What I Cooked Last Night

Yes, it's been busy. A lot has happened. Here are a few things. 1. The heatwave ended. Fortuitously, the school had ordained the Tuesday following Labour Day as an in-service day, making a four-day weekend corresponding with the last four days of the heat. Sometimes you can be lucky. We had four days at the beach. 2. On the last of the four days, a cargo ship sliding down the bay in full view of hundreds on the shore issued a large cloud of black smoke which detached itself and drifted off towards Queenscliff. Black smoke? Was this some kind of a joke? It was the day before they ... 3. ... elected a new Pope, who told the world he would just go with the guys on the bus. I'm trying to find a Latin translation, but the internet translation sites do it literally and make no sense. 4. Alexandra fell off the coffee table, and hit her head on the sofa on the way down, and cried uncharacteristically for the next thirty minutes, holding her neck. You can guess the next bit: an ...

I looked out the front window. It was a warm, cloudless afternoon, but the room had almost imperceptibly darkened, as if a cloud had passed the sun. There was something in the air, like smoke, or a dust storm. I went outside and into the front garden. The flowers were out, and the shrubs were in bloom, and the garden was looking nice, and the thing in the air was bees. Thousands of them. They were flying around in ever decreasing circles like fighter planes homing in on an enemy base. They were silent. I thought swarming bees would buzz but the only hum came from a light plane cutting a line in the northern sky towards Essendon airport. The bees were circling the old weigela. It could be sixty years old. It's about ten feet tall and almost as wide. It still flowers well, but inside it is like an old hedge with thick gnarled inner branches. By five o’clock they had settled. How many bees are there in a swarm? It’s the size and shape of a bagpipes, pendulous at the bottom an...

One of more hair-raising stories from the book I worked on (on and off) for six years until the thing finally appeared last year: I am uncertain of the year I started at St Bernard’s - being 1942 or 1943 - but I have clear recollections of the reason. While in Grade Four at St Monica’s, we did regular air raid practice, and helped dig air raid shelters in the large dusty wasteland that was the schoolyard. During these exercises there were various boyish discussions about the war, and to where we would be evacuated if the war were to get any closer. I remember in particular becoming friendly with a group of boys - in particular, two brothers whose father was at the war; and as I recall, missing in action. These were Ted and Jack Harris. They lived above Williams shoe shop in Sydney Road, Moreland. Ted was in my class and Jack in my brother Leo's class. One day they came to school with a fistful of money, how much I am not sure. Nor am I sure I knew at the time how they had come b...

It was well after eight on a Saturday night. My mother-in-law was here for dinner so I wanted something fast but impressive, easy but interesting, simple but appetising. So I went to the kebab shop. No, I didn’t. I might have wanted to, but instead I sliced a large chicken breast fillet into one-centimetre cubes, placed these in a pan with a close-fitting lid over half a tablespoon of olive oil and a sliced garlic clove, sloshed in half a glass of white wine and the cubed flesh of an avocado and set the pan on a low heat to poach the chicken and warm the avocado through. Then I drank the other half of the glass of wine. Fresh angel hair pasta, six little bunches from Donnini’s, was already cooking in a large pan in salted, oiled water. When the pasta was a minute away from done, I threw in ten asparagus spears I had sliced in three pieces each, and a good handful of snow peas. I shook the poaching pan and, with tongs, turned over a few cubes of reluctant chicken. It shouldn’t sti...