A new one just begun!

[Have I now put that song into your head too?  I swear I did not even hear it at all this Christmas and yet it plays, incessantly, on a loop inside my wayward mind. Hush, mind! Let's focus on other things.]

Wintry sunset over Romsey, Jan 2010.

2009:

On the me-blogging front, I was reasonably consistent and regular. Yay me!

On the creative writing front, I was irregular, inconsistent and unsatisfactory, but at least I wrote some, and much more than I have in the past.  Boo me!

On the life front, it was all over the place. Yay-and-boo me.

The year started out crazy busy at work and I came up with a great idea on how to improve my sleep: give up caffeine.  That proved a foolish idea and instead made me hazy and dull, so I reverted to my habit. Despite lack of caffeine, I sustained about a week of glee about the settled snow in February.

Spring rolled in and my bulbs flowered; this was terribly exciting.  But with spring came rather a lot of sad news from home and I felt far away, selfish and useless. I got over that and time marched on, as it does.

Summer, as well as my sister, came to England, heralding much busy-ness but of the fun gallivanting-and-touristing kind, rather than the head-down-at-work-don’t-answer-the-phone-it-will-only-be-another-problem-to-sort-out kind.  I cycled lots, camped quite a bit, sprained my ankle not once but twice, and, best of all, saw puffins.

I also ushered through a so-called milestone birthday, over which I vacillated about doing something big, something interesting or something spectacular. Realising however that it’s just a meaningless number and another day, I  just had a low-key non-event of a few people ’round to my house for some food.  I felt no different the day after as I had the day before, except that there were a whole lot more dirty dishes in my kitchen than there usually are.

Autumn arrived as a bit of shock.  Despite my unpreparedness, leaves turned yellow, red and brown and the wind and the rain came through, blowing and washing away all vestiges of summer. My partner and I thought it would be fun to pit ourselves against the weather and so cycled in wind and rain around Brittany, France, happily fueled by lots of pain au chocolats, galettes and seafood.  The weather won.

Winter seems darker, colder and longer than it has in the past, but I remind myself that around this time last year we were also impatient for spring, we were also feeling a bit worn down by the dreary wet, dark cold winter, we also thought it was colder than the previous year.  Nevertheless, there had been days of beautifully crisp blue skies, which we had enjoyed in our usual way and which there would be this year, too.  And so I was right.

2010: a new year, just begun.

Robin, Old Winchester Hill, Jan 2010.

Yesterday, I failed to go to work.

As is usual, lately, I stood at the top of our stairs, looking out our hallway window onto the street.  I check for snow, and the past few days have not failed me.  Yesterday morning, however, I saw shiny black streets and a young woman picking her way carefully along the pavement.  “Ah, icy again,” I thought.  On Monday, it was icy but we made it safely to work and the ride was quite enjoyable, with everyone – drivers, other cyclists and walkers – being very friendly and community-minded.  It’s so nice cycling along and having a stranger call out at you, “It’s icy ahead! Take care!”  I responded with, “It’s icy behind! You take care, too!”

After breakfast, I donned all my layers and made my way outside.  Our driveway was very icy and I minced my way towards the gate.  There is a little slope from our driveway to the road and this was treacherous on Monday morning and therefore even more slippery yesterday morning.  As I finished my careful manouvering of self and bike out the gate, I heard my front door open and my partner say, “Oanh, I don’t think you should go to work today.”  I, too, had been wondering if I could actually get safely to work and had been considering returning to change my heeled boots for hiking boots and walking in, rather than biking.  A few seconds of indecision later, I turned back, again juggling bike and self along our icy driveway and back into the house.

I checked the internet – Met Office, Highways Agency, BBC Weather News – to ascertain that it was, indeed, very icy out there and that there had been two very big, multiple car accidents (thankfully no one seriously hurt) at two major intersections near my house.  A few phone calls later and I settled in to work from home.

It was eerily silent around our neighbourhood.  Normally, we hear the low hum of cars, but the only sounds were emergency vehicles’ sirens in the distance.  The first car to pass our house that morning was a fire truck, at 11am.  Then there were no others until about 3pm, by which time rain had warmed the ice sufficiently for it to melt away, making the roads safe again.

I continued to peer out our hallway window every now and then, spying on the world.  I watched as one of my neighbours inched her way painstakingly along the pavement, ungloved hands steadying herself on ice-covered fences.  Another neighbour came out of his front door to have a word with her. He stepped onto his driveway and then slid, remarkably quickly, into the middle of the road towards her.  Amazingly, he remained upright the entire time (and I was glad for him as he looked to be in his 60s and I would not have liked for him to have fallen onto hard, cold ice).  After a quick chat, he turned back to his house.  He shuffled along the road and stepped onto the pavement, carefully but confidently.  Then he stepped onto his driveway and slid back onto the road.  He then stepped sideways onto a little patch of lawn, walked along it to his door and stepped onto his driveway again.  Before he could get a handle on his door, however, he had slid, once more, all the way back onto the road.  I watched him try to get back into his house for half a minute, before the tension of it was too much and I turned away.  Later, when I looked, there was no one outside, so I trust he made it back; but I bet he regretted that quick chat he had with the neighbour!

