. . . by any other name

A rose is a rose is a rose -Gertrude Stein

In case someone thinks I am just a grumpy old man without feelings of sensitivity, I can assure them it is not the case. I am a great admirer of the human form, particularly in summer; when I have time I write a little poetry, and; I have a passion for rational conservation.

But last weekend I was seized by one of my great loves, the simple English rose, particularly in the early morning when the petals still carry a few drops of the evening dew, and there is a slight drift of a gentle fragrance.

I was photographing Liz MacGibbon’s innovative clothes-pegging of her cabbage, when I lifted my eyes and was caught by the sight of a nearby rose.

Just click on the picture and it should enlarge for you.

 

Bitching around the barbie

The manufacturers of computers, cameras, printers and scanners all are driven by the expansion of technology. What is launched today can be guaranteed to be supplanted by a new model in six months’ time.

More memory, faster processing, bigger screen, impose on the purchaser the next requirement of upgrading software and peripherals. Yet, for most us, the increased memory is fine, the faster internet is better, but our utilisation of the software is about 20 per cent or less of its capability.

In some cases, particularly with printers, I have the strong suspicion the manufacturer is driven by the ink maker. I bought a printer/scanner some time ago and was rewarded with a complimentary printer/scanner as well. In both cases the ink cartridges lasted about a month with home use, and the replacements cost more than the printer I paid for. They worked, and it was quite useful to install one in the house for occasional copying of papers.

But economics have driven both those units to the E-day collection. I continue to use my laser printer (which also came with a fortnight’s supply of toner) and it is cheaper to do my copying down at Warehouse Stationery where the cost is about what I pay for my printer paper on sale day.

Yesterday we shopped for some garden hose fittings at Mega Mitre 10. Christmas is coming and while Kay paid for the goods at the counter I wandered around the great, cavernous building, looking at what I did not need. There is a great display of barbecues that do everything from roasting chickens to baking pizzas. Some actually are designed to broil and grill. All are designed to impress the guests.

What impressed me most was the range of prices — about half what I paid 20 years ago for a three-burner barbecue I used about a dozen times.

I came to the conclusion the barbecue industry has taken a leaf from the electronics industry book and has joined forces with the meat industry.

It will soon be cheaper to buy the barbecue than the lamb chops for a family gathering! I am waiting for the Mad Butcher to realise this.

The good oil

Please be assured I have not become obsessed with olive oil. It was just that as I was eating my lunch I remembered my first encounter with it. I was small and suffering from ear ache. My mother warmed half a teaspoonful of olive oil and gently poured it into my ear. There was relief.

I have no idea why olive oil was in her cupboard, or how long it had sat there in its small, flat, clear glass bottle with a cork stopper. I seem to remember it had a vile taste. It sat alongside two other bottles, one containing castor oil (the rural laxative of last resort, when Epsom salts had failed) and the other of paraffin oil (in which my father had an earnest belief a spoonful now and then was needed to lubricate his insides). Castor oil was also used to mix a paste with Epsom salts to provide a drawing poultice on boils and whitlows (infected finger nails).

There was also oil of cloves which I remember being used with a small wad of cottonwool and pushed into a tooth cavity with a sharpened matchstick to alleviate toothache. Codliver oil was imported from England prior to the Second World War and given by the nauseous spoonful to ‘strengthen’ sickly children, Came the war, and we found it replaced by halibut liver oil (I suspect it was made from local shark livers) that was sometimes laced with orange flavouring. At Oamaru the Lanes Emulsion tonic factory on the waterfront bottled gallons of its mixture of codliver oil and eggs with other still unknown ingredients. It did not pay to be a child who ‘needed building up’.

Much more pleasant were the aromas of eucalyptus oil, oil of lavender, camphorated oil and oil of balsam. A sore throat invited treatment with two drops of eucalyptus oil on a lump of sugar (who remembers them); a head cold was relieved by a tin of boiling water to which was added some balsam and the steam inhaled while patient and remedy were ensconced tent-like under a blanket, and; a drop of oil of lavender might be put on a handkerchief corner to take away the discomfort and the memory of vomiting. The camphorated oil, apart from its use with beeswax in furniture polish, was rubbed on the chests of children with heavy colds before they went to sleep. It reddened the skin, gave a sensation of warmth and probably also helped clear the breathing, but it also stained the sheets rather badly, if I remember rightly.

