, rice beside, greens over the rice. Jasmine tea.