That evening, my partner and I cycled through a hailstorm, with lightning and thunder accompanying us, to a pub to celebrate with a friend who had just handed in his PhD thesis.  When lightning flashed in the sky, I started counting, “One one thousand, two one thousand …” to discover that there were about 10 seconds between a flash and the low, ominous rumbling of thunder.  I haven’t been inside a storm like that since Brisbane.  About 100 metres from our destination, it began to hail; hard little balls of ice bounced off my helmet, pinged upon my bell and whipped my poor, frozen cheeks.  Other than my face, however, the rest of me was perfectly warm and fine.  We got inside the well-heated pub, steam drawing away from us.  For a few long minutes, I could see nothing as my glasses had entirely fogged up and I had not yet peeled off enough layers to find a dry bit of material upon which to wipe my glasses.

I hate this part of going into dry inside from wet outside.  I need a few minutes, alone, to de-layer and wipe my glasses and dry my face off, but usually there is hustle and bustle and greetings to be performed all while I drip, drip, drip and when I can’t see anyone anyway.  “Hi!” I say, high-pitched and a little hysterical, directed into a corner where I think people are, though I’m not positive if they are or, indeed, who.  Still, the Christmas lights were very pretty with my glasses off – lots of natural bokeh for me – and I settled in eventually, wrapping my fingers gratefully around a cup of tea while everyone else (now recognised) nestled pints of something-or-other.

We have no plans for travelling over the Christmas/New Year period and I am very glad.  It is wetter and gloomier this year, though the chance of a white Christmas is higher.  I think it is better, if the weather is going to keep kicking my butt likethis, that I stay inside and make only small journeys from my warm house to someone else’s warm house.

I’ve had 3 cold Christmases so far and they have each been different from the other.  On the other side of the world, my family are gathering at an apartment beside the beach.  They will probably be eating prawns (nice, proper big ones), goi cuon, grilled fish and lots of watermelon while I sleep.  Then, while they sleep, I will be eating roast chicken, roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots, stir-fried brussels sprouts and lots & lots of pudding.

If you’re somewhere cold, stay warm!

If you’re somewhere hot, keep cool!

Happy Merry Whatever-You-Celebrate Greetings and if you don’t celebrate anything, I hope you have a nice couple of days anyway.

Last year, after our visit to Australia, my partner and I returned with gifts for Boss & Cherub.

For Boss, we got a kangaroo hand-puppet from the Australian Geographic Shop and a copy of The Magic Pudding from the ABC Shop. Boss is a great reader.

For Cherub, we got a wombat hand-puppet and a copy of Possum Magic from the same respective shops. Cherub likes picture books and loves being read to.

We gave Boss & Cherub their furry animal gifts first, Boss was most appreciative and thanked us. He was in a ‘big boy’ phase, methinks.

Cherub unwrapped the wombat hand-puppet, took one look at it and buried his head in his mother’s lap and said, close to tears, “It’s not what I wanted!” I bit my lip and looked over at my partner, pulling an “Oh no! We’ve made Cherub cry!” face. B&C’s Mum, mortified, tried to reassure us, “He’ll like it soon. It will probably become Favourite Wombat before long! Really.” Equally, I tried to reassure her, with a smile, that it did not matter if he did not like the gift. After all, giving a gift is half the fun and it’s really okay by me if my gift languishes in the back of a cupboard.

B&C’s mum started telling Cherub about gratefulness when receiving gifts, irrespective of what they are.

I then pulled out the rectangular wrapped objects and said, “Um, there’s another, each.” Now, some people like to receive books as presents. I am one of those people. My partner is another. B&C’s Mum is another. We are not a rare breed, certainly, but book-giving is difficult, especially for children, which is why we had also bought the furry animals. We were both a little worried about how the books would go down and really did not want to make Cherub actually cry. “It’s, um, well, it’s obvious what it is,” said I as I handed them over. The books were what we had really wanted to give the kids.

Boss opened his and seemed mighty pleased, sounding out the title and flipping through the book straight away to have a little read, as much as he could, anyway. My partner and I started talking over the top of each other to explain The Magic Pudding to B&C’s Mum, to explain who Norman Lindsay was, who the Lindsay family were and what they meant to Australia’s literary, creative and artistic culture at the turn of the century (or thereabouts). I think I got a plug in there for Joan Lindsay and Picnic at Hanging Rock, too.

Cherub moved to his own chair and opened his book. Once fully revealed he looked up at us with huge eyes and said, “This is EXACTLY what I have ALWAYS wanted ever since I was VERY LITTLE.”

Trying to repress our laughter, we nodded seriously at Cherub and said something along the lines of, “Oh good,” while B&C’s Mum interjected with, “From one extreme to the other!”

I find Cherub’s announcement difficult to believe as his mother, a children’s books aficionado, had never heard of the (Australian) best-selling Possum Magic (it’s pretty darn famous in Aus, and I remember it fondly from my childhood.)

This year, we got them both books without worrying too much that they would not like them. It was a less eventful present opening and both were appreciative.

But Cherub, despite being another year older and now in school, still came out with a few gems.

The first was pre-gift giving. He had been just larking about quite happily when it became obvious that something had just occurred to him and it was Very Important. He clambered onto the chair next to mine and said, “Oanh! Oanh!” to which, of course, the only reply is, “Yes, Cherub?” His hand reached up to my left cheek – he likes to hold onto you when he’s talking to you – and rested there. Without breaking eye contact or blinking he said, most seriously, “You and Partner do not have any children.”

“No, Cherub. This is true. We don’t.”

“And you don’t know if you are going to have any children, either. Do you?”

“That, too, is also true.”

“Okay.”

And he left, to return to his larking.

