What I Cooked Last Night

The property falls away to the west resulting in views of incredible sunsets on hot summer nights (and nights in winter, for that matter, when the sun has wheeled right around 45 degrees north). The plunging garden is terraced; twelve years ago I planted a plumbago hedge of four plants along 18 feet of ornamental lattice guarding a drop of ten feet to a garden bed below. The hedge was to prevent two small boys climbing on the lattice and risk falling, should the ornamental lattice give way. No longer required. The boys are teenagers now. The plumbago had done its job. Over the dozen years, it had grown to twelve feet in height and had moved out about 18 feet from the fenceline. That's what? 12' x 18' x 18' in volume? Whatever. The point is I had to clear it. Plumbago produces a magnificent green façade with stunning lilac foliage in late spring and is totally gorgeous all year round. But beauty is skin deep. That eighteen square foot of volume behind the green a...

2009 - the Kookaburra . 2007 - the Golf Course . Merry Christmas.

The British election was decided early on Friday in the former mining region of Blyth Valley on England's Northumberland coast. ... the Conservatives took a seat held by Labour since its creation in 1950. ... And then the Conservatives took Workington, another deep red seat held by Labour for 97 of the last 100 years.... And then Don Valley fell too, and on it went, the red wall crumbling brick by red brick. ... There won't be any celebrations at The Guardian ... where its election eve editorial announced ... Jeremy Corbyn deserved to win because ... he was "progressive". That a major newspaper could endorse Corbyn, a diehard socialist who campaigned on policies so deeply regressive, tells you the danger of Corbyn's ideas lingering in the soppy brains and bleeding hearts of people who have university degrees but little common sense. (The Weekend Australian , 14 December.) Spectator Lowlife columnist, the late Jeffrey Bernard, once wrote something along the line...

I'm in a room with no windows, sitting at a large table covered with old books and weathered archives, under a single burning globe. I've been here for three years . The world might have ceased to exist, except that I know it hasn't, because I go home occasionally. Hello, children. I'm hauling bits of history into the present, like dragging two grand pianos bearing donkeys behind me. Buñuel knew what he was talking about in that scene, but especially the eye-slicing bit. Un Chien Andalou, an Andalusian dog. Radio theatre. 1976. Roll it, Syd. Syd was the grey-coated elderly projectionist, and the call to action was from Doug Ling, the world's only film buff who was not an insufferable intellectual. My mind is wandering. Back to the yellowing papers. Now I'm in 1902 reading an account published in the November edition of sporting newspaper the Australian Cyclist , about an overnight trip by the North Suburban Cycling Club to Gisborne, from where its members wi...

It stood sentinel in the back garden for endless seasons. Its central pillar had the strength of a battleship's flagpole and its four radial struts could have been deck railings from the same craft. They used to build clotheslines to last. Silent for decades, it occasionally emitted a low industrial whine when a breeze might set it turning lazily, which I fixed with a squirt of oil in its main shaft's intake valve. You couldn't wind it up or down any more because its winder had seized up years ago. Eventually it developed a slight list, to the north-west, after the drought of 2010 broke. I thought the extra water had allowed movement in the subterranean concrete block in which it was set. Eventually the slight list became a noticeable slant, and by earlier this year, it was like a sinking steamship in its death throes. I dug down to the concrete block, but three inches below the surface of the earth the mast was a brown, flaky mess. Rust. At 40 degrees from perpendicu...

If the Bible is too long, read The Third Beast instead. All your answers about what is moral, what is immoral, and what is evil, in 158 short violent angry pages. Wait a minute. This gritty British crime novel is blurbed as 'the ultimate novel of bloody revenge'. Revenge Biblical? Hardly. But then, maybe. She was only a little girl, really. When she was done up in her school uniform, with her white ankle socks and all, she looked about ten years of age. The first-person unnamed narrator is the girl's uncle. He runs a breaker's yard in grimy 1970s unemployed pre-Thatcher Britain. He breaks cars and sells the bits to poverty-stricken Triumph Dolomite, Morris Minor or Ford Escort drivers. Occasionally he might get a Jag. When she was a little girl, she was always down at the scrapyard in the nice weather. There was an old Riley I kept for her, as a playhouse. She'd line all her dolls upon the back seat, you know the way little children do, sitting them up straight a...

It was a warm night. I was two blocks into my six-block return walk, Helen by my side, and the streets were empty. (Helen is a failed greyhound staying with us for a few weeks. Failed as in racing, not as in being a greyhound. At being a greyhound she is quite competent.) Nothing in the air tonight except the occasional muffled ramp of a distant tram in Sydney Road and the soft rush of a city train on the down line. This neighbourhood was built in the 1940s for artisans and tradesmen who wanted to work where they lived. House blocks combined a residence with a small factory or workshop: cup of tea in the morning and five minutes later you're planing a piece of mountain ash or cutting some leather for a car seat. There are still several small factories, a couple of old warehouses with car parts hanging from dark ceilings like carcasses in butchers' shops, a bird boarding house that used to be something else, and a couple of print factories that clatter by day and fall silent...

