Hot in Melbourne Town

Am about to leave and go pick up my mother to drive down to Inverloch for a swim, maybe dinner and to pick up Princess who was there overnight with a friend.

Inverloch is special for me. It featured in the Bad Eighties Diaries a lot, long-term readers will remember.
My dad had a house down there, a fibro shack only a block from the inlet in what they now call 'Old Inverloch' - ie the best spot.

Last night I got on google for the first time and looked at what became of his block. We knew when he'd sold that someone had subdivided and put up two townhouses. They are predictably revolting. But getting on google and virtually walking the streets of Inverloch made me homesicky and nostalgic. Partly because it features in a chapter in my book; partly because I wish dad still had that place. I wish there was somewhere in our family that we still had. Everything is gone. Every house and therefore every home. Our family home - gone. Sold, knocked down and now with two fucking Georgian townhouses. Inverloch, gone. Barwon Heads, gone too.

I would LOVE to have my own beach shack one day. After selling the flat last year, the money sits safe in the bank. Last night I looked at real estate, and I could buy outright a place somewhere down that way, near the beach. I've looked in Castlemaine, Ballarat, Bendigo, all sorts of country areas. When P and I were driving back from Byron last year I made her take notes of the places we passed through, so I could look them up on google.

Last night, I found this place in Castlemaine. I'm not giving you the address cause then you'll go and buy it (I can't afford this one so I'm hoping it stays unsold until something magic happens and I can buy it):

This one is more in my price range, and I love it no less than the grand Castlemaine one:

Off down there now. Should I take my cheque book? I'll probably be disappointed because if it's changed and is different, it won't fit my memories.

2103 hey?

Some people have been saying 2012 was terrible for them. Before that, people were saying 2011 was a terrible year, or 2010. Not to demean people and their individual experiences but I don't think it's the years that are what's relevant, it's just that people have bad times sometimes and sometimes it seems to all come at once. I remember some really bad years. For me, mostly, cumulatively, they were the first half of the 2000s; it all started getting much better in around 2007 I think and then creatively, really kicked in during 2009.

2012 was a great one for me, the best for a long time maybe ever. It was rich and varied, with lots of new things as well as comforting old things. I am really pumped about 2013, this brand-new freshly minted year and I wish happiness and health to my four readers. Thanks for being my blog buddies.

I'll let you know how this went

 tomorrow.

Happy New Year.

So, maybe Antarctica for NYE

I might be flying to Antarctica on New Year's Eve. It's an 11-hour trip with a band and drinks and food. You don't land; you fly to the ice, fly around for a few hours, and fly back to Melbourne.

I just found out about this possibility yesterday and I have to say, I'm a bit excited.

Laughing and loving

So don't ask me why but I found myself just before looking at images of Jude Law and Sienna Miller. I swear, I think that's when I gave up reading NW and Who Magazine: when they broke up.

Only joking. Not really. Wonder what happened to the magazine sales after there were no more Jude and Sienna pictures?

And I can tell you how I googled my way to them: I was looking up the widow of the disappeared-Cuckoo Restaurant owner because she is in the news today, and I wondered if she was the very glamorous older woman I saw there a few years ago, sipping on a glass of sparkling wine. But no, different woman.

Then somehow I was looking at Jude and Sienna. Feast your eyes on the following 25 pics, a kind of Jude-Sienna Christmas present:

This last one is Sienna with her boyfriend. They've had a baby. Look happy don't they? I reckon once you've been loved by Jude Law nothing can compare. She was early twenties when she was with Jude; that first real love is something you never have again. At least she's picked someone who won't compete with her looks-wise and who won't be getting lots and lots of attention from women. Men who are ridiculously good looking are hard to keep, hard to manage, hard to live with and so easy to love.

Happy Holidays everyone. Over and out for a few days.

Orhan Pamuk on why he set his novel 'Snow' in Kars

Taken from The Paris Review.

INTERVIEWER

Why did you set it in the small town of Kars?