The next was after gift-giving, when it was Cherub’s bedtime. He wanted to paint a picture. He had been briefly diverted by the gift giving but as soon as it was unwrapped, appreciated and thanked for, he went right back to his earlier plan, “Okay, I need some paper and black paint. Then I am going to paint one layer and wait for it to dry. Then I’m going to paint another layer and wait for it to dry. Then I’m going to paint another layer and wait for it to dry. And then I will need green paint.”

“Right-o,” said I. “And what will you do with the green paint?”

Cherub looked at me like I was daft. “I don’t know yet. It takes a long time for paint to dry. And I will probably do something else.”

I tried to persuade him that watching paint dry could be fun but he got a bit upset, so I dropped it. Later, he said to his mum with utmost concern, “I don’t have to watch paint dry, do I? I don’t want to.”

The best, however, was pre-dinner, as we were all trying to work out who sat where. Cherub chose a seat next to my Partner and then said to his mum, “I want to sit next to Oanh because I like Oanh.” This made me more ridiculously happy than anything else at all. And I’m still chuffed about it.

Best. Present. Ever.

I had dinner with Boss and Cherub and their parents the other weekend and B&C’s Mum asked what we were doing on Christmas day. They, of course, have a host of family lunches and dinners to get to, which will involve much driving from one place to another place. We have organised Christmas lunch (which will undoubtedly roll into dinner then late into the evening) with a few other non-British couples who all just happen to be childless. B&C’s Mum laughed and said, “So, all the childless Christmas cynics are celebrating Christmas together!”

I related the above story to a workmate and she said, “You? No! Oanh is not a cynic!” and then wandered back to her desk, leaving me at the photocopier pondering the comment she had just made.

I have changed. I used to be such a Christmas grump.

In Australia, I did not exactly hate Christmas, it was just a very meh, over-hyped, over-commercialised occasion that had lost any meaning that I could glean.

Over time, I have removed myself from popular consumerist culture: no women’s magazines, no TV; very few newspapers (I read my news online with ads turned off). Interestingly, now that I cycle to work (and most other places too), I don’t even see much poster advertising, so I really am removed from popular culture – except for blogging (which, in its own way, is very much a guage of popular culture).

Christmas is no pressure for me: my partner and I don’t get each other Christmas presents; my family are far away and, anyway, I am exempt from my sister’s organised (not very) Secret Santa draw as the rules are (1) only the kids get presents and (2) you have to buy for the number of kids you have; my partner’s family are far away; and we have very few friends over here.

So Christmas can be whatever I want it to be. I can take all that joy and excitement and direct it whither I will. Everyone else’s excitement – for whatever reason and whatever Christmas means to them (if it’s religious, great; if it’s because you’re hanging out for that bang-up fabulous gift, good for you; if you like roast turkey and trimmings, cool; or, oddly, ‘piggies in blankets’ (ugh), you are weird but that’s your business, not mine) – it’s infectious. I’m infected.

When I cycle home, the Christmas lights in people’s front windows are warm and inviting (‘though I don’t think they’d be much pleased if a bedraggled, cold and wet cyclist rocked up, despite the abundant seasonal cheer I have).

I grocery-shopped, dreading Christmas tunes. Instead, as I was standing in line, I heard someone singing off-key:

Rudolf the dum da dumdaaar
Had a very la la laaaaa
And if you blah-ba ba baaaaa
Dum dee dumdee dum dee DAAAAA.
DUM dee blah-blah Christmas EEEEVE
Dumdee dum la SAY
Rudolf with your hmmm so daaar
Won’t you dee hmmm dee DAAAAA

Bemused, I turned around to see the shopping basket collector half-singing, half-mumbling, mostly mangling the song, but grinning and ever-so happy. Did she really not know the lyrics? How lovely. Instead of saying sorry when she bumped into people or excuse me when she had to get past them, she would cry out, “Merry Christmas!” at the top of her lungs and then keep singing her version of Rudolf. I’m sure she must have annoyed some people but it’s quite difficult to stay annoyed at someone so blithely good-natured. She really did like Christmas.

The tall guy behind me in the queue got this wild-eyed look on his face when she ‘Merry Christmas’ed him and I whispered at him, “You just have to say Merry Christmas back and then she’ll leave you alone.” He muttered, “Merry Christmas” and she beamed at him. Slowly, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards into a smile. I winked at her and she winked back, though I did not get a Merry Christmas. Possibly she knew who needed cheering up so saved her hearty enthusiasm for them. Me? I’d been grinning ever since I’d first heard her off-key, off-kilter Rudolf.

(As an aside, I like winking. Do you like winking? Why is it not more widespread?)

I’ve even been writing cards, making origami wreaths and thinking about making truffles to give to workmates for Christmas.

Also, I am hoping that it will snow. Despite the low probability of this occurring, I’m optimistic. And I will remain optimistic until all hope is gone (it’s just the sort of girl I am).  By then I’ll also be busy making the trimmings for a Christmas lunch with the Childless Cynics (sounds like a good band name to me), enjoying mulled wine (or apple juice, if you’re me, which you’re not because I’m me and you’re you) and probably talking and laughing. A lot of each, thereof.

Yep, I’m totally infected. Watch out – it’s contagious.

Pine trees covered in snow. Obviously Christmas trees. (Photo from somewhere-in-Germany, March 2008)

It has been wet and windy in Southern England.  It’s probably been wet and windy elsewhere, too.  After a hectic autumn, my partner and I have spent the last few weekends at home, mooching.  During one of our mooches, I wondered aloud where some of our old photos had got to.

We had some great photos of bushwalks we did in Australia and I wanted them.