There was also cottonseed oil, but I cannot for the life of me remember what use it was put to. Linseed oil, in its raw form was used to increase the life of axe and shovel handles, as well as polishing and preserving woodwork in the house, and in its boiled form was the major ingredient in paint mixed with white lead and colour.

Finally, there was neatsfoot oil (from its name it was originally made from boiling up the feet of cattle, and later it was the byproduct of gelatine manufacture) which was used to soften and preserve leather, particularly boots and horse harness.

On Pitt island during the depression Bert Hunt made a substitute by rendering down blubber from a stranded blackfish or pilot whale. It was a foul-smelling product that he used first on his boots and was asked to leave a neighbour’s kitchen shortly afterwards. His next application of the blackfish oil was on his saddle. It was too much for the horse. It threw him and bolted, eventually rolling frantically on the ground to rid itself of the vile encumbrance.

They are not really oils, but it would be wrong to end this tale without referring to muttonfat, beef suet and pork lard. In winter we often took a strip of raw fat trimmed from the chops and after softening the end against the fire in the wood stove rubbed it along the seams of our school boots to waterproof them for the next day. Grated on a cheese grater, the suet was blended with flour and made into dumplings that cooked in the pot over the stew. Only on marae visits these days do I occasionally find dumplings still made and cooked in the old way.

The lard made the best pastry and my mother saved it specially from pig-killing time for the occasions she would make a special apple pie for visitors.

I forgot the feta

Man does not live by bread alone

We went out to dinner last evening to celebrate Kay’s grandson James’s birthday. It was a very pleasant event. We went to an Italian pizza, pasta and bistro restaurant at Petone that is set in a gutted former warehouse and well decorated to promote the appetite. The menu was extensive, and came from the wood-fired oven at one end of the building or the stoves at the other.

I dipped my bread into some olive oil and it wasn’t as nice as last week’s visit to Martinborough. I tried another oil and quickly decided there might just be something in favour of the local production.

So, for lunch I decided to give Kay a treat and design a plate that worked backward from the olive oil I bought last week. Oil, lemon juice and lemon zest, with basil and white onion, over coarsely cut tomatoes on a fresh baguette. On this I would place a couple of hard boiled eggs and, in the manner of my favourite Annabel, I would crumble feta cheese.

We went to the gym after breakfast and then called at Countdown to buy the bread and the cheese. There were no white onions, but there was a red onion at home. The rest we already had. On the way into the shop I found there was a special on some beef mince and on the way towards the check-out I found a special on asparagus. The mince I needed to bottle for the island (that’s another story). We then got side-tracked by going to Mega Mitre 10 hardware and getting some hose fittings. Morning coffee was interspersed with several phone calls, and then we did some gardening (or rather Kay did).

The lunch was put together, but it seemed desirable to cook some asparagus as well as the eggs. The bread was cut. Then we found the red onion after peeling was in a terminal state. Kay found a shallot and I got a spring onion from the garden. It all came together and I made the final flourish of the lemon juice, zest and olive oil. Some black pepper and it was ready. It looked so good I though I should take a photo. That meant clearing the kitchen table of its usual several piles of mail and ‘things that need to go out to the office’. I also thought a glass of wine would be nice.

It was unashamedly showing off, which is easy to excuse in the name of showing appreciation of one’s mate. We sat down and enjoyed the meal.

It was while I was clearing the plates away, I realised why I am an old man and not in the mould of Annabel. There, on the bench, looking at me accusingly, was the slice of feta.

Arthritis and a dead pig

In the course of clearing an old hard drive, I found a story I wrote seven years ago that, on reflection, should probably be added to the blog. I still remember that day with much pleasure and satisfaction.

Saturday, 25 September 2004: Today I have enjoyed more than any other day in my life that I’ve been fully clothed.

