Cockfosters for a spot of Thai

Hello Possums! I am still writing to you from my brother-in-law’s in Soutgate, London. He and his family of five live in a 1905 two story residence, which they have renovated beautifully and even added on the English necessity – a conservatory. This room is a retreat from the rain and wind, and it traps what sun we have been getting to make a very cosy spot for pre-dinner drinks or for reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

When we first arrived here, we went for a walk around the local park. Here, a group of elderly gents were racing their model sail boats in a purpose-built body of water. We noticed they had made boxes with wheels to transport their boats that converted into wooden chairs! Some seated themselves whilst others donned waders to anchor their buoys and set the course for the day. We ate sandwiches at the park and watched in fascination. As the boats sailed past us we noticed that sailor figurines stood on their decks. Some had more ‘crew’ than others.  Just like on Stewart Little! Our girls were delighted. After we finished our sandwiches we walked around the park spotting squirrels – we were thrilled to spot seventeen! These little guys are amazing to us because we are used to possums, which are nocturnal. The squirrels were very active during the day and weren’t the least bit scared of people!

Last night our friend took us out to dinner with his wife. Twenty years ago he and I almost got it together.  A Scottish man, the hub met him on an expedition to India. He stayed with us in Australia for a couple of weeks twenty years ago and after that we came to England ten years ago and caught up with him. So it had been ten years since I had seen him. The last time I saw him he looked so spunky I was a bit overwhelmed.

He drove us out to the beautiful suburb of Cockfosters (shame about the name). There we entered what looked like a typical English pub set in a charming country lane. However, once past the main bar area, the pub became a Thai restaurant. Through an archway the decor suddenly changed and you felt as though you were in Thailand. The food was great and we had a fun night. His wife was lovely. He still looked great, but was completely grey. He had also lost a bit of muscle condition because he had been working an office job for the last ten years. So no heart palpatations to deal with this time, just good friends!

Tonight we’re heading in to London to see Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre.

Ten Random Things #5

Random thing about me #5: I love giving birth.

I have done a lot of enjoyable, rewarding and challenging things in my life: climbed mountains, canoed wild water, carved up ungroomed slopes, realised professional dreams, experienced love and all that, but the thing that I am most proud of is having given birth. Now this may sound strange. Giving birth is actually not really a personal achievement. It is due to the fact that I am a woman; something not really within my control. But there you have it!

I also love having a baby around. I could have been one of these people who ditches the career and pops out babies for the rest of their lfe… My close friends have confided in me that they think I am nuts.

Stories from London and Random Thing #4

Well, another cold and windy summers day in London. Today we alighted a double decker bus and hit the local shopping centre complex for the purpose of catching the latest Harry Potter movie: The Order of the Pheonix – the best of the Potter movies so far, in my opinion.

Yesterday we went into Oxford Circus for some shopping. The kids all wanted converse runners. We were able to find the ones Rosie, Sally and Kat wanted, but Emma didn’t have as much luck. Her favorite had a cherry print and each shop we went into only stocked them down to size 5 (she needed size 3).

Low and behold at the end of Order of the Pheonix, Loona Lovegood’s missing shoes that appeared strung up on a rafter were, yep you guessed it – a pair of cherry converse runners.

After the movie, we wandered the shopping centre for awhile and stumbled on a shoe shop having a closing down sale. They had converse! They had the cherry pattern! And they had size 3! The shop assistant said, yeah we have them. They’re the ones from the Harry Potter movie aren’t they?

Yes, said Emma, but I found them before I saw it!

On another, Potter-related note: The girls and I had searched the local area for a copy of the latest book. We found a stand at the supermarket advertising it for £5, but the shelves were empty. I finally found a copy at a bookshop in Soho two days ago, but ended up paying £12.50. I didn’t care! I wasn’t going to risk missing out!

I have been reading it chapter by chapter to the kids since. Anyway, my friend Cara who is staying with us here in London with her family mentioned something to me today about the bookshop in Soho that I had been completely oblivious to at the time.

Did you not see what type of bookshop that was, Bindi?

Um, no, I just went straight for Potter.

I thought it was really funny watching you race into a mostly adult bookshop with six kids following you. There was a sign saying only over 18 allowed down stairs and explicit photos on the fronts of most of the books upstairs!