I realised, in answering a comment on my Requiem for a Ricoh R7 post, that we have only been using a digital camera since about October 2005, when my sister gave me her old Olympus because she wanted to upgrade to something more compact and that had *fewer* confusing buttons.  (And here I am looking for things that have *more* confusing buttons).

Do you remember the days when a camera was a rare thing?

Before the Olympus, I never owned a camera.  When I went on trips, I would buy a disposable camera and husband my photographs oh-so carefully.  I often husbanded so well that it would be months after a holiday that I would finally finish the film in the camera and get the photos developed.  Imagine that – fewer than 36 photos from a weekend trip.  Actually, we took one holiday – a two week camping, hiking and driving adventure from Perth in Western Australia, down to the Great Australian Bight, across the Nullarbor and into South Australia and Adelaide – from which we had fewer than 36 photos. These days we have something like 200 photos from a weekend, of which about 60 are ‘keepers’.

I was so sure we had photos from a hike up to Mt Mitchell in the Main Range National Park and I wanted to find those photos.  We had taken photos of a spunky skink, a spiky sunflower-type wildflower and the unique peak of Mt Cordeaux – another mountain just across Cunningham’s Gap from Mt Mitchell.  These are all fairly typical photography subjects for us: the local fauna, the local floral and mountains.  Lots of photos of mountains.

Then I remembered: the photos I was after were in our pre-digital days.  They were only in albums, tucked carefully away in my partner’s parents’ house.  After we had reached the summit of Mt Mitchell, there was but one photo left.  Because the bushwalk was an up-and-back track (rather than a circular one), we’d seen and photographed the interesting things on the way up already.  This meant I could use the last photo for something I wanted a photo of but would never have wasted a picture on:- the steps taking us up to the summit.  As we were on the last photo and that camera also had pictures from our trip in Cairns a few months earlier, I took a photo of the steps to use the film up.  About 5 metres on from the steps, we encountered an enormous python with gorgeous markings sprawled across the path.  Oh, the recriminations heaped upon my head for using that last photograph on some steps.

I was also absolutely certain we had some fabulous photographs of kookaburras and I wanted them.  My partner said casually, “They’re probably on one of the CDs of the backups of your computer that we did.  Where else would they be?”  And, of course (oh, this is so aggravating), he was right.

Kookaburra sits on our old Hills Hoist ...

But along with the photos of the kookaburras, I found 58 (give or take) photos of a sunset from a lookout near Witches Creek Falls, Mt Tamborine.  I started laughing when I saw these photos.  “Remember these?” My partner looked puzzled, briefly, and then recalled them.  We had walked to a lookout to watch the sun set during one of our laziest ever holidays.   The lookout was to Queensland’s ‘Scenic Rim’, an arc of mountains south west of Brisbane, where we also spent a lot of time.  While at the lookout, I’m sure there was a bit of both of us wishing we’d gone up to those mountains instead of to much tamer Tamborine (it’s nice enough but not very satisfactory for active bushwalkers like us; the trails are too short, all less than 4kms or so).  My partner has a thing for sunsets.  He can’t stop taking photos of them and he always justifies his excessive phototaking with, “But the light kept changing!”

And that was the moment of my epiphany: with a digital camera, he could just keep snapping away to his heart’s delight and then dump the photos onto my laptop and forget about them until 4 years later.  Brilliant.

The task of sorting through the sunset photos for some keepers is too much for me at the moment.  I’ll show you some (but not 58) when I can work up the energy to be sufficiently discriminating.

Oh, and Queenslanders – the walks from Cunningham’s Gap to either Mt Mitchell (left hand side of the road if you are standing with your back to Qld and facing into NSW – you do have to cross the highway from the picnic ground / car park to find the start of the walk…) or Mt Cordeaux (right hand side of the road as above etc leaving directly from the carpark) are fantastic, easy walks very accessible from Brisbane as a day trip.  I like Mt Cordeaux best, because it’s a walk through rainforest and then emerging onto an exposed summit – wonderful place for lunch.  Mt Mitchell is a great and very easy uphill stroll for about 5 kms but is very exposed and so not great during the height of summer.  Oh, and on your way back to BrisVegas, stop in Rathdowney Aratula * for a burger.  You won’t regret it.

* UPDATE / EDIT / CORRECTION: Oh, I am such a LIAR.  You will regret going to Rathdowney if you are heading back to BrisVegas from Cunningham’s Gap – it’s in the opposite direction and will set you back about 2 hours.  The place to stop for a burger is Aratula.  Still, you should go to Rathdowney sometime, and *then* onto Mt Barney.  Mt Barney is great.

A little while ago, I told you how we lost our last camera: the lovely Olympus C750.  This is the eulogy for our Ricoh Caplio R5.  It has been with us but a short time and not all of it happy but it served us well.  I am sorry it is gone; more so because I am its murderess.

The Caplio started its life with us as an almost impulsive buy to replace the much-missed Olympus.  We were new in the UK and had not sent any photos back to our families, as we had none.  A week before our first holiday in the UK, I visited the local camera store and bought it.  They did not have any of the cameras I really wanted.  It was on special; it was compact; it did fantastic macros and it had a powerful optical zoom for such a litle camera. Sold.

It served us very well for a few months.

Damn fine macro photo of a snail, if you ask me. April 2007.

It took pretty fine wide-angles, too: Franscican Monastery at Assissi, Italy, July 2007.

