What I Cooked Last Night

In the early years of the century weblog writers circulated amongst themselves what were known as ‘memes’ - essentially questionnaires or surveys on various subjects, the following of which concerned books. The questions and my answers, posted on one an early weblog, were as follows: How many books do you own? Far too many. Hundreds. maybe thousands. They lurk, they shuffle, they sit on dark shelves silently and laugh on open shelves out loud. They reside in boxes stuffed away in back rooms. They probably dance with each other at night, covers akimbo, leaves all a-splay. They come out occasionally to be read. Most times, they are on their best behaviour. I love them. But sometimes I threaten to sell them when their stories become too loud, too raucous, like ghosts of the past having a party. They stop immediately, but I think they do not take me seriously and start regaling each other once again when I am asleep. You can't have too many books. The problem is the more you read, the ...

Some 'journalists' quotes are exquisitely revealing: “During any breaking news event we report what we know as we learn it.” (New York Times spokesman quoted in the Wall Street Journal and republished in The Australian, 23 October, on the Gaza hospital explosion.) Reporters ‘learn’? Not ‘investigate’ and ‘verify’? No, the NYT robot is on another journalistic planet; the one on which news capture and confirmation osmotically bypasses his abilities. He is a typing frog incapable of a leap. In fact, he budges not an inch from the lily pad: “And as the facts on the ground become more clear, we continue reporting.” Or, translated, ‘the truth, if there is one, doesn’t matter, we can fix it later’. Lazy ‘journalism’ like this will kill newspapers far quicker than any internet. The real problem for the 'journalist' is that since the reader has surpassed his level of intelligence he (the reader) regards the organ for which the journalist 'writes' as not worthy of his att...

It's the weather. The roses are on fire, breaking out everywhere. Pick them madly, I always told the children who were hesitant, as if cutting off such perfection in nature were vandalism. For every rose you put in a vase, or of whose petals you scatter on the grass, I told them, two more will flower. Or four. Or six. Yes, counter-intuitive. Since she was tall enough to reach the blooms Alex spent untold languid summer afternoons launching with five ever-growing fingers rose petals around the garden or on peoples’ heads. This year I spent winter finding sites in the garden for roses where they didn't exist (sites not roses) making instant rationalisations for suitability, even though they may not have been. The winter bare-rooted rose type is surely the greatest bargain in the plant world; a nascent creation that should last a lifetime, stretching itself languorously upward against a wall, peering across a fence, or peeping around a corner of a house while issuing impossibly be...

Some philosopher, or it might have been a scientist or a chef, said that the sense of smell elicits the strongest memories. You can't hear, taste, see, or touch it; so it must be true. The others are only recognition; each smell must be a sensation in the brain that is implanted the first time and simply gets poked, like a cow prod. Don’t ask me. The smell, which was a blend of new hessian, 1950s chemical plant, glue factory and artist's studio, was a brand new roll of linoleum that was being installed in the kitchen of the house in which I lived. I was close to the source of the aroma because I had not yet reached the mirror-like leading edge strip of 18/80 stainless steel that edged the kitchen sink and side drainers. I had to pull myself up to look into it and see two green eyes. The lino, once the installers had gone off in their Maples truck, looked to me like tracks. It was a linear geometric design; grey strips alternating with thinner black strips with alternate red and...

Once Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard is incredulous: “I never thought we would crumple to this … people chanting these things … (‘gas the Jews’ … etc) … is a catastrophic descent from civility that I thought I’d never see. … If you’re a law-abiding Jewish person in Sydney who wanted to go along to the Opera House ( … lit up in blue and white … ) and told you had to stay at home … what is this?” (Headline of editorial in The Australian, 11 October 2023: ‘Sydney’s Night of Shame … ’)

News report: Sydney, 10 October: ‘ … a man was dragged away by police as he held what appeared to be an Israeli flag … (he was ) removed by multiple (sic) officers and threatened with arrest.’  No link necessary - it’s all over the web. NSW police ‘assistant commissioner’ in charge of this - Tony Cooke - has a history of Orwellian behaviour . Cooke went on, referring to neither side, “This is New South Wales. We do not expect people to bring conflict from other places to the streets of Sydney.” Expect? How about ‘allow’? Yet: ‘Cooke said police had allowed the rally to proceed.’

Yes, not new. But good, even if only once every seven years. It's probably been longer. The cold weather had returned with a vengeance, earlier having been spurned by the kind of spring warmth we haven’t seen for something like seven years. That Nino thing or whatever it’s called. Let’s hope it stays away permanently.  Either way, the chilly blast called for homely, filling fare. This time I did the corned beef thing in the oven. A fist-sized knob of corned beef, chopped into small dice (apparently you are meant to 'pull' it - some kind of bizarre American expression) was turned into a large bowl of boiled and semi-mashed potato along with a tablespoonful each of mild English mustard and butter, and folded through with two eggs, a handful of finely chopped parsley and a dash of salt and pepper. This mess was placed into a casserole dish and topped with more butter and a thatch of grated cheddar cheese, and baked until bubbling. Serve with steamed green vegetables; green bea...

