Ooh, how nice! I was just handed a ice-tinkly glass of gin and homemade rhubarb fizz. It's the nicest shade of pink.
And it was too. I drank it before I thought to take a photo, so I decided to recreate it last night.
Isn't it pretty?
It led to a flurry of people wanting the recipe of the fizz. I have to say that it's made by Best Beloved, not myself. That's why he's called Best Beloved. Apparently it's a recipe by Tasmanian preserving expert Sally Wise, from her book A Year in a Bottle. That title makes me think of the novel Brave New World, but Ms Wise is the only author to whom my partner has ever written a fan letter. And she wrote back, the saucy minx. He has all of her books.
So here it is (with annotations):
875g (1lb, 15oz) rhubarb, chopped 875g (1lb, 15oz) sugar 1 lemon, chopped 200ml (7fl oz) white wine vinegar or cider vinegar 18 cups cold water
Combine everything in a food-safe bucket*, cover loosely with a tea-towel and leave for 48 hours. BB recommends putting a colander or something over the fruit to keep it under the waterline in the bucket, as (especially when it's hot) the fruit can go mouldy.**
Strain (BB strains through basic muslin (cheesecloth), which he buys in bulk at the local haberdashery) and pour into very clean bottles*** and seal.
The fizz will be ready in two weeks. Chill well before serving. Open carefully.
GOES VERY WELL WITH GIN OR VODKA. Children like it too, but only if you can spare it.
Makes approx. 4.5 litres (156fl oz)
You can do this with other fruit as well, berries and the like.
* This is a bucket that hasn't been used for cleaning products, not a bucket a-la Mr Creosote. We bought a special food-safe bucket and wrote in large friendly letters FOOD ONLY on it. That seems to work, but I can't vouch for pre-literate children and cats.
** It can sometimes develop a weird-looking scum that looks a bit like mould but isn't. BB chucked a couple of batches until we could tell the difference. The colander thingy helps.
*** We use 1.5litre plastic soft drink bottles, washed and kept once we've finished with them. Don't overfill, in fact leave some space for the gas that will build up. Don't shake the bottles! Store in a cool place, but not the fridge (until it's ready).
The funeral was lovely. The new crematorium is sweet and unscary. Bumblebee read well, and the aunties et al told great stories. We drank a lot over the two days, just because there were a lot of good people around to drink with, and we didn't sleep very well, thanks to the cats, who prowled and yowled all night. Dunno what they were complaining about, they had a great time for the most part.
On the way home, along the long empty drive through the Monaro Plains, I got nervous about the amount of things I still have to get done before 'me Op', which has now been confirmed for November 13. So I stuck my head down all weekend and got the cover for my next book* completely printed, and also, in the evenings, got a fair bit done of the teeth-grindingly frustrating design job I'm doing for the art school (it's a history of the institution, written almost wholly from the POV of the bureaucracy, nothing yet of actual art or students). I wanted to take photos of my printing, but BB decided this weekend that he wanted to document his jam-making, so I couldn't take my camera with me. Turns out the jam didn't go that well, so he's pretty much documented what NOT to do. So I can't show you what I've done until tomorrow. It's funny, I've ended up with a cover I love, but it was a very roundabout way of getting to it.
Tomorrow term starts again, a weird little 3-week term which basically just allows students to finish their projects and plan how they're going to set up their work for assessment. And then, of course, there's assessment. I know there's a fair few of you out there marking right now, and my heart goes out to you.
Anyhoo, my book class is supposed to be mounting a little exhibition tomorrow in the school library, so if it happens (they've been a bit cruisy this semester) I'll give you a little virtual exhibition of our own.
*Poems to Hold or Let Go, poems by Rosemary Dobson, wood engravings by Rosalind Atkins. Edition of 200. Yes, 200. I'm a fool. From now on I'm doing no more than 50 or 100 in an edition.
Well, it's not me. And I don't care. I'm not 14 and I don't feel insecure when I read it, but it sure makes me hate whoever mounts that crap on Facebook.
[TAKES A DEEP BREATH]
Just had to share that with you.
Anyhoo my lovelies, I'm off tomorrow to climb these steps again for a week at the Sturt Winter School. I think I'm ready, but I'm on my rollerskates and have very insistent flu symptoms, so it could all go horribly wrong.*
The first line of the Winter School promo says it all: Rug up and get creative this winter! All I can think about is the bloody communal bathrooms with stone floors and no heating. Although I did discover staff bathrooms on my last day of the Summer School and will be hunting one down in whichever boarding house I'm allotted to.
