Cancer FAQs

Hi there - here's hoping you are all well on this blustery Melbourne day.

I have posted a new page, called cancer FAQs, which will  hopefully answer some or many of the questions I have had from you wonderful readers.   It's over on the right.  

Go ahead, read.  There is happiness even in cancer, I promise you.

xoxo happy weekend!

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Indian Dreaming

For those who are not Australian or from other parts of the Commonwealth, you may not be aware that the Commonwealth Games are under way in Delhi at the moment.  I was so excited for India when they won the chance to host the Games.  Unfortunately scandals, delays and some controversy marred the build up to the Games.   At time of writing, Australia has won 143 medals, more than 30 more than the next country (England).  Which makes the Games either pointless or brilliant, depending on your point of view. I tend to favour the former.  

I have never been to India but I believe it is a place, like Italy perhaps, which changes you forever.  

To kick off, two beautiful modern Indian interiors:

Something soft and restful:

Then, the hotel to die for. Have you ever stayed at an Aman resort?  We have toyed with the idea of the one in Java, and also Ubud in Bali but the furthest we have ever got is lunch at the Amandari and Amankila (both on Bali).  I think they are a bit outside my budget.  This is the Amanbagh near Jaipur.

And of course, some Indian reading.   These are my five must read Indian novels.   They capture all the magic, mystery and spirituality of India.   Each of these books I have brooded on for some time after finishing and to me, that is the key to a great book.

This book demonstrates the power of luck and opportunity better than any other I have read.

This book is set in in Mumbai, in India, in the middle of last century when a bad decision or an instance of bad luck can change your life forever.  

I won't describe it further other than to say you must read this book. It will make you a more humane person. 

This book is about old India and the British Raj, and its clash with the new.  Set in Chandrapore, the book follows an excursion to some caves led by doctor Aziz and the life changing consequences of that day. 

If not the book,then you should watch the excellent Merchant Ivory film of the same name. 

I read this book for school when I was 15.  Set in India in the 1920's It is about a little girl who lives on a river which feeds into the Bay of Bengal. Harriet is in that time between between childhood and adulthood and the rhythms of her life are disrupted and changed in this deceptively simple and subtle book. 

At more than 1300 pages this is one of the longest novels ever published in a single volume in the English language (I actually read it when it was published in a three book series).

This amazing evocative epic book is set in post independent and post partition India, and follows Mrs Rupa Mehra's attempts to arrange the marriage of her daughter to a suitable boy.  

It sounds simple, but it is not. There is a wonderful array of eccentric, personality filled characters, and Vikram Seth manages to cover a range of political and societal events like Muslim education,  the caste system and the land reforms. 







I have to be honest. I am a bit scared of Gregory David Roberts. He was an armed robber who broke out of jail in Melbourne in 1980, skipped the country, fled to India and lived an adventurous life including gun running in Afghanistan and working as a slum doctor in Delhi.  This book is lengthy but worth it.  Whilst it is true that he escaped from prison, Roberts has since clarified that parts of it are fictional. 

This book is a fascinating glimpse into modern India.  

(Images: (1) via Indian Summer Blog (2) from Contemporary Indian by Henry Wilson (3) Elle Decor India (4) (5) Tobias Harvey via Sarah Kaye (6) Amanresorts)

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Rock cakes and smuggler's coves

We all know that if there is one thing you should not do to your children it is to impose your embarassing ambitions, tastes and foibles upon them.

If you want them to become a neurosurgeon, don't force it.  If you love sailor suits and think they look charming, don't make your child wear them.   And if you want them to have the same obssessive childhood hobbies, be a subtle directionist, and do not push it on to them.

This has been hard for me.   What I want my children to be is bookoholics.   To me, there is nothing more important than a love of books. Books are my stalwart companions, and I learned that early on, as a child, when my happiest times were lying in the sunshine in my bedroom reading an Enid Blyton book.

(this is what my shelves looked like, photo from here)

So for my daughter, I have started a little collection of all the books I read over and over when I was young.   Predictably, and perversely, as yet she shows no interest at all in them.

Here is my list.  I haven't collected them all yet, but I figure I still have a bit of time.
And in case you are wondering, they are all quite readable by adults too.  

1. Joan Aiken 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase' (1963).  

(image by Superflygirl on Flickr)

These books are set in early 1800s during the reign of James III, positing an alternate history of England in which James II has not been deposed, but instead Hanoverian insurgents agitate against the monarchy.  To add to the excitement, wolves have invaded England from Russia via the channel tunnel.

