{The country we invented turned out to be just right.}
Christmas found me enjoying my Mum’s tagliatelle with asparagus & herbs, a warm lentil & rice salad and even the occasional thin slice of Silvia’s seasoned turkey. Everything from serving dishes piled high with rosemary oven roasted potatoes to all too tempting snow pea salads lay on our Christmas table adorned with its fare share of festive candles and glittering bird ornaments. The kitchen was buried beneath pots and saucepans in use or mid use, empty containers for the recycling piled high in one corner and cooking utensils to be washed in the other. Tea towels cast aside on the marble counter and every conceivable variety of fresh herb, rosemary, basil, tarragon, dill, all rammed into its own little glass jar of water by the window. Herbs so ripe for the picking, crushing and sprinkling that they made even me feel as though I might be able to cook. A kitchen barely big enough for one produced food fit for hungry hoards. The potato, much to my Dad’s liking, rose to prominence in several dishes, from tiny potato & pumpkin pancakes (tasty morsels too delicious to describe) to a warm & spicy potato salad… all this and we’ve yet to reach dessert. So it will require no stretch of the imagination when I say that Christmas found me in good spirits and I could not have wanted for anything more. Good company, good cheer, good food, good all round.
{A faded snowman reappears.}
{Twinkling lights still with us a little while longer.}
{Mishii bathed in yellow.}
I have spent those idyll days of post Christmas with the new James Bond in an intimate little theatre in Yarraville for my Mum’s 61st birthday (which falls just three days after Christmas Day) and I have survived the east wind with Raimunda in Volver. I have later enjoyed revisiting on dvd The Flower of my Secret (1995) in which the romance writer Leo submits a novel with the very same plot as seen in Volver, only to have it turned down as being too bleak for her audiences needs. I have enjoyed fish & chips dockside in Williamstown, and I have eaten way too much but then that is what the New Year and all its resolutions and promises and new starts are for. I have enjoyed receiving wonderful gifts and I have enjoyed giving (hopefully wonderful) gifts. And I have received fine musical compilations - from Lisa S (amongst other brilliant treats and delights… thanks again, Lisa S ♥), Songs for tapping toes, shedding tears, and about birds, from Briana January songs… sounds of longing, solace, change and new beginnings and an unexpected cd from someone else, Seasons Beatings featuring the Ramones Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight) before ending with Elvis with Merry Christmas, Baby... tunes to accompany me through the post Christmas stretch and the long hot days of January. I have been rendered momentarily immobile by too much lolling. Lie-ins, sleep-ins, late nights and relaxing times, and all work pushed aside… I don’t know how I’ll ever wind up again. I have surrendered completely to relaxing times.
I have taken bucket loads of grey water collected from the shower and kitchen sink and distributed them around the various dry garden beds… in full embrace of the water restrictions. And I have played a variation of the Pied Piper of Hameiln to the local cats, looking after several in the street whilst their owners holiday. Up and down the street I trot, a string of cats following behind me. In place of a pipe, I lure my feline journeymen in with a bag of top shelf cat biscuits. The ending is also somewhat different, no drowning of rats or sealing of children in caves, just some contented cats chomping on biscuits on their respective verandas. I have wondered at the speed at which a colony of ants can find an almost empty cat food dish. No matter where I seem to place the dish they always seem to find it with ease. If I place it in one corner one day and diagonally opposite the next, that very same ant army seem to always enjoy the fruits of my labours.
I have watched the sky grow lighter with Hajime, “like blue ink on a piece of paper it spread slowly across the horizon. If you gathered together all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, the epitome of blue, this was the colour you would choose.” (South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami, p.186). And I have begun to dream in blue with the Grandfather in The Black Book… “He’d be dreaming in blue, he’d say: the rain in his dream was the deepest blue, midnight blue, and it was this never-ending blue rain that made his hair and beard grow even longer.” (The Black Book, Orhan Pamuk, p.8) before searching for gilt papers suitable for wrapping candied chestnuts with Uncle Melih. I have wondered what it would be like to read these original texts in their original language. To discover Istanbul free of translation though I don’t think this is something I will ever know. I have also been out a-journeying with mice in balaclavas constructed from the tips of gloves as they take on the Prime Minister with their Save Our Noses campaign in Daren King’s book for little-uns and big-uns, Mouse Noses on Toast.
I’ve rung in the New Year very much as I mean to continue… with dear friends and a leisurely amble to the beach to take in the fireworks in the far, far distance. And I have enjoyed my blogging break but I have also missed it dearly. So roll on 2007 for I’m ready for whatever it is that you have in store. Happy New Year one and all!
{Shake, Shake, Shake.}
{Someone, please... my back is aching.}