Then on our first overnight hike in the UK, we had a minor accident with the Caplio.  My partner and I had barrelled down a mountainside to try to get to a pub before it most probably stopped serving lunch – some country pubs in the UK are bizarrely strict about dining times. We walked into a pub in a Welsh village at about 3 minutes past 2pm and were greeted with an unfriendly: “We’ve stopped serving.”  Disappointed and not a little discombobulated by the customer service, we went outside to discuss our options.  My partner was holding the Caplio, but also juggling some other things and, in extracting the map so that we could consider our options, he dropped the camera.

Do you ever do that thing where if you have done something you know to be bad, your next moves are then very quick as if by speed you could erase the deed?

With lightning speed I bent down and picked the camera up from the pavement and cradled it in the palm of my hand.  I think I turned it on again to discover that it still turned on.  So I turned it off and we dealt with the more pressing matter of food and the rest of our day’s walk to our intended campsite for the night.

Yskyryd Fawr - shortly before The Unfortunate Lunch & Camera Incident of August 2007.

Our accident with the Caplio resulted in it becoming more temperamental – it still worked, but sometimes it would not turn on at all; or it just would not take a photo; or it saved a photo to its hard-drive rather than the memory card.  Also,  dropping it had allowed dust to get onto the lens and we learned that we would not be able to clean that dust away. So now, there was a blotch on the camera.  The dust, too, would be temperamental: sometimes present and ruining photos, sometimes minimal and able to cleaned away in post processing, and sometimes a photo could be framed to hide the dust spot.  Not ideal photo taking conditions, but still fine and, occassionally, pretty good.

Still taking good photos - straight out of camera shot: Flowering Quince with Snow, Frankfurt, Germany, March 2008.

Then we bought the Fuji Finepix s9600, with which we are very happy except that it is heavy and bulky.  Having the Fuji – which had more manual controls than the Caplio – made me learn more about photographing well and I was able to apply that knowledge to the Caplio, to take better photos with it.

We stopped using the Caplio for a while.  Sometimes, I can be particularly dim.  I had an epiphany one day when packing that we could take both cameras on our trips.  This is especially useful when we are cycling as my partner and I cycle at different speeds (guess who’s slower? If you think it’s the shorty-pants, you’d be right.)  Each of us having a camera means that we don’t miss out on taking photos of things like, oh, caterpillars on the side of the road.

My partner was nowhere in sight when I spotted this spunky caterpillar, Pembrokeshire, Wales, July 2009.

Both cameras were with us for our recent trip to France.  For most of our week, the weather was unsettled.  That is, it rained, then the sun came out, then the wind blew, then the rain came in sideways and then the sun came out again.  We’re reasonably phlegmatic about weather – we’ll generally just keep on doing whatever we had intended to do.  As we were staying in a wonderful apartment in Dinan, we spent more days inside, reading, lazing, playing Carcassone then we would normally if the weather had not been so unsettled.

Our last day dawned lovely, with crisp, clear skies.  The night before we had decided to make a long day’s ride from Dinan to St Malo, from where our ferry would take us back to England.  St Malo is about 30kms on a bike (that is, taking smaller roads and not the most direct route) north of Dinan, but we had decided we would make a sort of triangular trip, about 35kms north-east out to Dol de Bretagne and then cutting back another 35 or so kms to St Malo, via Cancale – famous for its oysters.  I was particularly happy that we had blue skies.

The blue skies did not last long.  It drizzled on us as we flew along with a tail wind pushing us effortlessly into Dol de Bretagne.  It cleared when we were near Dol, visiting a standing stone (Menhir du Champ Dolent) and then started to rain again as we headed out towards the coast.  While cycling along the coast, we were buffeted by what felt like galeforce winds but the skies were blue.  At one stage, I was actually blown off my bicycle (luckily onto a nice soft grassy verge.)

It was raining lightly as we rolled into Cancale, thankfully with the wind behind us.  We located a decent looking restaurant with undercover, outside seating so we could keep an eye on our trusty steeds, and then began to peel off layers of waterproofs and fleeces before sitting down to a fantastic meal including, of course, the freshest and most delicious oysters I have ever tasted.

Oysters at Cancale, November 2009.

After lunch, it was still drizzling.  I stood up and started to replace my layers.  Last, I collected my rain jacket from the chair beside me.  My heart sunk when I heard a ka-thunk.  I looked down to see the Caplio in its nifty red Crumpler case looking back up at me reproachfully.  It had not been a drop; rather, I had flicked the Caplio from its resting place on top of my jacket (where I had, foolishly, placed it after taking the above photograph) onto the restaurant’s hard, wooden floor.  I did not retrieve it quickly.  I think I already knew that it could not take any more.  I tried to turn the Caplio on, but failed.

At our next stop, I found I could still turn the Caplio on but its auto-focus was completely gone (it has no manual focus).  It was bucketing down at this stage and the light was poor, so I was still hopeful that all was not lost.  Have I mentioned that I am ever an optimist?  The Caplio has always been rather rubbish in poor light, even before the first accident.

The next day, during a patch of bright, brilliant sunshine, I turned the Caplio on again.  It absolutely refused to focus on anything – near distance, far distance, middle distance; all blurry.  It’s over.  I’m sorry.

We had good times, the Caplio and me.  Together, we have visited more places in the 2 and 3/4 years we’ve been together than I had during my life before the Caplio.  With it, I reassurred my family of my continued existence and, occassionaly, graced them with snaps of my grinning mug.  With it, I have taken my best ever photograph of a dragonfly and learned to understand (and even manipulate) shallow depth of field.  With it, I have been almost comfortable taking snaps of food in restaurants.  With its dust-spot, I thought more about composition and I learned to post-process.  It has, actually, taught me a lot about photography.