You see, Possums, we had been looking for Chinatown in Soho and had inadvertently ended up in the red light district.

My goodness I hadn’t even noticed! I was flabbergasted.

Cara ended her recount laughing, that is such a Bindi thing to do!

So let me use this as my random thing about me #4. Although I’m not sure what to call it, since it is from another person’s perspective. I suppose the randon thing is that sometimes I can appear a bit unworldly or oblivious.

Ten Random Things #3

Random thing about me #3: I don’t smoke.

Except, I really enjoy rolling a rollie! And if I get the chance to roll one, I smoke it if I’ve been drinking. The last time this happened was last November at a conference in Adelaide. A tall and very attractive young man with a silky voice had a pack of rollies. I noticed him at the conference dinner slipping off for a smoke early in the night. Later that night after too many champagnes I went up to him and said hi!

Do I know you? said he.

I said, no but I noticed you have a pack of rollies.

Do you smoke?

Only when I’m pissed. (For those of you not from Australia, pissed means drunk).

Do you want to pop outside then? he asked.

Yep!

And we became sort of friends for the rest of the conference. I remember we sat together during a fairly boring presentation and communicated through whispers and scribbled notes – lots of fun! But I do digress.

Then the time before that was probably a few years prior at a farmhouse owned by my friend’s family on a girls weekend away. She pulled out a pack of rollies in the evening around a large open fire. We smoked and chatted into the wee hours of the night, feeling rather naughty to be doing so after so many years.

Prior to that was in my younger years, and where I developed the skill for rolling. A young male friend of mine had sort of an open room. You could enter his room without having to go through the rest of the family home. Often on the way home from an evening out I would pop in for a chat with him if I didn’t feel like going home. We would sit, talk and roll up cigs. I wouldn’t always smoke them, but enjoyed the rolling anyway.

Moving on to London

Eventhough I am now in London, Italy lingers. I have lost count of the times I have almost said grazie or expected the reply, prego. Walking into a sandwich bar in Southgate, I expected to find the familiar panini line up. But, no such thing – plenty of fried eggs and chips though.

When we were in Italy, we soon found out that not many people spoke English outside of the cities. I became accustomed to ordering lunch for my family in Italian. Succi di frutta, Pera, quatro, for the children’s drinks and the rest of the menu was pretty easy – pizza, or gnocchi or spagetti e pomodoro are not  challenging phrases to master. However I did make a mistake on the first day out of Rome. We stopped for lunch at a cafe in a country town. Judging by the prices compared to those in Rome, I ordered four slices of pizza for each of the girls, pizza quatro. However, when they arrived, instead of four slices we received four large pizzas – such was the relative cheapness!

As well as fresh panini, I do miss Italian men. The day we took the kids into Florence, we caught the wrong train out again. Connecting trains were 45 minutes to an hour apart, so we were stuck in stinking heat backtracking on the train system when we could have been back at our beautiful villa swimming in the pool.  It actually got to the ridiculous stage when we passed through our stop for the second time – once as our train diverted onto another line and we saw the blue rails of our stop at Lastra a Signa fade off to the side, and again as we came back through on a train that was on the right line but just didn’t stop at Lastra a Signa. Do you you know the feeling? – so ridiculous that you just have to laugh.

Finally in Lastra a Signa, we stopped at the Ipercoop for supplies on the way back to the villa.  My family waited for me in the car while I ran off promising to be quick. I raced around the Ipercoop as fast as I could grabbing milk, breakfast cereal, chianti (a few staples) and stacking it into my arms. Unfortunately the lines at the checkouts were mammoths! I waited and waited behind trolleys stacked like mountains, my arms gradually giving out on me. After almost as much as I could take, a man in the next isle who had just loaded his stuff onto the conveyer belt thingy, called out to me. Bella, he said to get my attention. He held out his empty basket to me, gesturing that I should use it to save my arms. Gratefully I accepted, but another man came to my assistance to help me move the stuff from my arms into the basket. Grazie. My relief was obvious. The man in front of me was watching all this while. He caught my eye then and whispered, bella to me before turning back around to attend to his shopping.

