I am back, briefly

I am back, briefly

Hello, dear readers.

It has taken me about 45 minutes to log back into blogger.  After such a long hiatus Google freaked out and sent me all these emails warning me I was being hacked.  

Who would have thought Google would decide to annoyingly consolidate everything into one big non user friendly account with a 1990s style interface.

It has been so long I almost forgot both my user name and password, which is not helped by the fact I have 5 separate email accounts not including the home one. 

And I found more than 400 emails in my inbox, admittedly a rather large number of spam (not I don't want to 'collaborate' with you on my blog, sorry), but others, I am embarrassed to say, from dear internet friends emailing to check up on me and share their stories. 

To those who wrote and to whom I haven't got back to yet, I am dreadfully sorry.   I pride myself on being responsive and organised, and indeed, I get at least a 100 emails most days at work, and end the day with only a couple in my in box (not perfect of course, just slightly OC). 

As luck would have it, I am having a non superstitious month, and I have a few little thoughts and writings I have put together about cancer, post cancer and all of that stuff.  

I have put this off because I was pretty certain that continuing to write about cancer would curse me with a recurrence.   I am now slightly more philosophical about these things

None of my writing tends to feature any of the following words:

• journey or cancer journey 
• remission
• courageous
• pink.

I will explain why in due course.

In the meantime, it has been 3 years since I posted. 

My how the world of blogging has changed. 

No more blog rolls.  Hardly anyone comments any more.   It seems like a less generous, inclusive space, but I am sure that that is just the natural progression of life.  People are busy, and they find new and different ways to distract and entertain themselves. 

Most bloggers have moved to instagram, in my case, exclusively.  

And so, what that means is that I feel more like I am writing for no-one and no body, and that is a good thing.  So really  it has come full circle.  

The other anniversary which has passed by is my 5 year anniversary post my diagnosis.   And yes, I seem to be still here. 

I spent that day, a day I had been dreading, and anticipating, in equal quantities, in central England in a tiny honey coloured stone village called Easton on the Hill,  and here is what I posted to IG. 

Today marks 5 years since I was diagnosed with a breast cancer I was told was very aggressive. My children were 3 and 8. I was given a special pamphlet to help me explain 'cancer' to a boy who had just started kindergarten. 

I spent the next four weeks in total shock and denial. I had two major operations and then started two years of various treatments including chemo and Herceptin. And I don't even have room to list all the temporary and permanent side effects and issues arising from that treatment. I didn't really expect to be here to be honest. 

Being a patient in some ways is easy - you just let the system take over and you always feel supported (even though in some ways it is like attending your own funeral - so many flowers!). Being the family member or friend is much harder - so I would like to thank all those who brought food and champagne, wrote me notes, told me my newsreader style wig looked great, gave me the names of a great Chinese doctor and naturopath, sent me poems and DVDs and magazines and books, pushed me to keep exercising and just generally stood by me. 

Not just at diagnosis but six months and two years later. There were some friends and indeed family members who vanished never to be heard of again. But I guess that is more about them than me and other friends with cancer tell me this is quite common. I was lucky to get world class health care and to have an oncologist with both a sense of humor and great perception who understood what I wanted which was the nuclear option. Who also said do not whatever you do throw a five year survival party - because of course it is never over and in spite of what you might read there is no such thing as remission from breast cancer, not really. I was unlucky to be misdiagnosed by my GP so please do not do what I did and listen to the man who says you are too young to have a mammogram or ultrasound and trust your judgement always and always ask questions.

Love to all 

J

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Savannah

One of the many books I read during my chemo purgatory was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.  A great book for sleepless nights wondering about the random nature of life.

(designer Lyn Morgan's Greek Revival House in Savannah) 

(living room)

I first bought it at university, prompted I am pretty sure by the rave reviews of my friend Aussie New Yorker but I never quite got to it.

If you have not read this book, it covers the author's lengthy stay in Savannah, at the time of the four trials of antique dealer, Jim Williams, who was tried for the murder of local good time boy (and his assistant), Danny Hansford.

I so loved this book, the humid, creeper clad decadence of the Savannahians, and their eccentric cross dressing, backwoods bars, corrupt politicians, secret affairs, all night parties, internecine rivalries, and the two unforgettable female characters - a local voodoo high priestess and drag queen (the Lady Chablis - formerly Frank).  The writer describes the shady world as Gone with the Wind on Mescalin, one of the many lovely turns of phrase sprinkled in the book.  

I particularly liked Mandy Nichols' observation that it is so much better to be on the 'edge of a party'.