Goodnight, Caplio.

*****

I feel like I am a poor custodian of cameras. First, drowning the Olympus; now defenestrating the Caplio.  Goodness knows what villainous deeds await the Fuji.

September and October were busy, busy months as my post on Solo Lentil Soup alluded to. On having a wee think about October I realise:-

1. October opened and we were in Ireland. Prior to that I had been away for a conference on the weekend. Law conferences are mean.

Dandelion Clock from Mean Law Conference, Oxford.

2. We came back (from Ireland) and started a language course – my first formal learning environment since finishing my law degree. Studying again is disconcerting and makes me rather nervous.

Raindrops on Crocosima, Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, Oct 2009.

3. We went to London for a weekend and a couple of weekends later, I went to London again. Although I have traipsed to London on quite a few occassions while living here, I very rarely take photographs. This time, I tried a bit harder to take photographs but even still, we did not have many. Partially, it seems as if everything is over photographed. Partially, the crowds bother me and I just want to escape them. And now, there is the added annoyance of wondering whether I am taking a photograph of something that I am not allowed to photograph because I might use that photograph for my terrorist plots.

Japanese Windflower. The photos are tangentially related to the immediately preceding paragraph. Except for this one. I just like this one. (And I have not sorted my London photos yet.)

4. On our first free weekend in about 2 months, we filled it to the brim with cycling. As we had house guests, we had not been for long rides; so we went for a long ride. Except that the long ride ended up being stop-start-abortive because I got two punctures (or one puncture not fixed correctly the first time).

The first puncture we fixed at a roundabout junction of two A-roads, with many passing cars, motorbikes and pedestrians. That sure was fun.

The second puncture we did not bother fixing, but instead changed the inner tube. Thankfully, the second puncture occured on the bike path, so we were surrounded by trees and it was blissfully peaceful. The only sounds were my grunts of annoyance as I struggled to (1) remove back wheel; (2) remove tyre; (3) replace inner tube; (4) replace tyre; (5) re-affix back wheel.

Naturally, the next day we had to go for another ride (plus the weather was glorious – my favourite crisp cold blue skies). We went for a less long ride but together, both rides made for a lot of riding plus one lovely long lazy Sunday lunch at a fabulous pub in the English countryside.

Gentian or Campion? I always mix those two up. I think it's a campion. The Burren, Ireland, October 2009.

5. Our next free weekend we ruined by staying up way too late at a friend’s place, nattering, playing computer games, watching silly Youtube videos (you know that party game, Have you seen, “Charlie bit me?” No? It’s on Youtube, you must see it. And so it goes.) On Saturday, we woke rather late.  Sunday was miserable weather. I spent the weekend crafting, cleaning my bike chain and, surprisingly, whooping my partner’s ass in Carcassone. Yay me!

Carcassone is a board game, in which you place tiles that have roads and city parts on them. You have a set of characters – known as Meeples – which you place on the tile to claim it; once placed the Meeple can become a Knight (city piece); thief (road piece) or Farmer (land piece). The aim is to gain points by building cities, roads and farms. Cities and roads are scored as they are completed and farms are scored when all tiles have been placed.

I don’t really have a strategy for Carcassone and what “strategy” I do have would not be called a strategy as such by more serious players. Usually, I try to place my Big Meeple (what my partner and I call a Beeple but I don’t think that’s orthodox) as a farmer as soon as possible because his continued presence in my ranks of Meeples stresses me out. Mostly, I play with an eye to aesthetics and how the land is developing. Sometimes I decide, “This game, I’m going to make lots of cities.” Often, I play and develop the land physically closest to me. I try to resist these tendencies but I’m not very good at it.

I never was very good at chess; I could not help wanting to save all my pieces. Losing even a single pawn would get me quite upset. As a war leader, I would more likely retreat or negotiate a peace settlement than make a, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead,”* type speech. My chess strategy involved dodging around evading capture until I did something stupid like expose my king to check and, sometimes, to checkmate. Conversely, when I used to play Lemmings (the computer game) I would rescue just the percentage I needed to get past that level and then blow all the rest up because their posture with the bomb above their heads and increasing panic as the numbers counted down made me giggle. Every. Single. Time.

Dear Partner, if you read the two preceding paragraphs, please erase all memory of it. In truth, I have excellent game strategies with multifarious strands and clearly developed endgame manouvers, which you will never learn. Never.

And, as of this weekend, we are off to France to cycle in that alleged cycle-touring mecca. In November. (We like cold weather.)

* Henry, from Shakespeare’s Henry V.

Did a lemming go down there? Me at the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland, October 2009.

I don’t think I remembered to show you this picutre.

Papa feeding his babies: House Martins, Corniglia, Italy, June 2009

They were terribly noisy.  In a narrow laneway, this neat nest filled with ravenous baby birds caught my attention.  I stood in the doorway opposite and watched.  I was no more than a body length away.

No one else paid them any mind until they saw me craning my neck and fiddling with my camera, taking shot after shot.  Unhappy, I switched cameras trying to get it right.  Eventually, I handed the Fuji to my partner, who wanted to have a look at the scenery or something ridiculous like that, while I stayed there and watched Papa’s amazingly accurate flight from nest to foraging ground and back to nest.  Papa left and returned at least 15 times while I stood and watched.  Equally, the faces around me changed at least 10 times.  People came and stood next to me.  A few would, “Ooh!” and some would, “Aah!”; most took a snap and wandered off.  I wanted to grab onto some of those people and say, “Just stay a bit.  You should see the way he flies.  And oh, the way that front one pokes its head out when Papa’s gone and checks us out.”  But they were off to the next thing.