This books tells the story of cousins Bonnie and Sylvia who are left by Bonnie's parents in their house Willoughby Chase under the care of the sinister and villainous Mrs Slighcarp.  

This book is part of a series which included Nightbirds on Nantucket and Black Hearts in Battersea, which also feature Simon and a new character, the wonderful and feisty Dido Twite. 

These books are so imaginative, and scary, they thrilled me to bits when I was a little girl. 

2. The 'R' Mysteries and the Adventure Series by Enid Blyton

A little confession - I recently looked at the Enid Blyton Society website and I couldn't find a single Enid Blyton book I hadn't read. 

Now, we all know about Mallory Towers, St Clares, the Faraway Tree, Noddy, the so called racism, the so called sexism, the library ban and other things. But, in spite of all that, what Enid Blyton does so well (the same point has been made about JK Rowling) is engender a love of reading whcih endures for a lifetime.

I loved all the school stories of course and desparately wanted to go to a boarding school in Cornwall and be naughty in a prim way, but I most of all loved the adventure stories.  The above is the Barney series, and below, one of the Adventure series.

Both series consisted of groups of siblings and friends (there is always one outcast eccentric friend who is especially clever at getting out of sticky situations) who have wonderful adventures in sinister castles, villages, islands, etc. 

(all Enid covers from the Enid Blyton Society)

3. Lucy M Boston's Green Knowe Stories, starting with the Children of Green Knowe

This is a ghostly story set in an evocative house.   Part of a series of 5 books (I think).

4. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden



Rumer Godden has written some fabulous books including The River.  Having spent much of her childhood in India, she often explores themes of belonging and homesickness.

In this book Nona is sent from steamy India to live with cousins in cold rainy England.  Life is utterly miserable until she is given two Japanese dolls, and instructions to build them an authentic Japanese home, which she proceeds to do.  This was my first introduction to tatami mats, rice paper walls and kimonos.   The book also comes with instructions for the house. 

5.  Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards


Yes, this is the Julie Andrews of Mary Poppins and Sound of Music fame.  She is a rather good writer.  This book tells the story of Mandy, a girl in an orphanage who discovers an abandoned cottage in the forest behind the orphanage.  She cleans it out, 'does it up' and all ends happily when the man who owns it ends up adopting her.

A magical story for girls who want to live in their own home separate from their family (as I did.  Nothing personal, it was just what I wanted). 

6. The Chalet School Books by Elinor M Brent Dyer



As a little girl my Chalet School addiction knew no bounds.   Elinor M Brent Dyer wrote 59 of these books, over 45 years (between 1925 and 1970), so it was pretty much impossible to collect them all.   But wonderful to obsess over. 

The Chalet School was set up by an English women, Madge Bettany, in the Austrian Tyrol in the 1930s.  The stories cover the many and varied adventures of the girls and their teachers over decades.   

They had more substance and drama than the Enid Blyton boarding school books, and were truly exotic, being set in Austria.    Following the rise of the Nazis in Germany the school moved to Guernsey, then to England, and island off Wales and finally to peaceful Switzerland. 

Yes these books feature feisty heroines too, and some wonderful character names - Mary Lou Trelawney, Daisy Venables, Prunella Davies, Eustacia (can't remember surname) and Verity-Ann Carey. 

7. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

We all know about the Secret Garden.  This is about a little girl, Sara Crewe, who is sent to Miss Minchin's boarding school in London.  Instead of being treated kindly, a per her father's instructions, she is treated with cruelty and once her father dies, matters deteriorate.   

This story does have a happy ending, and Burnett's story of a clever, imaginative little girl who manages to make the best of an appalling situation, is quite enthralling. 

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Cushions and Three More Things

Recently I have been the unworthy recipient of some awards.

From Julie at Being Ruby, a 5 Diamonds award.

From Jacqueline at Home, a Happy 101 award.

From James at Garvin Weasel, a Kreativ Blogger award.

Thank you all. In the interests of playing fair here is a little grab bag of things that make me happy\sad\inspire me\that may be vaguely interesting or that you might not already know. No kittens or puppies or flowers will appear in this post, even though these things all make me feel reasonably happy.

1. Cushion-mania

Like many others, I too have discovered the magical thrill of making my own cushion covers and thereby defeating wily over-priced cushion purveyors world wide.

(cushion made with Pakistani textile remnant)

(cushion made with an Amy Butler Midwestern Modern fabric for the green room)

(cushion for sunny lunches outside)

2. Sir Graham Berry

Does this man not have the most interesting, slightly ruthless yet elegantly dishevelled face? A man of Churchillan determination and persistence, born in London in 1822, the son of a victualler, he emigrated to Australia in 1852, set up a grocer shop in Prahran, 9 years later was a member of Parliament, first for East Melbourne, then Collingwood, then Geelong. He was premier of Victoria three times between 1875 and 1881.