This book is a great exploration of the darker side which hums beneath every city, town and village.   As Minerva the voodoo lady puts it -

'Dead time lasts for one hour -- from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half-hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half hour after midnight is for doin' evil.'

This is Jim Williams' house (Mercer House, now a museum I think) which he loved to live in because it annoyed all the 'right people'.

Here are some typical houses from the historic quarter:

(via Young House Love)

(via Pinterest)

For all of Lyn Morgan's stunning house in Savannah, go here.  

It is quite divine and the antithesis of the dark antique filled rooms of Jim Williams.  You can read more about him here. 

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St Kilda Dreaming

On Saturday the AFL Grand Final was held before 100,014 people crammed into the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

(Corvey, Brighton Road St Kilda, fell into disrepair and then demolished)

For only the third time in more than a 100 years the game was drawn at 67 points all.

(captains of Collingwood and St Kilda looking stunned at the end of the game)

I don't really follow football, and I can tell you that is pretty unusual in Melbourne. But I always watch the Grand Final and it was an amazing, heart stopping 1970s style game on Saturday.   I actually 'barrack' (I use that word very loosely) for Richmond but St Kilda comes a close second. For no reason other than I love the suburb and spent many happy years living there.

Do you know what happens in AFL when a game is drawn?  Unlike 99.9% of the other ball games played on this planet, there is no extra time.  No no.  They replay the game next week.   Although for future finals, they may need to rethink this.

So here,  for  my second most favourite team, are some St Kilda iconic buildings.   All demolished now.   Do you think we have learned not to demolish beautiful buildings?  I am not so sure.   St Kilda was a wealthy suburb in the 1800s and full of Italianate and Victorian mansions.   Many were saved simply by virtue of being converted into apartments.   Others were demolished in the 1960s to make way for brick flats or glass towers. 

(Iloura in St Kilda Road demolished in 1964)

(Armadale in St Kilda Road, demolished in the 1970s)

(Summerland House, located near the corner of Fitzroy Street and Acland Street, St Kilda)

I read an interesting story on the origins of the name of the suburb.  The buyer of the land on which Summerland House was located was a Lieutenant James Ross Lawrence.  He was captain of the schooner Lady of St Kilda. Captain Lawrence named Acland Street after Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, the ship’s owner.

Acland’s ship was in turn named after a Lady Grange. In 1734, it is said that she was imprisoned by her husband for seventeen years on the St Kilda group of islands, the westernmost point of the British Isles, and way beyond the Scottish Outer Hebrides. Only on his death could she be released. Her crime was in remonstrating with him about his schemes to restore the position of Bonnie Prince Charlie. There are seven islands in the group, but Hirta is the largest. It has not been continuously inhabited since 1930. Lady Grange was probably left on Hirta.

I will remember that next time I remonstrate with my husband about his schemes. 

(Images:  (1) Not sure sorry (2) The Age (3) (4) The Collector (5) St Kilda Historical Society

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More Rooms in Art

I get a few emails about this post so I thought I would do another one.  

To kick off, Matisse, who invented the idea of the completely red room.  Personally I couldn't live with it, but I can see why people do rooms in this way.  For me, my red dining room is enough to be going on with, and even that room I rarely enter. 

The Red Studio (1911) 

This is a wonderful abstract art piece by Theo Van Doesburg called Counter Composition, painted in 1924.  Very radical for its time.

Its perfect match is this fantastic 1975 kitchen in a John Fowler house in the UK. I have seen red and black laminate kitchens but only rarely blue: 

(Warning: water restrictions rant coming up)

It is rainy and awful (still, again) here in Melbourne. We have floods all over the state and yet our water storage is still only at about 42%.   I can't work it out.  Is there a leak in the dams? I am told the main reservoir is very extremely ginormous and will take years to fill.  So now, after putting a dripper system in our garden and installing three huge water tanks four years ago when the drought began, I may just be able to start using my decommissioned sprinklers.   But there is really no point as we pulled up most of our lawn years ago.   And my water tanks are now overflowing. 

Anyway, I am not so sure about this David Hockney, but you cannot go past him for blue skies and shimmering pools which to me are the epitome of LA.   

Nick Wilder (1966) 

This is the Kauffman house at Palm Springs built in 1946 and designed by Richard Neutra.

And this, the Petrucelli house in Kew here in Melbourne by McBride Charles Ryan. 

To perfectly capture the misty waters of Venice, what better than Giorgione's The Tempest, painted in 1508, which is possibly the first landscape painting (where landscape is not just the background) in Western art.  only 6 works survive and he died of the plague at the age of 34.  Very little is known about him but the maturity and calm in his works influenced many Venetian painters including Titian.  Something pretty creepy is going on here. But no one has ever really been able to work out what. 