I had to be dragged away, stumbling along the cobblestones and looking over my shoulder .

I cycle to and from work through The Common – a large expanse of park, not privately owned (hence its name), and used by joggers, cyclists, walkers, families and animals.  Apparently, deer even reside somewhere in its depths, but I have not spied any.  Although I am reasonably alert for most of my cycle ride, I am actually more alert cycling through The Common, than I am cycling along the road.  This is because cars behave mostly predictably (I can often tell when a car is going to turn out in front of me, turn across my path or just plain hasn’t noticed me) but joggers, walkers, dogs and kids do not.  Dogs and kids are particularly unpredictable; their perpetual wonderment and joy results in sudden stops, turns and changes in direction.  As a cyclist, one just has to keep a wary eye out.

One day last week, I entered The Common’s main path and pedalled merrily along, looking forward to being home and having dinner.  I passed two walkers, giving them a wide berth and not bothering to ding my bell.  I saw a young man walking a dog on a lead.  Ahead, a light brown dog ran madly alongside the path.  I watched her come towards me.  She was near the trees so not in my path, but I looked around to see if I could see her owner.  It is quite easy to tell who owns which dog, especially as the dog nears me.  Some owners bristle and glare at me suspiciously; others get nervous and try to control their dogs, while looking at me apologetically; many keep an eye on me as I keep an eye on their dog.  I saw no one to whom this brown dog could belong but it barrelled happily past me and I cycled on.

About three-quarters of the way along, I passed a young woman jogging.  Her breathing was ragged and irregular and I thought, “Well, good for you getting out and  running but perhaps you should walk a bit if it’s that difficult?”  I then heard her call out, “Mum! Wait!” and saw a woman up ahead turn and bring her arms up in a, “I don’t know” gesture, turn again and walk on, away from her daughter who wanted her to wait.  Naturally, I started making up stories about what was going on.  It was barely a minute later when I caught up with the mother.  She was walking in the middle of the path and looking left and right.  As I pulled level with her, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out, “Bonny! Bonny!”  Her voice was hoarse.  I cycled on but continued to hear both her and her daughter calling out, “Bonny! Bonny!”; their voices getting more desperate on each cry.

Wondering if they might be looking for the brown dog I saw down the other end of The Common, I wheeled my bike around and said to the mother, “Are you looking for a dog?”

“Yes! A golden labrador! Have you seen her?”

“Um, I’m not so great with dog types but maybe.  Except, she was down the other end of The Common, not up here.  Could you have lost her down there?”

“We don’t know when we lost her!”  The woman’s daughter caught up with her mother and the woman turned to her daughter, saying, “This lady says she saw Bonny down the other end of The Common.”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s definitely Bonny, I just saw – “

“But mum! You told me to run up this way!”   The daughter looked worn out.  She turned to go back the way she came, though hesitantly.

“I’m not positive I saw Bonny.  Just a brown dog that looked like it was on its own.”  They both looked at me apprehensively, trying to decide whether to keep searching where they were or to head back down the path.  “I can cyle down there and see if she’s still there for you.  Bonny, did you say her name was? Will she come if I call?”

“Oh, definitely,” offered the mother, “Would you? You don’t mind?”

“She’s got a dog-collar with her name.  And she’s a good dog, she’ll come,” the daughter said at the same time, “And you really don’t mind?” but I was off and cycling back down the path so I threw back a very Australian, “Yeah, no worries.”

It took me only a few minutes to get back to the beginning of the path and there was the brown dog I’d seen.  She was standing on the edge of the road, watching the traffic and deciding when to cross (I surmised).  “Bonny?” I called.  The dog turned to look at me but looked back to the cars, uninterested.  “Bonny! Come here!” I tried a more assertive tone.  The dog looked at me again and then trotted towards me.  She stopped short about a metre away and cocked her head to one side.  “Come on Bonny! Let’s go back to – um your people.”  I got off my bike to try to look at the dog’s collar, but as I did so, she  backed away from me.  I don’t trust dogs and I’m not good with them, so I re-mounted my bike and tried, “Bonny! Follow me! Come one!” I pedalled slowly away, looking back towards the dog.  She would follow me for a bit and then stop, look at me and then look back the way she had been going.

In this way, we advanced back up the path.  I was a little worried that she was not Bonny and I was coaxing someone else’s dog away from them.  Worse, I became one of those unpredictable people on the path – I was cycling slowly and veering off to one side every time I turned around to check that ‘Bonny’ was still following.  And I was cycling on the right hand side of the path, and not the left.

It felt like ages but was probably no more than 5 minutes, when I met up with the woman and her daughter.  I barely said, “Is this Bonny?” before both were down on their knees rubbing her back and hugging her.  “Oh good. I was worried I was stealing someone else’s dog!”

“Oh thank you!” both said and, “You’re lucky this lady likes dogs!” the mother said to Bonny, to which I smiled an unseen half smile because it was not exactly true.

“Glad she’s back with you.” I went to cycle off and both mother and daughter started to thank me, “So kind – We don’t know what we  -” etc.

“No worries. Take care,” and I pedalled away, with the happy noise of reunion behind me.