A newspaper owner, protectionist and staunch adversary of the Legislative Assembly, at that time controlled by Victoria's land owning squatters (who owned most of Victoria's land), his actions as premier gave rise to class conflict, with massive torchlit processions. Some saw Berry as a radical, who sought to do away with legislative protections. Others as a man of the people who sought to defy the Assembly which 'robs the people of the gold in the soil'.

I mention him first because he is one of Victoria's leading early liberal lights and one of my favourite politicians and second because he is my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Of course in the manner of families (mine is secretive - although aren't they all?) I only found this out about two weeks ago.

(Disclaimer: it is possible that half of Melbourne can claim Sir Graham as an ancestor. He had 20 children. No mean feat. But of course even more impressive for his two wives).

3. Invitations from a lost era

Well maybe not lost in the sense that WW1 destroyed the Edwardian era. But 1988 sure seems a long time ago.

I am an unsentimental nostalgist. Or should that be a disorganised hoarder? Actually I am so organised that we have a section in our filing cabinet for Lego instructions for every Lego item we own.

I have also kept every single invitation, postcard, letter, thank-you letter, birthday card, travel brochure, ticket, receipt, program, love letter, doomed first novel attempt I have ever created or received.

And these go back a long way:

(Now a fantastic architect so this invitation was very apt)

(1987 - note price of the evening - $32 including full bar)

(engraved invitations from 1988)

(relaunch of my favourite youthful haunt, the Redhead in Albert Park, in 1994)

4. Overeducation

I have three degrees, one in Fine Arts, a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Laws.

My favourite judge ever is the incomparable Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, Judge of the High Court and Privy Council in Britain, who died in 1999 at the age of 100. I am not alone in this of course. Every law student finds his judgements an oasis in the desert of verbosity so often seen in case law.

A man of succinctness and razor sharp intellect, he was a reformist lawyer who had no difficulty seeing right from wrong and worked hard to ensure the law remained relevant.

How can you not love someone who commenced a judgement thus:

''It happened on April 19, 1964. It was bluebell time in Kent'. (Hinz v Berry (1970) 2 QB 40)

During his time as a judge he made many significant changes to the common law including creating the right to recover for negligent misstatement, the principle that the state should have to prove that a war veteren's injury was not caused by service (previously the injured person had the burden of proving the cause), the right of a deserted wife to remain in the family home and many more.

This could be said to sum up his approach to change and reform in the law:

'What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand whilst the rest of the world goes on, and that will be bad for both' (Packer v Packer [1953] 2 AER 127)

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My favourite things of the Year Part 2 - Food

Favourite restaurant - Mo Vida, the quintessential Melbourne restaurant and bar, in all its incarnations, including the one (Aqui and Terrazza) which opened opposite work in early November. To understand the significance of this, bear this in mind: when we moved offices 5 years ago, we moved from what is called the Paris End of Collins Street to what is known as the Beirut End of Bourke Street (apologies to all Lebanese people). An area largely bereft of good coffee and anywhere much to eat lunch with a few notable exceptions.

So, to now have Mo Vida so close is excitement itself.

I wrote here about a dinner I had with Mo Vida food and Spanish wine. The new Mo Vida Aqui, an industrial space behind a bank, with views to the Supreme Court, is up to Mo Vida standards.

Having had a many coursed meal there last week, it satisfied all my requirements, including one I barely knew I had, namely for an octopus terrine with smoked paprika and potato salad. Here it is:

Favourite wine - is wine a food? Yeah, sure. The heatwaves last February which led to devastating bushfires in South East Australia had one good outcome - in combination with heavy rain in mid December 2008, an outstanding 2009 riesling vintage.

This is really mostly what I have drunk this year.

Favourite packaged food: Pineapple and vanilla bean jam.

Generally speaking I do not like pineapple. To paraphrase Dr Seuss:

I do not like it in a tin

I do not like it on a pizza

I do not like it in a burger

I do not like it with ham

Not in fruit salad

Not in a muffin

Not on pavlova

Not under upside down cake

Not in a salsa

Not in a pie

I do not like it

One little bit

But this jam, which manages to smooth the sharp spikiness of pineapple with pungent vanilla-eyness, is quite something else. Perfect on toast.