To accompany this work, a Venetian palazzo:

and an interior which seems to me to be very Italian in style and feel:

This work is by Ken Done, a designer and artist who was very famous in Australia in the 1980s for his almost Fauvist style vistas of Sydney Harbour.  He uses bright primary colours, which are perfect for any children's room. 

Happy weekend to one and all.  We are off to have Greek for dinner with the children tonight and tomorrow I am hoping to buy some lawn from the nurseries to plump up the nude bits in our garden, and also some more herbs and possibly some silverbeet.  

(Images: (2)(3) Elle Decor (10)(11) Lost sorry! (13) Design Sponge)

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Biscuits for the Medici

On a windy Sunday recently I turned my hand to some Florentine biscuits, part of a life long search for biscuits which maintain the interest of both children and adults.

I remember these biscuits being rather popular in the 1970's and feeling quite grown up when I ate them as a child.

I adapted a Karen Martini recipe for these, and had to road test some of the ingredients on my daughter.  She didn't like the glace ginger so I took it out. 

A tip - this is sticky and messy to make, so much so that it is almost impossible to form a biscuit to put on the baking tin by hand.  I scooped spoonfuls into 10 cm metal rings, pressed down and then lifted the ring off.

Ingredients

395 ml condensed milk

250 g cornflakes

150 g unsalted peanuts coarsely chopped

100g dried cranberries coarsely chopped 

100g dried apricots coarsely chopped

finely grated zest of one lemon

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

1/3 teaspoon ground cinnamon

250 g melted dark chocolate (I used milk to satisfy small children)

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Line two or three baking trays with baking paper.
Combine all ingredients save the chocolate in a large bowl and mix well.
Press 1 to 2 tablespoons of mixture into 10 cm scone or biscuit cutters and place onto trays. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden and cooked.  Remove and when a bit cooler, cool on wire racks.
Spread melted chocolate on the flat back of each biscuit.  Leave to set.
They keep for about 7 days in an airtight container. 

So why Florentine biscuits?  Some say the biscuits are actually Austrian in origin. Another story has it that a master confectioner created them at Versailles, in the kitchens of King Louis XIV of France, in honour of the Medicis of Florence when they visited.   Those who are up on their Medici history will recall that Catherine de Medici married Henry, Duke d'Orleans who later became Henry II in 1547.  Louis XIV reigned between 1654 and 1715.  By this stage the Medici family had waned in power and I think they were quite unlikely to have been visiting Versailles.  

In any event, can you imagine that a little cornflakey biscuit would have impressed or delighted the likes of these people?  Somehow I just can't see it.   

Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492) by Bronzino

Giovanni (Lorenzo's son, later Pope Leo V) by Bronzino

Guilio (later Pope Clement VII)

One thing my European History studies taught me is that you do not mess with the Medici.  They would probably see conspiracies galore in such a frivolous biscuit  

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Wandering about Whiteley

I have recently been spending a bit of time with a medical professional who has a reproduction of this painting in her rooms.

Brett Whiteley needs no introduction to most Australians, being one of the most successful, award winning and prolific artists of the 20th century.

This Archibald Prize winning 'Self Portrait' was painted in 1974.  That is the artist in the mirror.  Through the window to the left is his beloved Sydney Harbour and in the foreground a distorted odalisque in the manner of Matisse.   I could look at this painting for hours and hours.   Brett Whitely died, alone, of a heroin overdose in a motel near Woolongong in 1992 at the age of 53.  He flies in the fact of my visual artists live long lives theory.   

He said 'art is an argument between what a thing looks like and what it means'.

Here he is in the 1960s with his wife Wendy and their only daughter Arkie:

Arkie was a beautiful woman, creative and gentle.  She is famous for appearing as an actress in Mad Max, and for zealously guarding her father's legacy.  She died of adrenal cancer in 2001 at the age of 37. I remember seeing a story about her in one of my mother's Australian Vogues in the early 80's with a feature on her completely white and pastel apartment in London.  White and shabby chic long before everyone else started doing it.

The only one left in this little family was Wendy Whiteley.  She said this:

“you can go two ways with grief. I could have given up and slid into an abyss of depression, or become suicidal…..I just felt an overwhelming desire to do something positive…doing something creative, right here, would be the most freeing thing I could do”.

So Wendy created a garden at Lavender Bay in Sydney.  She planned and designed it and has cared for it for years now.   The garden is not hers, it is on public land.  But it is known to locals as Wendy's Secret Garden. 