The TAB was deserted at 9.30 a.m. "Everyone bets on their phone," she told me when I got home. Of course. * Cup Day lunch: home-made chicken burgers in the sun at the new table in the garden, with roses as good as Flemington's (Queen Elizabeth climber planted last year is now in full bloom and six feet tall with a bullet). The burgers were very simple; nothing to it. Hardly needs a recipe: Toast burger buns very lightly. Grill or fry crumbed (breadcrumbs, garlic, herbs of choice, salt, pepper) chicken fillets until just done. Ample shredded iceberg lettuce as a bed for the chicken on bottom bun spread with mayonnaise (peri-peri or aioli). More mayonnaise flecked with finely chopped white onion under top bun. Serve. * Alexandra had chosen Vow and Declare, who lost the race with fifty metres to go after leading bravely; and then, incredibly, took off again and got his nose in front. Then, on the replay, the second horse's crazy diagonal charge across th...

A five-Test series: Kitchen Hand pits five Beatles recordings against cover versions recorded by a selection of Australian artists. Who will win the Ashes? 1. Bad Boy The Larry Williams (Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Slow Down etc) classic put to the test by the Beatles in full flight, versus the Twilights' uncanny harmonies. The Beatles : A crowd favourite, John Lennon's voice tends to a slight raspiness when he really gets going while Ringo lets fly on the hi-hat or tambourine or whatever brass it is he's belting away on. A classic rock'n roller. But can it beat the Twilights? The Twilights : Glen Shorrock doesn't rasp like John Lennon and doesn't scream but it's still a visceral vocal job. The drums thunder with that millisecond off-beat accuracy that makes any song as tight as a ... well, drum if no other comparison comes to mind. By the way, don't judge this song by its ridiculous YouTube black and white clip in which Shorrock was forced by some idiot d...

I keep seeing the expression 'comfort food'. Isn't all food 'comfort food'? No. Comfort food is food that (a) makes you feel good when you're eating it; and (b) allows you to think about something else while you are eating. Anyone who continually talks about what they are eating is not eating comfort food. Pasta carbonara is a prime example, like lamb shanks, or beef goulash, or shepherd's pie, or loaded mashed potato. I've been making carbonara for years; went through a phase of ordering pasta carbonara on hot summer Fridays for lunch inside darkened Ti Amo in the 1990s, anticipating the efforts needed on Saturdays. Carbonara-loading. Sitting up at the bar, pasta on an oval plate, heavy on the bacon, rings of buttered pasta dura to mop up the cheesy residue, astringent coffee afterwards. Unbeatable. Pasta carbonara. Bacon or just about any variety of salted, cured meat is fine. Anyone insisting on guanciale is forgetting rule (b) above. If you h...

Love Machine , an unexceptional folk rock tune recorded by by US west coast band The Roosters, didn't chart in Australia. It probably didn't even get any air play. However, a bunch of musicians in Sydney and Melbourne noticed it in 1968 and thought they could do a better job. (The Small Faces had just released Itchycoo Park , Cream had The White Room ; and The Legend of Xanadu , Pictures of Matchstick Men and Lazy Sunday Afternoon were the psychedelic soundtracks to my Grade Six life at St John Bosco's where I sat at my desk virtually levitating.) So the musicians who thought they could do a better job of Love Machine did. The result , co-produced by Geoffrey Edelsten, was a swirling symphony of psychedelia complete with synth, keyboards, feedback, phase, reverb, swell, mind-altering drugs and the kind of harmonies the Twilights took to the outer limits with their later incarnations of Axiom and the Little River Band among other projects. The song was recorded under ...

Sydney Road shoots straight out of Melbourne like an arrow and becomes the Hume Highway, an ant trail of roaring B-double trucks on four, six or eight lanes connecting the two cities. The concert was in a venue about twelve miles out of town; one of those places that does big outer-suburban weddings. It was raining when I drove through the hipster suburbs where they ask you five questions before they make your coffee. About 7 p.m. I passed the border, which used to be Bell Street and then Gaffney Street; but which is now Camp Road where a checkpoint charlie stops cool people getting out and non-hipsters getting in. It's called Campbellfield. Then Campbellfield's yellow brick veneers gave way to concrete depots, and empty manufacturing plants, and breaker's lots, and half-built orthodox churches, and signs spruiking new suburbs with names like Eden Rise. I did a U-turn just south of Craigieburn where Supreme Caravans stares across Gasoline Way to Northern Fleet Care and ...

This piece of pop perfection , also buried and forgotten under layers of post-twentieth century sonic silt, saw on-air sunshine today for the first time in decades. From the days when they used to cram the local symphony orchestra into the sound booth. As one commenter noted: "I had forgotten what a bright and happy world it was in 1969."

FM radio is full of singers who sound like they are about to cough in between notes, or who ululate as if they are gargling gravel while taking part bin a prehistoric mating ritual. I have lived through some grim fashions in music but the current crop takes some beating. There are small pockets of resistance. Someone who goes by the on-air name of Ghostrider puts out three hours of gold on Mondays featuring acts you should know but most don't. Drowned in a sea of mediocrity, these names surface and then disappear again for decades at a time. Yesterday's feature artist: Esther Phillips. Listen and weep. Or try this link . MDR has the wrong track listing.