PAMUK

It is notoriously one of the coldest towns in Turkey. And one of the poorest. In the early eighties, the whole front page of one of the major newspapers was about the poverty of Kars. Someone had calculated that you could buy the entire town for around a million dollars. The political 
climate was difficult when I wanted to go there. The vicinity of the town is mostly populated by Kurds, but the center is a combination of Kurds, people from Azerbaijan, Turks, and all other sorts. There used to be Russians and 
Germans too. There are religious differences as well, Shia and Sunni. The war the Turkish government was waging against the Kurdish guerillas was so fierce that it was impossible to go as a tourist. I knew I could not simply go there as a novelist, so I asked a newspaper editor with whom I’d been in touch for a press pass to visit the area. He is influential and he personally called the mayor and the police chief to let them know I was coming.

As soon as I had arrived I visited the mayor and shook hands with the police chief so that they wouldn’t pick me up on the street. Actually, some of the police who didn’t know I was there did pick me up and carried me off, probably with the intention of torturing me. Immediately I gave names—I know the mayor, I know the chief . . . I was a suspicious character. 
Because even though Turkey is theoretically a free country, any foreigner used to be suspect until about 1999. Hopefully things are much easier today.

*

Sounds to me like he was there mid-late '90s. I passed through Kars in April 1990, travelling east on a bus with a fellow Australian; both of us female, her very blonde, me more pooh-brown. All I remember is how desolate it was; isolated and grim and grey. We stopped for a break, got off the bus, tried to ignore the staring, then tried to find out waht was happening when an unconscious man with blood on his head was carried past and bundled into a car to be driven away.

'What happened?' I gesticulated to a man nearby. (I had no Turkish then.)

He replied with a stream of words, made the shape of a gun with his fingers and said something else which I took for 'bang bang'.

CODA and girl on tram

Dinner at CODA tonight. It was yum but could I suggest that the oysters could be a little larger? They were defo on the puny side.

On the tram, back home along St Kilda Road, there was a girl. She was so elegant. She was wearing a black t-shirt and black suede slip on broguey things. Then a very lightweight camel cardigan and tight camel pants, like ski pants but that had a perfect cuff. Her hair was in a casual pony tail and she was wearing dark brown, maybe black, newsreader specs. Her phone was in a mint-green case.

She was gorgeous.

The process

Sometimes it just takes a second where a few words tumble out of someone's mouth and that's the moment. For me, right now, it was one Ms Marieke Hardy and her retro-lipsticked mouth accompanied by fetching Deco-ish-green gown. I LOVE HER STILL.

I'm catching up on First Tuesday Book Club, and in one episode they are discussing Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea.

Marieke says this: 'Who we are when we first love; what we chase when we go back to find that first love.'

And this immediately gave me an answer to a question someone has posed.

At 1:27 mins



PS Mr E, please hold your fire, sir.

PPS Mr E. Two martinis down, this fine sultry, cloudy, muggy, grey, gloomy, December Melbourne Friday evening. What's your count?

Notes on a Scandal

I finished it and it's great. That is all. If you want to read something succinct, with not a word out of place, with two distinctive and interesting female characters, where moral or ethical concerns get hazy and where the author absolutely does not intrude a la 'this is what you should be thinking', then this is for you. It's a quick, easy read but that doesn't make it any less large. Oh no no no.

I can't wait to work my way through her oeuvre.

I love saying oeuvre.

Yesterday I made hors d'oeuvres and just now I got to wondering the meaning of the term.

Found the following here

What's the origin of "hors d'oeuvres"?

Dear Straight Dope:

What is the origin and history of the word hors d'oeuvre? I can't seem to find out anything about it!

— LKenyon772

Quoting William and Mary Morris' Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins: The French phrase hors d'oeuvres literally means "outside the works." Originally it was an architectural term referring to an outbuilding not incorporated into the architect's main design. The phrase was borrowed by France's culinary experts to indicate appetizers customarily served apart from the main course of a dinner. Thus hors d'oeuvres are, quite literally, outside the main design of the meal. Vraiment, c'est simple, n'est-ce-pas?