This jam comes from Phllippa's Bakery, a place of such temptations we were compelled this year to buy a coffee machine to avoid our weekend trips there for takeaway coffee, as these visits always involved us also returning home laden with unnecessities like French butter, gingerbread stars, peanut butter biscuits, tomato kasoundi, creme fraiche, costly spiced nuts, raspberry cupcakes, little hand shaped dinner rolls and so on.

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Questions and Answers in a minor key

JMW from the lovely blog A Place to Dwell has tagged me. I am not usually that keen on these types of things, so am getting it over with now. Plus, I am limited to one word answers, which is a challenge for me, anti Twitterer extraordinaire.

1. Where is your cell [Mobile] phone? Desk

2. Your hair? Unsatisfactory

3. Your mother? Organised

4. Your father? Inspiring

5. Your favorite food? Artichokes

6. Your dream last night? Epic

7. Your favorite drink? Reisling

8. Your dream/goal? Freedom

9. What room are you in? Office

10. Your hobby? Blogging. No, reading.

11. Your fear? Harm to my children

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Here

13. Where were you last night? Work

14. Something that you aren’t? Patient

15. Muffins? No

16. Wish list item? Kilim for the front room (there I knew I couldn't stick to one word)

17. Where did you grow up? Melbourne

18. Last thing you did? Drafting

19. What are you wearing? Dress

20. Your TV? Loewe

21. Your pets? None

22. Friends? Away

23. Your life? Jumbled

24. Your mood? Optimistic

25. Missing someone? No.

26. Vehicle? German

27. Something you’re not wearing? Jewelry

28. Your favorite store? Scanlan & Theodore

29. Your favorite color? Pink

30. When was the last time you laughed? Lunchtime

31. Last time you cried? Revolutionary Road

32. Your best friend? Husband

33. One place that I go to over and over? Royal Botanic Gardens

34. One person who emails me regularly? Teammates

35. Favorite place to eat? Bistro Thierry

I have six people to tag, which I should do shortly and very soon.

(Images (1) Daniel Farmer (2) Joanna Henderson)

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My holiday recipe

Ingredients

1. House with the salty scent of the sea wafting through the grasses:

2. A view of pale blue and then a darker strip with white foamy edges. The sound of crashing waves and nothing else but perhaps the warning horn of the lighthouse:

3. Another view, this time of sand dunes:

4. Pitstop on journey there at 3 hatted country restaurant. Children tucked up in bed with local girl babysitter. Glass of champagne in front of the fire. Long lingering peruse of the wine list. Ingredients scavenged from kitchen's vegetable garden, locally sourced beef and chicken, wild greens picked just an hour ago, smears of this, splodges of that, all divine.

5. Coffee pot. We have three of these at home now because we keep forgetting to bring them and have to urgently buy another in our holiday location when we arrive.

6. One good knife and a black iron saucepan.

7. Required reading - stocked up at the bookshop and ready to go. (This is only about half of what I would usually take. Maybe it's too much but I actually have a congenital fear of being stranded with Not Enough To Read. I take enough reading material for a week on a one day work trip to Sydney). The Caesar book is a handball from my husband who has just finished it.

8. Lobster from the local fisherman co-op. Boiled, split then grilled with butter and served with lemony mayonnaise.

9. Day trip if we can be bothered to local vineyards:

9. Family (of course)

10. Sticker Dolly Book for my daughter. No, not any old sticker book. It must be a Sticker Dolly book. We have already been through Sticker Dolly Fairies, Princesses, Pop Stars and Ballerinas. Imagine my apoplectic excitement to discover that a new one - Sticker Dolly Bridesmaids - had just been released.

11. Miscellaneous bag of toys, books and bits and pieces for my son including compulsory dinosaur for growling and creating havoc from the back seat of the car:

Method

1. Put ingredients together, stir very gently with a wooden spoon, sit back and enjoy.

See you very soon......

Images (1)(2) Prue Murdoch's Island Beach House, courtesy RAIA (3)(4) Robe Lifestyle (5) (6) Royal Mail (9) Wesleying (10) Wynns (12) Dinosaur.org

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Food Memories - Toast by Nigel Slater

I have just finished Toast by English chef and writer Nigel Slater (subtitled - the Story of a Boy's Hunger). This book is about his childhood and adolescence seen through the sometimes frightening, frequently sad and often funny prism of the food he ate. How he remembers is one thing of itself but the taste of the memory he manages to evoke by his food descriptions is quite something else. Remember, this is an era of trifles, salad cream, jam tarts, tinned salmon, mushroom ketchup, tinned ham, rice pudding and steak diane. His father wouldn't have Heinz sauces in the house because he thought they were 'common'.