I won't be online at all, as I discovered last time that there is an extremely vigorous net nanny on every computer at Fresham within reach of innocent schoolgirls, which brings me back to that horrid Facebook ad above. It's not perverts you need to protect kids from, it's those revolting snipes at users' self-esteem. Built-in internet bullying... good on ya, Facebook! I'm going to think very carefully over the next week whether I want to stay on it, fun games or no.
[TAKE A DEEP BREATH]
So yes, I'm just about to sit down and sort out my materials. Best Beloved is cooking up an Indian storm, and we're quaffing a rather gorgeous red given to us by a loved person who has very good taste. Bumblebee has escaped down to Colonel Duck's prickle farm, where apparently he learned to drive the ride-on mower all by himself today. He told me he's allowed to drive it anytime, as long as he lets an adult know first.
[TAKE A DEEP BREATH]
So have a nice week, do lots of internut persnickery without me, and I'll be back before you can take a full yogic breath.
I'll just leave you with this:
And this one, because I'm wishful thinking...
*I have brought out the big guns: olive leaf extract and lashings of my special sick soup. Take that, evil germs and bugger off.
Tonight, out with the In-laws, we had the opposite dining experience to last night; M-i-L insisted upon eating a huge dessert even though she's a diabetic, so we went to the local Italian for coffee and luscious cakes.
Chatting away merrily, Bumblebee taking photos of us all with Grandma's camera, when a couple next to us suddenly erupted into globs of molten outrage, hissing at the young waitress in disgust about hearing from lawyers, and stalked off, leaving a table with two half-glasses of wine, and a garlic bread with two slices on plates with one bite out of each.
All of us nearby were mystified, having missed the initial inflammatory situation. Best Beloved made a joke out loud that their forks had been placed on the wrong side, and the group at the table next to us turned and said 'REALLY?!' which made us laugh.
We asked the waitress (after she'd composed herself) and it turned out to be as pathetic as if the forks HAD been on the wrong side: she'd forgotten to bring their bread until just before the hissy fit, and he'd said that if the bread was on the table at the same time as the meal he'd be walking out. I think she'd just come out to tell him that, sorry, their meals *were* imminent, and he'd erupted.
I should be addressing this question to the Devil Drink at Progressive Dinner Party. Is such a situation really so bad as to stalk off? I secretly suspect he'd discovered that he'd left his wallet at home or some such thing.
Last night a posse of true believers (and me) went to teh Canberra Theatre to see Keating! The Musical.
A small selection of us had a quick dinner in a Thai restaurant in Civic, who told us when we tried to order dessert, that 'the kitchen was too busy to make desserts', even though there was a fab dessert section on the menu. Well, puck you too, we thought. Let's just go to the theatre a bit early and have an alcoholic dessert whilst we await the others. I've never had a restaurant refuse things like that before. How rude was that?
I loved Keating! It's spare and clever stagecraft was excellent, and the ensemble were brilliant -- and I totally include the band in that statement.
My favorite song sequence was this one (although this is a an abridged and uncostumed version):
Happy Mothers Day to any of you that partake in such rituals, and an extra special hello to Jahteh and Lady Duck (and anyone else who has lost their children).
My MD treat was a cooked breakfast in bed then being allowed to have as long as I wanted to print book pages in the BookStud without guilt-inducing phonecalls or pleas to come home. As it turned out, I was horrendously hung-over from a wee dinner-party with my sister outlaw and her current moistie* plus Zoe and Owen and squillions of little boys here at Chez Duck (details of the food to be guested posted at Progrock Dinner Party when I pull my finger out), so I only managed to print 200 pages with many quick breaks to play Scramble and Scrabble and unscramble my braincells, and I was home by 5.30pm, ready for a hair of the dog. It was a pretty good printing day, but not to full capacity.
Best Beloved took Bumblebee to see the Duntroon Dixieland Band at Old Parliament House (I made up a song about it tonight to the tune of 'Spiderpig' (Spiderman) to amuse B and now I can't get it out of my head:
Dixieband, Dixieband Does whatever a Dixieband does.. Does it swing? Yes it can, It can swing, it's a Dixieband. Look out! Duntroon Dixieband...)
and then they went to JB HiFi, BB's fav shop, to spend his birthday money. He came home with series 2 of Jonathon Creek and a couple of other things. Bumblebee, despite having been with BB when he bought it, asked him tonight why he'd bought series 2 and not series 1. We have a family policy of answering dumb questions with equally dumb answers, so I wasn't surprised at the start of this exchange, but I was most admiring by the rest of it:
BB: Well, the makers of Jonathon Creek decided that it was such a good concept that they wouldn't bother making a first series, just jump straight in with series two.