A related word is canapés, which are "savory appetizers made with a bread, cracker or pastry base, so that they can be picked up with the fingers and eaten in one or two bites." Canapés are a type of hors d'oeuvres, but the common tendency is to figure you've got your canapés and then you've got your hors d'oeuvres, which are everything else.

Although you didn't ask, we're on a roll (so to speak) here. The word canapé originally meant a canopy of mosquito netting over a couch or bed. In time it came to mean the bed or divan itself--and then into English with its present meaning of a bit of bread or cracker with a tasty mixture of meat, cheese, or fish spread on't.

Correct pronunciations: Say or-DERV for hors d'oeuvre (and for hors d'oeuvres, too) and kan-uh-PAY for canapé or canapés.

— Dex

I'm reading Notes on a Scandal

So, the above are all covers of Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal. 

I remember seeing the movie a few years ago - you know the one: Cate Blanchett all blithe and gorgeous and SK-II dewy, and Judi Dench watchful and creepy*. The book was published in 2003 I think and the movie came out in 2006. So this is old news but I feel lucky to have found the book. It all came about when recently I saw a link to an article where Zoë Heller had slammed Salman Rushdie's new memoir Joseph Anton (currently residing on the floor beside me bed, no not him, the book.)

I looked up Heller and saw she'd written this, as well as a couple of other books. Found it at Readings and bazinga, just over half-way through.

The first thing I noticed about this novel is how slim it is, it's like a novella. I've had a good run with slender-volumes; in the last few years I enjoyed Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall (found a blistering review of that while I was googling around Heller; she didn't write it though) and also The Old Man and the Sea. Oh, and Cosmopolis. OH AND THE LIGHTHOUSE. How could I forget. Again, slim and perfect length though I don't know if any of the above technically fit novella length.

Anyway, second thing I noticed about Notes on a Scandal is how tightly it's written and how the words are arranged. Brilliant. The voice of Barbara, who narrates the story - everything comes through her as cipher, as taker of the said notes on the scandal in which her teaching colleague embroils herself. I don't think I've read a character with such a polished, wonderful, impressive vocabulary. Heller has definitely chosen the words that appear in Barbara's voice with such care. The choice she's enacted - the particular words selected - contributes to Barbara's character. Other words might have done but it gives the reader the message that Barbara is a very particular person, Barbara prides herself on her verbal skills (even if she doesn't speak them aloud, she feels proud that she knows these words and knows how to use them).

Words like: insouciant, parenthesis, orthodoxy, duress, soubriquet, calumny, lugubrious, bonhomie, imbroglio, glut, concupiscent, salacious, ribald, fecundity, ersatz and riposte.

Of the above words, it's only concupiscent that I didn't know. It means filled with sexual desire; lustful: "concupiscent dreams". Synonyms are: lustful - prurient - libidinous - salacious - voluptuous. I wonder why she didn't use libidinous or prurient.

I haven't read a book that has had such beautiful words all in the one place before. Sure, lots of literary writers use beautiful words all the time but there is something different about these words. They are on another level. I would bet that Heller had been keeping a list of words like this for years and then created a character who would use them. I reckon this because it's the sort of thing I would do - am doing - oh, those words. They are sublime.

So, the covers. I like the one with the apple best, hate the ones with the orgasmic blondes, but I got the one with the tattoo thingy on the front. Inside the back flap there is a mini feature of a tattoo artist, Valerie Vargas**, from Frith Street Tattoo, in London.

I will definitely be checking out Heller's other fiction, it's wonderful.


* can't think of a third adjective to use. I had lesbionic but took it out.

** cool name

God I love this

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee - ft Ricky Gervais

Freakiest gif evah

I've always been a late bloomer.
And so it is with gifs.
I've also never done the 'cat thing' on this blog.
But today's the day I do the cat thing in a gif.
Did you know you are meant to pronounce them 'jif' (like the non-scratch, household cream cleaner?)

What if money was no object?

What is it you would do?

One of the best short stories you'll ever read (note the deliberate absence of question mark)

26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss

at Kij Johnson

I'm completely fucking serious. It's so good, and I don't even read sci-fi. It's so good, it makes me think to forget even trying to write short stories. It's so good it will make you really happy just to read it, if not tear up a couple of times, if you're at all like me.