They had told me over the phone in July that our next foster dog’s name was Zorro, but when his papers arrived it was spelt Zoro. I didn’t know whether the name was a misspelling of pulp writer Johnston McCulley’s fictional character, or an obscure reference to Zoroastrianism. I liked the latter as Zoro (the dog) was a cool, calm, peaceful creature; although when he arrived here in July there had been a scar on the crown of his head which, with a little imaginative typographical realignment, could conceivably have been a ‘Z’. Zoro/Zorro stayed for the regulation four weeks, and was the initiator (via his presence; he didn't contribute) of a philosophical discussion about greyhounds and their role in modern society. These random debaters are confused about many things but completely uninformed on most; least of all the animal relationship theories of Kant et al, so that any discussion becomes bogged down in cliché and parroted second-hand opinion. Zoro/Zorro returned to Tullamarine...

I posted something like this years ago; way back in the early years of this weblog, pre-pandemic, before children, ante-GFC. A long time ago. I could use the search button, but where’s the romance? There are more complicated and crowded recipes along these lines about the web; but some contain too many ingredients. To illustrate the point, one of the most rustic pasta dishes adds only garlic, oil, parsley and a dusting of grated cheese; but when you’re hungry, there is nothing better. And note: only one ingredient actually gets cooked in this recipe. Standard spaghetti works well, or you could use angel hair, or any other long pasta. Without wanting to be coarse, the slurpiness of long pasta assists in the uptake of the flavour when the sauce is minimal. I don't know why; ask a food technician or a chef. I’m neither. Chop a small handful of semi-dried tomatoes into slivers; likewise with half the volume of anchovies, and half again of birdseye chillies. The idea is to fascinate the...

At ninety-five and physically fading fast, but with full mental capacities intact, the frenzied mental interruptions of middle-age have long gone, leaving memories that spill out at random: limpid freeze-framed images, like specimens under a microscope coverslip. My mother and I sat in grey vinyl-padded chairs on a sea of cloud-grey carpet that lapped up to depressing storm-dark walls, which were interrupted by large photographs of bucolic green meadows in which happy animals grazed. The interior designer of the medical centre catering to the rapidly aging local population evidently couldn't decide whether to induce hope or to encourage patients to go gently into that good night. Sitting next to me, my mother was painting one of those random memory pictures, obviously prompted by being in a medical establishment. She was talking about something that happened when she was very young, and the scene was set like fallen trees letting the sun into a forest after decades of darkness. ...

'... excessive dependence upon the banks ... largely accounts for the ups and downs of colonial life. In times when money is easy the banks almost force it upon their customers. When it is tight, ... panic ensues ...; Overdrafts are given for the most part on purely personal security. It is quite a common thing for ordinary working-men to keep banking accounts; and all farmers, even the smallest, are obliged to keep them; for in the country specie (coin cash) payments are almost unknown, and the smallest sums are paid by cheque. ... You need never keep more than a few shillings in your pocket ...' Within a few years, with no federal deposit guarantees;and extravagant lending for land, the land boom crashed, the banks fell and Australia was thrown into crisis amidst a 1893 world economic depression. The Victorian government compulsorily shut the banks for a week to allay a run. * Town Life in Australia , Richard Twpopeny, Elliot Stock, 1883. Kitchen Hand three-word review: Plus ...

Putting a famous name in your title is a cynical move.  I knew that, so I was aware.  Melbourne on Dylan : a short documentary film is supposedly about the relationship of the very large city of Melbourne (population 2 million in 1965; 5 million in 2023) with the legendary American singer. I imagined the documentary would meander through the influence of Bob Dylan on the wider musical culture of Melbourne’s incredible diaspora. Instead, it was a series of interviews with a short - very short - number of the ageing hipster class from suburbs like (but not limited to) Kew, shot in retro bars, inner-city shabby chic lounge rooms, empty theatres and of course in front of the inevitably clichéd recording studio mixing desks.  The documentary's fatal flaw saw these pet interviewees' answers to unheard questions cut together, so that as an aggregate, the answers were all the same; while, towards the end of the insufferably repetitive interviews, seemingly dazed interviewees told...

  … and now you’re off on vacation … something I’ve tried to explain … Well maybe she wasn’t coming back. One of two songs I remembered and confused in the cold dark days of 1974, that lonely year of sickness and hospital tests and siblings moving away and year twelve hell, with the radio charts moving away from prog and power pop into disco; and which now, fifty years later, appears like some kind of retro musical paradise, it hits me again; and this time I remind myself that 1974 wasn’t so bad because Come Monday, by Jimmy Buffett, was optimistic even though the Loggins song was not. Didn’t mean a lot but at that time a centimetre of comfort would have helped. Please Come To Boston , by Dave Loggins Come Monday, by Jimmy Buffett. RIP Jimmy Buffett.

There was this musician in the 1960s, I told them. He was huge, everywhere - when commercial radio played intelligent music. Sergio Mendes, I said. His band, which was more of a combo or even an orchestra, I went on, was called Brasil ‘66. Nothing they recorded then sounds dated today by even a second. I was chopping parsley at the time. Heavy in the garden right now, on the poised starting gun of spring, is that herb along with its three song compatriots; hence the conversation, driven by random semi-conscious thoughts rather than by any ordered progression of script-like dialogue. It’s a lesson I’ve been teaching ad nauseam to my screenwriter-aspiring older (at least from this marriage) child: write dialogue like it’s not a script. I bluetoothed Scarborough Fair and kept chopping. The searing strings chased the ethereal voices around the kitchen, bouncing off the walls. The 1960s were so long ago that when someone asked if Sergio Mendes was still alive I said he’d have to be about ...