Nigel Slater did not have the happiest childhood. His mother (who couldn't cook) died when he was young and his father remarried. He spent a lot of his childhood feeling unwanted. And yet he is not bitter, and this makes the book completely addictive. Here is his description of one of the many tinned products they eat:

We lived in a world of tinned fruit. There were tinned peaches for high days and holidays, fruit cocktail for every-day and tinned pears for my father who said they were better than fresh. On one occassion we tried mango but my father said it tasted fishy. I wasn't allowed to try. 'You wouldn't like it'.

And here he is in the kitchen with his stepmother :

'You can call me Auntie Joanie if you want to' said Mrs Potter. I walked straight past her and round to the kitchen door. 'I told you' she snapped at my father. 'Just give him time, he'll be all right' said Dad. There was a cake on the spotless kitchen table. A home made cake, with a thin line of raspberry jam in the middle, the top dusted with caster sugar. A perfect cake, three inches high and as light as a feather, the criss-cross of the wire cooling rack etched into its top. The kitchen smelled of baking and Dreft. Two pairs of my underpants and my school pullover hung on a wooden airer with some tea towels still warm from the iron. Mrs Potter rushed in behind me. 'Come on I'll put the kettle on. Why don't we make some toast?'.

It made me think about how I would describe my life (if I had to) by reference to, say, my top 10 food memories. And once I started thinking I couldn't stop. This is what I came up with, divided into three sections of my life:

Ages 0 to 17

1. Egg Sandwiches - okay, I know these repulse many people. And I am not so keen on them myself these days. But when I was a bookworm 9 year old my very favourite activity involved lying on the floor of my bedroom in the sunshine, reading the latest Enid Blyton book and munching on my egg sandwich. In fact, I recently found a list of every book Miss Blyton had ever written and I can honestly say I have read them all!

2. Spaghetti Bolognese. I may have previously mentioned what a great cook my mother is. And trust me, spaghetti bolognese was about as exotic as it got in my childhood. And even that would have been considered to be 'on the edge' by many. She made the sauce correctly with veal and pork, simmering slowly for hours but the cheese we sprinkled was that grainy powdery 'Parmesan'. Nothing like the big wedges we hand grate these days.

3. Snails in garlic butter. My father owned a restaurant for parts of my childhood. We ate out quite a bit. And this was my favourite dish (still is a favourite). It brings back memories of stained glass, bluestone and indoor plants and other 1970's decor features.

4. Paradise pudding . Sounds better than it is. Our school had a health food tuckshop. Pretty advanced for the 1970s. So whilst my brothers were eating Sunnyboys* and Twisties for a living I was eating health food. Paradise Pudding was a paper cup filled with layers of granola and natural yoghurt.



Ages 17 to 30

A reasonable amount of this period of my life was taken up by studying, travelling or having lowly paid jobs. It follows that my food choices were more constrained.

5. Chicken parmagiana and lukewarm tea. This is what I lived on in college at university. And it is no exaggeration to say I have not touched a chicken 'parma' since I was 24.

6. Baileys Irish Cream. Okay this is not a food. But it provided me with a lot of sustenance at university. And it does have carbohydrate, right? And I know you don't need to see a picture.

7. Singapore noodles. I worked for 2 years as a public or civil servant. Theo's cafe was in the basement of the building and every day almost without fail, I would have singapore noodles from the bain marie with lots of chilli sauce. My mouth waters just thinking about these!

Age 30 onwards

8. Venice. In 2001 we spent an amazing 2 weeks in an apartment in Venice. We drank ombras in the bars, had lunch at the Cipriani, and trawled the Rialto market for creatures from the lagoon to cook in our ill equipped kitchen. I still remember grilling some unnamed crustacean and trying to prise it out of an unforgiving shell.

9. Degustation. I admit it I am sometimes a gourmand. I have been lucky enough to have some lovely meals in various places. Most memorable perhaps was a meal at the Grande Vefour in Paris, 12 courses (including white dove, I know its shocking isn't it). We framed the bill.

10. Chilli-world. Since 2000 I have been obsessed with Asian food of all kinds, but particularly Chinese, Thai and Indian. I can't go more than two days without a chilli hit.

* Sunnyboys were in the same family as Razzes and Glug. They were basically frozen ice pyramids in lurid lime or raspberry. I think but I am not certain that they are an Australian food item? Does anyone know?

Images (1) Luis Melendez 1772 NGA (3) Wisebread.com (4) Flickr (5) The HungryCyclist.com (6) Upstate Harvest (7) BBC Good Food (8) Travels with a Gourmet (9) Channel 4 (10) Sunnyboy

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