B (clicking): Oh yeah, right...
BB: BUMBLEBEE, do you think I'm making this up?
B: Yeah, of course!
BB: So the makers of Star Wars jumped right in at the first movie, did they?!
B: ...
[He started looking puzzled and scratched his head, until I completely lost it and started giggling.]
It was fun to watch it tonight; I'd forgotten how much I like Maddy as a character.
*I've always wanted to use that line, but now I feel guilty. He's a lovely man, and it was nice to meet him :)
Forgive me; Best Beloved is away for a couple of days, I've had one too many wines to work efficiently (blame TV for that), my computer says it's an hour earlier than it is (I'll regret that in the morning) and Blogosphere is mine.
Actually, I'll ask forgiveness of a few people while I'm here:
-- Tim T. I really don't play Scrabble with anyone else like I play with him. Bingoes everywhere, all the best letters fall my way. Sometimes it happens with Lexicon Harlot, and Pavlov's Cat as well. But no one else, I swear. The rest of them thrash me in even shares, especially my sister outlaw, Naomi. She's a killer on the board. I've only won against her once, according to my memory, and we've played nearly every day for a year now.
-- Anyone who believed in Earth Hour. I didn't do it. I forgot. But. I was talking to a colleague the other day, and was shocked to find out that she leaves every. light. on. in. her. large. house. every. night. She & her family 'don't like the dark'. She also drives home for lunch every day. A colleague of BB's does a full washing machine of washing every. day. And she lives by herself. Stories like that make me feel that in my household, every day is Earth Day.
-- Anyone whose blog I leave a comment on. I notice that quite often I leave a comment on someone's blog and it's the last comment they get on that post. I must be a conversation killer. Either that or I am just lucky enough to get the last word. Whatever.
[OMG I'm in love with Marshall & the Fro and Juzzie Smith: see the last post for the music I'm listening to]
-- My bathroom. Our Tastic light blew the other day and I replaced it with one of those long-life fluoro lights, but chose Daylight White rather than Warm White. Suddenly the room looks filthy. Before, we could ignore the soap scum and the light mould, but now... it's going to get the cleaning of it's life. Maybe.
Enough apologies. Let's move on.
No, let's go to bed. I have a vet to see and a class on coptic binding in the morning. And no matter what my computer says, it's still 10.30pm, and I need to make the bed before I sleep. There's nothing like clean, fresh linen when you're sleeping by yourself.*
Well, that was the weekend that was. Easter, the time for the National Folk Festival! We always get season tickets, because it's only ten minute's bike ride from our house, and has the added bonus of some of our lovely relatives working there (they run the stall that sells the official Festival t-shirts, along with other lovely things), so it's our chance to spend some (reasonably) quality time with them.
I don't actually do a lot at the Festival; I find that once I'm through the gates, I leave the rest of the world outside, and my poor overworked brain just goes into meltdown. I tend to sit quietly in corners and watch the other people getting excited about the gigs, and I also grasp the golden opportunity to spend hours doing nothing but reading -- so if you were there, and you saw a woman sitting in the corner of a concert reading a novel and tapping along absently, that was me. I read the whole of The Kite Runner yesterday.
The quiet starts to each day gave me a chance to whip into the BookStud and do some printing. Today I managed to print about 150 halves of a brochure before I rode up to the Festival. Feels good to flake out knowing that something's been done to lower the tideline of the in-tray.
Anyhoo. I did catch some good acts, mostly because each day I went to the Infinity Tribute session. Every year they choose a corny theme, and invite Festival acts to participate in a competition to play covers according to the theme. They started years ago, unimaginatively, with Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' (making it any Led song would have been Teh Bomb), and since have progressed through Bob Dylan (limiting it to the 'Blood on the Tracks' LP), ABBA, Queen, The Sound of Music, and this year they did Grease. It's a fabulous way to get a taste of a variety of acts, and I invariably discover someone/something that I later follow around the festival like a puppy dog.
This year my crush was on a group called The Fourth Realm, who used to be The Fellowship of the Strings. Imagine Anna and Agnetha, mix them up with Stevie and Christine, throw in some dulcimer and harp and some very 70s folk rock, and you have a heady mix of fabulousness. I saw all their gigs at the festival, including what turned out today to be their last. gig. eva. [sob]
Martin Pearson, one of my fav funny men, had quite a low-key but excellent contribution to the festival this year. He gave a book reading of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man, divided into four sessions. I only missed the second part, thanks to a programming irriot who put the Grease heats on at the same time. Choices, choices! I knew Martin would give a precis of the previous episode each day, so I followed the action.