The garden was overgrown and unkempt and filled with old railway parts and carriages.   This tree is a Moreton Bay fig, a wonderful climbing tree which is prolific in Sydney.  Willy wagtails, kookaburras and parrots chirp and chatter away whilst magical bendy paths go hither and thither.  This is secret Sydney at its best.  Surrounded by high rise buildings, a little place of peace.

How wonderful is her positive and creative approach to the vicissitudes and tragedies which life has thrown her way?

(Images: (1) Gallery of NSW (2) John Tranter.com (3) The Age (4)(5) Galeriaaniela.com.au)

 

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Our holiday (in the manner of Bret Easton Ellis)

(stormy Sunday at Robe)

We crossed the border into South Australia just after midday and outside our car the paddocks of wide grey gums and black cows became a shrubby national park of grass trees, where there was no traffic on the road except a red Subaru which overtook us and sped off and I was still reading my work emails and sending texts until 3G ran out of range and we arrived at the house as the sun was setting: it sat up on the crest of the hill looking over the ocean and behind back down to the harbour crowded with little fishing boats and for the first four days it rained and hailed and blew and felt a little bit as if the roof might tear off although the windows didn't really rattle much at all and in the evenings every night at 5.15 pm the unmanned lighthouse light came on and pivoted around at 180 degrees over the sea and every few minutes shone a bright unforgiving light through my daughter's bedroom and the living area but we lit the fire and that abated some of the harsh blue shining through and when I looked out of the window I was certain I could see the red Subaru parked over the road just momentarily but when I looked again it drove away and when I went into the village to buy groceries the eggs were from Kangaroo Island and looked incredibly fresh so I went on an Egg Run, making meringue, mayonnaise, aioli, baked eggs with spinach, omelettes, scrambled eggs and Bearnaise and I found it a little hard to stop once I started and on the fifth night we bought two lobsters from the fish co-op which was run by a one armed bearded man, presumably some kind of fisherman, and we ate them with lemon and parsley butter and a bottle of Chablis and they were so succulent that we went back for more the next night and most days the children played Bionicle v Barbie, which is an invented game with intricate rules which cannot be explained to outsiders like parents and in the morning and night we walked along the beach and the sandcastle we built with a cuttlefish tower remained in place for a full week because no one else ever visited that beach and when I could drag myself out of my holiday book reading egg induced coma I ran around the town, up hills past flashy new holiday homes and then down into the little dips where the weatherboard and fibro cottages sat and I didn't feel empty inside, not at all, I felt as if I had learned something and I felt as if time had stood still just for a few days.

(obelisk and remains of colonial prison, Robe)

You can get more of the same, namely one sentence paragraphs and some other stuff, like drugs, sex and violence in Bret Easton Ellis' Imperial Bedrooms.

This is a sequel of sorts to Less Than Zero, which I read with great delight and empathy as a nihilistic teenager in 1985. I am no longer a nihilistic teenager, but the drifting amoral protagonist of Imperial Bedrooms still seems to be.

In fact not much has changed at all since 1985.

The only difference now is that the players all text, email and cell phone each other relentlessly, and the huge houses in which the parties are held are not those of the parents but the children, all grown up now but barely matured since they were 17.  

And this made me feel bad, and a bit superior, for having changed since I was that age, and then a bit angry because personally I would have liked to have seen a bit more character development than there is.   Read it and decide for yourself.

(fishing boats at Robe harbour)

An antidote to Bret Easton Ellis (or BEE) is definitely called for.  Something solid and life affirming.   A little speck of humanity.    

(sunset, Robe, 17 July 2010)

I figure that those characters would be no match for Thomas Wolsey or Thomas More.   Life was cheap in 1529, and you either dragged yourself up by your fingernails or were passed by, splashed with mud from the Cardinal's procession of horses, carriages and a precious cargo of gold and reliquaries.   Issues with your parents such as those which crop up in all BEE books would be irrelevant, because everyone had them in the 16th century.   In those days parents were beating their children, putting them to work or indeed, if you were royal, it might just be that your parent or some other relative would be plotting to have you killed.    

So, my BEE antidote is these three thrilling books:

Everyone has probably read the Booker prize winning Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which is not a simple Tudor romp by any means, rather an absorbing and penetrating look at the amazing Thomas Cromwell and all he achieved.

I have always loved Antonia Fraser's history books.  They are all great, and this one is a wonderful and sympathetic dissection of the man and his loves. 

I have not read the Leanda De Lisle but it is on order - it tells the story of Henry's great nieces, including Lady Jane Grey, who reigned for 9 days after Henry's son, Edward VI.  A scintillating review can be found here. 