Possums, this attention cheered me up no end. So kind and gentle – nothing like the leering and pinching that the guide books forwarn you of! Jess and I discussed this later and we believe that modern Italian men don’t deserve this image. The only experience of lewd or unwanted attention we had over our three weeks in Italy, was once when Jess alighted stairs in a cafe opposite the Vatican. A decrepid man of around eighty years old pinched her on the butt. We laughed about this, but my point is that I believe the habit is dying out with that old timer’s generation.

My tan lingers, and so do the sand fly bites from a day at Portovenere! But I don’t know how long the tan will last because here in London, in contrast to the Italian heat wave, the weather is cool and soggy. This is not deterring us really. We had a great day in town today walking the banks of the Thames and catching a ride on the London Eye. We ended up in Chinatown in Soho for dinner, and would have stayed longer had it not rained. Instead, we came home early with our copy of Harry Potter 7 that we found in a bookshop in Soho and I read the first couple of chapters to the girls – very exciting!

The girls are appreciating the cooler weather, and the relative quietness of the suburb we are staying in. The only decisions I have to make over the next few days are which shows to see (I’m thinking a matinee of Wicked upon request by the kids – they know the songs from choir, and an evening show of Miss Saigon without the kids), and which restaurant to book for Thursday night, when my brother-in-law’s opare will baby sit for us. 

Oh, and one more thing to look forward to in London – a visit from an old flame who I haven’t seen for ten years. He said he’d pop by on the way to or from work one day this week. Cool! said I.

Ten Random Things #2

Random thing #2: I am Pisces.

… not that I think astrology holds much weight, being a scientific thinker and all. However being assigned a star sign does give people the opportunity for reflection on their own identities. It affords one the chance to make statements or think thoughts along the lines, this is who I am, and this is who I am not.

My first true love was a bit of an astrology buff. He thought I fit the description of Pisces perfectly. I still remember how he took it when we broke up. He said something like, well I suppose it makes sense. I can’t expect to hold onto you when you want to go. Like a fish you wiggle free and just swim away.

You might think that sounds like a strange thing to say. If you do, then I agree with you. That’s why I have remembered it. But it is true. I do move on. When I have made the decision I’ve had enough it seems to be irreversible and I have already begun life in another direction. The thing that did it for me in this particular case was living with the man. Its all very well and good to have great sex, but if they don’t help with even the simple house chores then living with them really is too much. Living with him really killed the passion for me, much to my parent’s relief. They never liked him, and I was only 19.

Ten Random Things #1

Thanks to a tag from earthpal, I have been challenged to list ten random things about myself. I am having trouble thinking of ten things in the short spaces of time I have, so I have decided to just do one at a time. In the meantime I will tag Mr Z and Kate.

Random Thing #1: I always forget to wear perfume.

… although once at a conference I had Opium on.

On the way to the conference opening in Adelaide, I bought a little bottle of it whilst wandering through a department store to fill in time. In fact I’d been testing out lots of different perfumes and ended up with quite a concoction of flavours on my person. I even mistakenly put on a male one – couldn’t tell the difference, Possums. It was only when the shop assistant pointed this out that I realised…

Anyway, I was seated at the opening address next to an acquaintance from Melbourne and her eyes began to water. Oh dear, someone has strong perfume on, she said most agitated and beginning to sneeze.

I didn’t own up, I was too embarrassed.

She avoided me for the rest of the conference!

Thoughts from Florence

Some random thoughts from Florence

… well, as many of the thoughts I have been thinking whilst in Florence as I can fit in in my 15 minute internet session right now:

1. I am surrounded! Everywhere I look I see a stone penis.

We took the children to a fresco painting lesson at the Palazza Vecchio in Florence. After a lesson on the art, we were able to paint our own on a rectangular tile. We all sat there, each confronted with a blank tile, freshly plastered and awaiting the touch of our brush. What to paint? You could use a stencil, copies of small motifs from the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio, commissioned by the Medici family or make up your own. I’m doing an angel, said Kathleen, who is quite an artist. I’m going to copy the Capricorn, said Emma. I said, well I think I might make up my own – I’m going to do a penis!

Well, I did laugh at the expressions on my daughters’ faces!

They, on the other hand, all agreed that I was too embarrasing.