The readings were terrific; he's a very clear, expressive reader, and he does excellent voices. I'd be very happy to buy him narrating Pratchetts for audio books, and I hope he recorded this one for release. Unfortunately the crowd dwindled more each day -- but those who remained were quality crowd :)
Mal Webb, my other darling festival funnyman, did an excellent job with his Grease act. He did so well that he won the whole thing. He worked out that most of the songs in Grease use the same timing, and took advantage of this (and his magic recording pedal) to make a vertical medley. I recorded it -- but in one of my best DOH! moments, I've done it sideways on my camera (he looked so good in a portrait format!). If you have a bad neck, don't try to watch -- until the last minute or so -- but it's really, truly worth a listen. In the first few seconds his microphone is having problems, but then it kicks in. He's so frigging clever. And do hang about for the high kick at the end, lithe bugger.
I taped a few other acts, which I'll add later, because they're taking forever to download.
Other highlights: -- Liz Frencham (as ever. That woman can do NO wrong) -- Rory McLeod -- Dr Stovepipe -- King Curly -- Martin Pearson's blackboard gig last night, when he sang his triumphant "Farewell John Howard" song (that's the polite way to describe it), to the crowd's utter delight. -- Catching Zoe's choir performance. Zoe has joined a world music choir, delighting in the fact that with world music she only needs to learn bits of songs. Unfortunately she is too tall to hide amongst the other singers, pretending that she knows the words:
Zoe is not standing on a box.
Luckily she seemed to know the words and looked like she had a lot of fun.
Over the weekend I drank a hell of a lot of Troubadour mulled wine, and ate a lot of chocolate. Bumblebee ran wild all weekend, and is now sleeping like a log after being completely exhausted and in tears all evening. Tomorrow will seem weirdly mundane after all the colour and fun.
PS: I did forget to write last night (half asleep!) that if you want a really good low-down on the Festival, check out Enny-Pen's efforts. She did lots more than me, and has better photos. And I'm glad she covered the weirdest act in the Grease heatlap trials. BTW, Enny, I had a similar reaction to your mum re. David LaMotte, but I warmed to him eventually. I think it's the Michael Bolton hair and the accent. He'd look ever so much better with a short back and sides :)
When I woke up yesterday, I had my full complement of braincells. Today, sadly, not so, thanks to the cocktail party I attended last night. Flung by one of BB's public service mates, there was a bench covered in jugs of exotic and potent liquids of all colours. It made me think of Snape's potions class.
Since I knew no-one, and couldn't partake of much of the acronym-laden conversations about how busy everyone has been since January, I resolved to have one of each cocktail and enjoy myself. I did so, and now can't remember much of the convoluted bus ride home from the outer reaches of Gunghalin to our humble abode in Downer, and I'm amazed at how well I feel today, apart from the urge to drink water every ten minutes and a slight fuzziness which I'm sure is my brain trying to pull its tatty bits together.
I do remember cats. She has four cats, none of whom are related to each other. They were very hot, poor dears, and spent a lot of time flopping just out of arm's reach. We were very hot too, but a lot of crushed ice and alcohol can do wonders for that. I wasn't as bad as the mob who ended up lying on a mat on the front lawn slobbering and moaning as they reeled under the stars, but I was pretty jolly.
And I remember seeing balloons in the sky yesterday morning on the way back from the Farmer's Market. Hot air balloons in the sky in Canberra are a wonderful sign of autumn (although they're usually accompanied by frosty mornings), and always mean that I'm going to have a good day, probably because I feel so uplifted by the sight of them. Maybe I feel good today because the Balloon Day magic worked, and I was protected by all the hot air around me last night :)
Still batching my books, a bit slower today, but getting a respectable pile together. Must put some images up to show you. [Makes mental note to do so, and it goes skipping through the lacy holes in my brain patterns.]
-- Ms Fits' theory that racists cannot spell, especially on Facebook.
Interesting things I have found whilst skulking:
-- A very good reproduced book about bookbinding, for anyone who wants to know how it's done, and for those who already know but wonder whether they're doing it correctly.
-- A forum of photocopier technicians who helped me track down a drum for the Book Studio's decrepit but beloved copier. Someone called "Mr Spock" told me what to do in a thinly veiled tone of sarcasm, but I was so grateful I hope I melted his wannabe Vulcan heart.
Between skulkings I have been wrangling my very late tax, preparing for the return of students next week, and sewing books. And sewing books. And doing tax. And doing tax. etc etc ad nauseum.
I am trying to photograph Mr Padge's curly recovering tail for you, but it's very tricky, because he is black. The tail will now always curl, and the hair growing back is mostly white, so he will be our ring-tailed possum.