And I just know that those in the Tudor times would have brooked no complaints from whiny, over privileged, aimless childlike grownups, whether from Los Angeles, or otherwise.  

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Winter in Melbourne - Books for the Fireside

For all the obvious reasons I tend to read more in winter.     I am inside more, and spend more time lolling around on the couch.  Similarly the children watch more DVDs (I know I know) and there is only so much Buzz Lightyear I can watch, so I sit with them and read.   You need escapism more than ever in winter, something to draw you in and warm you up. 
  

I was concerned I was becoming addicted to my Kindle so it has been quietly removed from my bedside table and replaced with real paper books.

This is what is absorbing me at the moment.  Firstly, Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain:

Ah Tony.   You, along with Antony Beevor and Ian McEwan, can come over to my place for dinner any time.  I will serve eye fillet with Bearnaise sauce, crushed potatoes in goose fat, rosemary and garlic and a perfect green salad and you will enjoy it.  We would probably have to drink quite a lot, so I would also serve some of our best Australian shiraz in proper Reidel glasses.   We will finish with some Delice de Bourgogne and some local quince paste and King Island cheddar.   You could sign your new book, to make a matching partner to Kitchen Confidential, which you signed for me when you were in Melbourne 8 years ago. 

We could all chew the fat about Berlin and Stalingrad, the challenges and difficulties of writing history, climate change sceptics, 'third book syndrome',  the politics of selling out, London house prices, whether the film 'Atonement' was any good,  the Cipriani business model for restaurants and how to talk your daughter out of wanting to eat McDonalds.  It will be really fun.  My husband will be there too, but that's okay isn't it?  You can bring Ottavia if you want. 

This is the 'sequel' to Kitchen Confidential, which changed this restaurateur, chef and former heroin addict's life in all ways possible.   He is still mighty angry, and some people question why. But having money and a comfortable life doesn't require bland acceptance of all around you, does it?

The cover describes the book as a 'Bloody Valentine' to the world of food and and those who cook.   Perhaps it is better described as a slightly rambling and very unstructured look at Tony's life post best seller where he basically writes about what he feels like writing about (a bit like this blog really).  

It opens with a cracking story about a secret dinner of chefs in New York eating a forbidden food but then doesn't really get going until about page 84.     I think he is at his best when writing about some of the amazing meals he has consumed globally over the last decade in places ranging from Hanoi to Tribeca, or pointing out some of the obvious flaws in the organic and locavarian food movement (the book contains an entertaining but slightly unfair evisceration of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse - I would not want to be on Tony Bourdain's bad side). 

He is at his worst and bordering on self indulgent when talking about the effect fame has had on him. It is also a pity that he makes so many assumptions about the level of knowledge his audience has about the US food scene. Yes I know who Mario Batali is. But Wylie Dufresne, one of your heroes, I have never heard of. And other than emphasising that he does what he wants in his resturant, you don't explain who he is.

For something completely different I am also reading this, about my favourite decade:

The author achieves her objective largely by peppering her story with lots and lots of little examples and anecdotes about the daily lives of those who lived in that decade, from poor housewife all the way to the King.  This does give the book a real intimacy which many such expansive histories do not achieve.  Running to more than 570 pages, it does sometimes feel a bit like reading a very well written PhD thesis.  It opens with the tragic stampede in the Glen cinema in Paisley, Scotland in 1929 (71 children died) and takes us all the way up to the eve of the war.  

There is happiness in between but it is heavy going.  Perfect for reading in an over furnished English country style living room.  

So, as a remedy to all the sensible shoes, workers' strikes, flowery dresses and fascism, I am also reading this book by the sparkling Lucy Moore:

I cannot believe that there were autographed copies of this in Hartchers when I was last in London which I passed up because of concern about my luggage weight.  I now have to content myself with the paperback.   How can you not love this era? This book largely focuses on the 1920's in the US, and has been criticised for its lack of primary sources.  However it is still absorbing and transporting.   Perfect for sitting in a white room (which I have just noticed seems to have two fireplaces!).

And last but not least, a book I can't read now because it won't be published until September, but I am dying to get my hands on this.  What a fantastic title: A perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life. 

This book by Mary Randolph Carter is described as being for all those who live imperfectly with the messy things they love. It shows you how to do so happily, creatively and with style.   The book looks at how 'real life tastemakers 'integrate their lives to live well with their passions, histories, conveniences and inconveniences'.   Doesn't it sound just perfect? 

Such a book should clearly be read in these kinds of surrounds with 'special to you' treasures making a happy eclectic space:

But wait, I need more.  Any tips for a good front of the fire book?

(Images (1)(5)(7)(9) Airspaces)

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