It's so good that it's made me post twice in one day. This does not happen often.

Lilley is coming...

New-look ABC revives Specks, Lilley

This is the headline The Age has online for this news item. I'm happy to read today that Chris Lilley has a new project and that a 'new-look' ABC will be hosting it. Sometime. Soon, I hope. But the headline in The Age might have Lilley lodging a complaint because it seems to suggest that Angry Boys was not a success and that Lilley needs resuscitation.

I don't think Lilley needs reviving. To me, Angry Boys was genius partly because lots of people didn't seem to get and it were made uncomfortable by what they perceived as the content rather than being aware that their discomfort was because they couldn't get the satire and the rationale behind doing it the way he did. People wanted more of Summer Heights High but really, while I loved that and thought that brilliant as well, he had to do something else, something different, something more.

I'm a definite Chris Lilley fangirl, for sure.

If people don't get something, that's their own, um, I want to say stupidity, but I will say lack, rather than the problem of the creator.

*

The second complaint of the day is the letter send by one Julia Gillard to the Fairfax chief. I love it, the way she lays out very clearly what happened. Again. This is not for the benefit of dullard journos, oh no. Nor is it for the education of opposition politicians. They all know what's what, that's for sure, but they aren't letting truth get in the way of what Gillard's describes is a witch-hunt. No, the letter is for the people, the voters, so they can see that Gillard  has nothing to hide and did nothing wrong.

It's just a matter of her hanging in there, I think, for another couple of days.

And how about the Libs getting Julie Bishop to do all their dirty work this week, because you know 'if we get a woman to do it, then no one can call us misogynists.'

Do they really think we are that stupid?*

Took me a while to choose a picture. There are too many good ones.

   

* Yes.

For grammar freaks

I like this from Granta Magazine

Sad.

Video goodbye from Bryce Courtenay.

While I wasn't one of his 'readers', I did read The Power of One years ago and I have to say, some of the scenes, particularly descriptions of place, still pop up in my head from time to time. That's pretty powerful, to be randomly taken back to a couple of passages that you read a long time ago.

This goodbye made me weepy, especially when his voice goes at the end.

Best thing found today

Brain Pickings

Happy Monday. A little early you say? Never too early for Hem and cocktails...

 

I have to say, I don't think the words 'cocktails' and 'Hemingway' go together. Surely it would have been drinks? To read about him and his favourite cocktails, see Philip Greene's article in the Huff Post.

Love this pic too, I think he's on his boat The Pilar. I like to think it's The Pilar anyway, look how happy and relaxed he is.

Busy times

This week has been busy. Finished off programs at three schools, and then on Friday evening, met Clokes in at the Martini Bar in the city.

I had two. First one was Grey Goose, second Imperia (as recommended by Mr E in a previous post.) I asked for them very dry, and they were okay but could have been colder. They weren't that cold at all, but they were stirred and not shaken and the olives were enormous green ones - delish.

Then we rolled up the hill to Flowerdrum. We had never been before and it was as good as I expected. Despite Gilbert Lau selling it (I think he still acts as adviser?) it seems the place has retained its charm and quality, though I can't compare. What I liked about it: the waiting staff were excellent and the sommelier deliciously casual and cheeky; the in-between courses hot towels on little silver trays; the generous servings of each course (we had a 6-course banquet, and there were four of us: this was an end-of-of year celebration dinner for our new business so it was me and my partner and our supportive, lovely husbands); the glassware; the cutlery; the way the tables were so spaciously positioned, you felt miles away from the other tables which makes for a very luxurious, special feeling.

We had three bottles of wine including a nice Henschke, not a Hill of Grace before anyone gets excited. And the bill came to under a thousand (just). Far out. But that's what we would have spent on a Christmas Party, say, for a staff if we had a staff. Mmmm, might be a reason to keep the biz small so we can have our annual thing at Flowerdrum rather in some tacky marquee in our backyard with sausages on the BBQ and Yellowglen on ice in the wheelbarrow.