I don’t even remember what mother and daughter looked like, because it was dusk and I did not really look.  I might remember Bonny, though, if I see her again.  All the way home, I sung to myself:

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

My Bonnie lies over the sea

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

Oh bring back my Bonnie to me

Bring back my Bonnie to me

Bring back, bring back

Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me

Bring back, bring back

September has been a weird, and busy, month. My house would go from full of people all trying to share the same space at the same time – my partner’s parents have been a-visiting – to just me all on my lonesome – September is the month of conferences, so my partner had a few and disappeared during the week, and I had one and disappeared on a weekend.

I don’t mind being on my own. Actually (don’t tell anyone), I rather like it. And sometimes, I desperately need to be on my own because I am either not fit for company or won’t be, if I’m not allowed to be somewhere by myself for a while. Sometimes people laugh when I tell them I’m an introvert, because I am confident, sociable, talkative and loud. It’s true, however. Interacting with people drains me. I like it, and I’m good at it, but it still enervates me.

I have a family full of extroverts, so I do not know how I turned out this way. No where in my childhood home was private space. It was very unusual, until most of us hit our teens, for the toilet door to be shut. I made my own space by being outside, usually up a tree. I think this is where my love of the outdoors stems from, and why I prefer it empty. That’s MY outside, not yours. (Although we can share if you’re real quiet-like.)

What I don’t like doing on my own is eating. Surprising to me, I have ended up in a long-term relationship that doesn’t really look like winding down. I always just expected I would spend most of my life alone and yet, here I am, eating most of my meals with another person and looking like I will keep on doing that for a long while.

Occassionally, he goes away and I am left at home to fend for myself. I start with grand intentions of cooking and end by having slap-dash meals not quite worthy of the title. I am so bad at eating on my own that I don’t even make a sandwich for dinner: I just eat the individual ingredients directly out of the ‘fridge (except the bread, of course, which I frequently toast – ta da! hot meal).

I promised myself to be better this September, when my partner and I passed each other, like ships in the night, going to and from our respective conferences; we saw each other only one evening out of an entire fortnight and I got to joke (oh I am so witty), “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” to which he replied, “Who are YOU? What are you doing in MY house?”  The fun times we have.

My first week alone, my dinner menu was:-
1. Ate out
2. Lentil soup;
3. Lentil soup;
4. Sausages with lentils (the very last of the lentil soup).

My second week alone, my dinner menu was a bit more varied:
1. Rice, with stir-fried vegies;
2. Fried rice with kim chi;
3. Leftover fried rice with kim chi and a fried egg;
4. Ate out.

So, I did alright.

Here’s my lentil soup:

Eating Solo Lentil Soup

The recipe is inspired by Heidi of 101 Cookbooks’ Lively Up Yourself Lentil Soup, which my partner made one day and, with variations, is a regular in our eclectic repertoire.  It can be made in huge quantities and keeps for, like, ever.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• Garlic (a few cloves, roughly minced)
• Onion (small, diced finely)
• Potatoes (two small or one large, diced finely)
• Lentils (a cup of; any green is good; puy is best)
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes (400gms)
• Sun dried tomatoes (4 or 5, finely diced)
• Greens (2 big handfuls once chopped; any will do: kale is great; spinach and cabbage are good; zucchini/courgette/broccoli will do just fine in a pinch)
• Seasoning: salt and pepper; good powdered vegetable stock (I have Gallo Organic and Marigold Bouillion); mixed herbs (I alternate between a mix of oregano and basil and a blend of ’spaghetti’ seasoning that we picked up from Italy)
• Water (quite a few cups)
• A nice big saucepan / stockpot.

What to do:

• On medium high heat and in a small amount of olive oil, fry the garlic and onion for a few minutes until onion is translucent.  You can do both together or add the garlic after a minute or two, depending on how finely you have minced your garlic (if fine, add garlic later; if pretty rough, add it the same time as onion).
• Toss in your finely diced potatoes and a teaspoon of powdered vegetable stock, some cracked pepper and a teaspoon of herbs.
• Give everything a good stir until the powdered stock covers the potatoes.
• Toss in the lentils and stir.
• Toss in the sun dried tomatoes and stir.
• Don’t worry if things get stuck to the bottom.
• Empty the tin of chopped tomatoes into your mixture and another two cans full of water.
• Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 20 minutes to half an hour.  The time will depend on the type of lentils you have used (puy cook faster) and how finely you have diced your potato (the finer, the faster).
• When the potatoes and lentils are soft-ish (I like my lentils a little al dente, but you can cook your soup however you like your lentils.  If you like them real soft, you might want to pre-soak but I have never, ever pre-soaked lentils because I’m just not that organised), add your greens until they’re cooked.
• Greens are usually cooked when they turn a bright deep green.  Obviously, this time will vary depending on the types of greens you’re adding.  I find spinach is pretty speedy (a minute); cabbage is quite slow (5 – 10 minutes depending on the type of cabbage); and kale halfway between the two although I do add the stems first and the leaves a few minutes later but about 5 minutes usually does it.
• Add more seasoning if needed.
• Serve as soon as the greens are cooked.
• Make sure there is heaps of leftovers.

To eat the leftovers, re-heat.  I like to add more fresh greens when I re-heat this soup (usually because in my first eating I have eaten all the greens …).  If adding more liquid, also add a little tomato paste.

On its third outing, there was barely any liquid left so I decided to make my sausages with lentils, using the remainder of the lentil soup.  I fried some pork sausages, until they were nicely brown (and in some places, black), then poured the remainder of the soup onto the sausages and set the mixture to boiling before turning the heat down to a simmer.  Dinner was ready when what little of the liquid that was left had evaporated.  Then I ate it with toast.

It’s important to have toast at least once if you’re eating on your own for a week.