2. I wonder if the baffalo mozarella and the rosemary and sage olive oil will go well together?

Our Tuscan cooking lesson out at our villa, was a roaring success. So much so that my friend Jess and I decided to repeat some of the dishes whilst shopping for our next weeks supplies at the local Ipercoop. The Ipercoop is a cross between a fresh food market and a supermarket, with a wide selection of delicious deli items. Jess and I always leap for joy behind our trolleys when we enter. On this particular occasion, we found zucchini flowers. A repeat of the flowers stuffed with anchovy and buffalo mozarella, cooked in a light beer batter was in order. The six children and four adults we cooked for woofed them down as before when we made them with our tutors. Our second attempt without help was therefore deemed successful! We used up all of the anchovies but had over half of the mozarella left. The buffalo mozarella was very creamy, and quite delicious…

The following day we toured the Chianti region, and found a beautiful vinyard where we tasted chianti among a few other varieties of wine, and first pressed olive oil flavoured with different herbs or spices. We bought samples of everything and then had a picnic under an olive tree on the vinyard overlooking a valley sparsely dotted with magnificent villas, and coloured in with rows and rows of grape vines and olive groves. Upon reading the brochure we were given in the tasting room, we were astounded to discover that in 1479 at this vinyard, called Vinamaggio, the Mona Lisa was born!

During pre dinner drinks that night with our friends Jess and John we found out that the sage and rosemary olive oil I purchased at the vineyard perfectly complimented the left over mozarella – served on Ipercoop crackers.

3. Am I too old for a bikini?

Well, if I am its too late for advice on this one, because I purchased a little cheeky number from the local Ipercoop for a very reasonable price which I have been using whilst supervising the children in the pool. I am now pleased to report that I have a tan to be proud of (even on my tummy, that hasn’t seen the light of day for a very long time).

Italy is affecting me, Possums!

I Love Gnocchi

Well Possums, this is my last day in Rome. I have learnt a lot. Very early in the piece I realised that if you asked for a latte (as you would in Melbourne), you will not be given a cafe latte, but a glass of milk. My naive Australian ways have been corrected and I now make this pledge: from this moment onwards I shall ask for cafe latte wherever I am, even back at home.

The caffe latte in Rome is consistently magnificent. I am in heaven.

My other love is gnocchi. My Italian girlfriend back in Melbourne, who is also a chef, taught me how to make gnocchi. I bought the large mouli that she recommended to me from a restaruant supply shop and used to make it every week. I have been out of the habit lately. I do find that I go through cooking fads. However I do know a good, fresh gnocchi when I taste it.

I have not been disappointed by the gnocchi in Rome! In fact, I think I will cry tomorrow when we leave this city behind. It will be painful to me to be torn away from the gnocchi. My favorite dish has been the Sardinian style gnocchi with fungi and clams. To die for, Possums, to die for!

Ah Roma…

Oh being in Rome is truly a sensual experience. I am absorbing the vibes of this city and wishing I had more than one life to live, because if I had another life I would be living in this chic rooftop apartment that we are renting for the week. I would be working somewhere in Rome, and getting around these cobble-stone streets on one of those mopeds. I would be wearing the latest fashion, have a tan and a latin lover. 

Being in another city makes you feel like another person. The last time I experienced this was twenty years ago in Kathmandu… 

My imagination is working overtime and I am overcome with desire. How wonderful to experience life so differently, if only for a short time. 

Yesterday afternoon, after a day at the colusseum and the old Roman Forum I cooked for my family and our friends in our apartment using local produce: orachetti with black olive paste in a sauce made with richly flavoured cherry tomatoes, grilled zucchini and broccoli, topped with shavings of local parmizano reggiano. The black olive paste added a salty pizazz to the sauce, and I had never tasted parmesan so smooth and moist before – it literally curled off the knife when I sliced it thinly.  The Chianti we chose suited the meal superbly and we felt very satisfied.

This morning Sally lay on the sofa bed in the living room flicking through the before and after pictures in a book I bought about the Roman archeological sites.

I think its really sad that they let this happen, because look how beautiful it once was and look at them now, she said flicking the transparent flap back and forth over the forum ruins.  Her voice really expressed her emotions.  She was upset.

Yeah, why did they let it get like that? Emma asked.

We spent the next little while discussing the Emperors of ancient Rome and hypothesizing.

…  there is no better history lesson than experience!