THEN yesterday I had a writing thing. The best thing about this was: meeting (and hopefully making some sort of impression) on a writer that I admire. I negged him about his e-reader (see The Game, Neil Strauss) and poo-poohed one title he suggested for his next novel. This was at drinks, afterwards (see, even that impressed me, that he would spend that time. Most writer-teachers run away afterwards). I think I scared him a little when I brought out my copy of his book and asked him to sign it (typical fangirl but why not?), and THEN again when I said that I'd blogged about him and he'd emailed me saying 'thanks for reading, glad you liked it but what do you mean a bit of a spunk?' heh heh BUT I am hopeful that overall I didn't freak him out too much. Also he agreed to assess my ms if I want him to (paid) and I think I really would like him to, so that he sees my stuff primarily and then also to get his feedback. That would be ace.

So, this weekend thus far: Mission accomplished. Now to revisions for the agent, have to get them to her in January and someone needs to have a look at it (fresh eyes) (Alex?) once I've done revisions and before I send the full thing to her again.

For Mr E

Now you've got me going. I have been re-arranging my work space and getting all paid-work stuff out in to another bookcase so I can consolidate and tidy my non-paid writing space. While toiling, I kept in mind to watch out for a certain book on a certain topic.

A few years ago, I bought MARTINI, a memoir by Frank Moorhouse. I have never read, never much looked at it but I liked having it, knowing I possessed a book that was entirely a love-letter to martinis.

This is the table of contents:

Martini city
The story
The pageant of learning
Email to Ophelia in New York
The venerated craft
A captivating observation
The question of coldness
This thing called gin
The vodka option
The lost vermouth
A disturbing observation
The breast: the bra: the glass
The olive and the lemon tree
The diamond: the pearl: the acorn
'The olive on the toothpick gives the drink an axis'

Don't you just love it? The mention of 'this thing called gin'. Is he going to be pro or con? And the coldness; Mr E you are specific about coldness. And finally, the olive versus the lemon (I guess) is what that section refers to.

Let's see.

Oh wait, there's more. Turned the page, more in the TOC:

They had a date with fate in Casablanca
Liberating the Ritz
The first martini film
The role of the martini in movie-making
A martini matinee
'The orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music...'
Canapés
Scuba and Martini's Law
Mademoiselle and the doctor and the martini
The cocktail dress
The whole question of the drinks' cart
A new drinks' trolley
The souls of animals
The thirteen awarenesses
The mysteries
Where are they now?
Memoir of a story: Story of a memoir

End Pieces
A letter to my drinking companions around the world
The classic martini
Acceptable variations and close relatives of the martini
Martini music
What is this demon? Alcohol and the art of drinking

So much good stuff here. Where to begin?

Deliberation is one of the ingredients of the martini... To care about the martini shows that you know what it is that goes to make that which could be called, in life, fine.

In life, there are drinkers and there are martini drinkers.

The gauge of a sophisticated household is the number of glasses it possesses which are appropriate to the beverage.

(Moorhouse's friend V.I. Voltz, Mahattan identity)

Among many interesting snippets there is this one: Malcolm Fraser was (is?) a martini drinker. Apparently he takes a swig from the bottle of gin, replaces it with vermouth, shakes the bottle and puts it into the freezer for ready-made martinis.

More snippets to follow.

Hemingway's love of drinking

This is an article found at Food Republic
By Chantal Martineau

You may have heard: Ernest Hemingway enjoyed a tipple or two. In fact, the iconic writer liked his drink so much that another writer, Philip Greene, was inspired to pen To Have and Have Another, a book about Hemingway’s drinking habits and the libations that wove their way into his works. When Greene is not reading or discussing Hemingway, he is stationed at the Pentagon, where he works as a trademark lawyer for the Marines. A longtime Hemingway buff, he became interested in cocktails while researching his ancestors in New Orleans, including one Antoine Amedee Peychaud, the pharmacist who invented Peychaud’s bitters. Eventually, Greene co-founded The Museum of the American Cocktail. His book answers, among other things, the burning question: was Papa really the boozehound he was so rumored to be?

1. Hemingway was notoriously fond of drinking, but he refrained from indulging while writing
   When asked in an interview if rumors of him taking a pitcher of martinis to work every morning were true, he answered, “Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes – and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one. Besides, who in hell would mix more than one martini at a time?”
2. The mojito was not Hemingway’s favorite drink
   Hemingway lived in Havana and may have drunk mojitos, but their connection to the writer can probably be traced to the marketing efforts of La Bodeguita del Medio. A handwritten inscription allegedly penned by Hemingway on the wall of the now famous bar professing his love for the cocktail is likely a forgery, says Greene, who consulted a handwriting expert. As a diabetic, Papa took most of his drinks (including absinthe and double daiquiris) without sugar. So, the sweet mojito surely would not have been his cup of tea.
3. Hemingway had several go-to cocktails, but his favorite was a dry martini
   The author “thought globally... drank locally,” explains Greene. His characters often drank what he himself quaffed in whatever city he happened to be in while writing. But martinis were a constant, and each seemed drier than the last. In Across the River and Into the Trees, Colonel Richard Cantwell orders a Montgomery Martini: 15 parts gin to one vermouth. In A Farewell to Arms, Frederic Henry muses of sipping martinis: “I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized.”
4. Hemingway may have liked his martinis as dry as a bone, but he loved vermouth
   While recuperating from his wounds during World War I, he would ask friends to smuggle bottles of it into his hospital room, writes Greene. Sound familiar? The A Farewell to Arms protagonist did the same: “I sent for the porter and when he came I told him in Italian to get me a bottle of Cinzano at the wine shop, a fiasco of chianti and the evening papers.” One of his favorite drinks aboard his boat Pilar was a Vermouth Panache, a blend of sweet and dry vermouth with Angostura Bitters.
5. Hemingway liked his drinks icy cold
   In a letter he wrote to his publisher, he described using tennis ball cans to make dense tubes of ice for mixing martinis, and was known to freeze not only his cocktail glasses but Spanish cocktail onions to keep them cold. He bragged that the method made “the coldest martini in the world,” and described it as “so cold you can’t hold it in your hand. It sticks to the fingers.”
6. Hemingway did not invent the Bloody Mary
   There are many stories about the origins of the Bloody Mary. One such legend has it that the drink was first served to Hemingway in Paris. As the story goes, his doctors had forbidden him from having alcohol and his wife, Mary, was holding him to it. A bartender at the Ritz mixed him the vodka-and-tomato juice drink, full of booze that could not be detected thanks to the other strong ingredients. Having got the better of his “bloody wife,” the cocktail was christened after her. A number of sources have debunked this myth.
7. Hemingway traveled extensively, but was most at home on a barstool
   From his experiences in World War I and Lost Generation Paris to safaris in Africa and fishing the Gulf Stream, from covering the Spanish Civil War and World War II to chasing German U-boats off the Cuban coast, Hemingway’s life was one full of adventure, Greene reminds us. “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares,” Papa once said. “If you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars.” 

*

I think what I love about this is his sense of ritual. The making of ice from tennis ball cans; the freezing of cocktail onions and glasses. I'm sure he would have cared about the shape and size of the martini glass, the length of the stem. Comme moi.

There is such pleasure in rituals and for those of us who aren't religious (yet who may hypocritically enjoy a bit of churchy stuff like stained glass windows, Christ-on-cross paintings and beautiful hymns) we can also find them in drinking, eating, bathing, sleeping, organising our cans in the pantry and making sure all our coat-hangers face one way in the cupboard. If you can call it a ritual, maybe it's more socially acceptable. No I don't drink my vodka out of the bottle, I like a nice glass, look at me I'm civilised.

775th post and let's go a little Kermit

Here's that gif

This is still me today, but on the inside

Hey pssst

I have news.

I have a literary agent who likes my novel and thinks she can sell it to a publisher.

I don't think I have EVER been this excited but I am really, really calm. Inside I am doing that arm-waving-dance that Kermit the frog does.

Champagne tonightski.

Re-reading it

And what a difference 35 years makes. I was a schoolgirl in love with this book but now, NOW...

And the movie is the best I've seen. LOVE TO LOVE.