Tonight I shall dose myself with diclofenac and panadol, and dull some of the pain that is already reminding me of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

Last night my cousin Ken Lanauze and I enjoyed a few whiskies and the Canterbury/Waikato NPC Rugby match. It was punctuated by the marine weather forecast of “moderating south-westerlies and an easing of the swell to three metres”.

This morning there was a Department of Conservation charter of a fishing boat to go from Owenga to South-East Island and transfer a group of scientist to the other bird sanctuary Mangere Island. They are on either side of Pitt Island, second largest of the Chatham group, and where I have been for the last few days. We have had a prolonged bout of gales and storms that held up my plans to get to Pitt for a conservation trust meeting by over a week. I managed to fly over in the teeth of a howling gale to land on the water-logged grass strip at Waipaua. Strangely, though, weather was always on our nose and there was little turbulence.

Glenn King, my neighbour Ian’s brother, takes many of the DOC charters, and I had mentioned to him the other night I would really like (if it was possible) for him to pick me up at Flower Pot on Pitt island first so that I could see South-East Island at close hand.

So, this morning at 9 a.m. Ken and I are on the wharf at Flower Pot ready for Glenn. Another 10 minutes and we were chugging around the point below Mount Hakepa (at the foot of which Ken lives) and heading out to South East Island.

The landing was uneventful. There is a sheltered cove into which we nosed and put the anchor down. The yellow inflatable was launched over the side and the outboard motor connected. Four trips later the many yellow polypails that provide waterproof packaging were unloaded and others brought back to the boat. Finally the scientists made the last load. The inflatable was reloaded across the stern and we set off back to Flower Pot.

Another DOC transfer of equipment and gas cylinders, together with a large, red, very dead wild pig hunted last night and now destined for the weigh-in on Chatham Island tomorrow at the annual eel, possum and pig hunting competition.

We held a meeting last evening at Flower Pot in the school and we finished after dark, at a time when school children home for the holidays and their uncles and the odd parent, were setting off on four-wheelers to camp and hunt all night (that is, until the enthusiasm wears off and sleep becomes more important that adrenalin). One new rule this year is no hunting dogs near the albatross nest in the Waipaua reserve.

The second stage of the trip was out from Flower Pot and through the gap between the Point and Rabbit Island which brought us out into the south-west swell. Mangere is a great massif of volcanic rock protruding from the sea with a tail of land that settles back towards Little Mangere. This is where the black robin has been brought back from extinction.

We nosed into the little bay where the swell lessened but the sea still surged up and down against the wave cut rock platform the sides of which are faced with bull kelp. Glen nosed in to the rock edge and the first scientist jumped across from the bow. His feet had no sooner touched the rock above the kelp when the surge took us back and down below him. We made another approach and the second scientist, this time of grandmotherly vintage took her leap across. The two made their way around to a more sheltered spot between the kelp where the inflatable could land the stores and other scientists.

I looked at the bow and the rock platform and thought of the last time I came to Pitt on the coaster Rangatira. On that occasion George Hough and I joined the ship at Waitangi. That involved climbing on to a wharf bollard and then reaching across to grasp the ship’s rail and climb on board. But this time I got my exercise by standing legs apart and holding on to a rail above my head. Each time the boat rolled I felt another twinge in my shoulders, but things must be improving. I couldn’t have done that a couple of weeks ago.

Jumping off the bow of a fishing boat is now something I wouldn’t attempt, but I did resent the easy leap and springy landing the two scientists made on to the rock.

The inflatable did another four trips and we were on our way again. Glenn had several crayfish pots to lift and rebait near Mangere. As he located each set of floats from his GPS plot he slackened speed and circled. The deck hand threw a grappling hook to catch the rope and within seconds it was looped around the hauler and a spray of weed and seawater was being shed from the fast-moving rope. Up to the surface the big rectangular steel cage came and was lifted inboard across the rail. The crayfish were picked out and the pots rebaited and the cage was over the side and we were on our way again, the rope snaking out across the stern as we picked up speed.

Back to the little fishing village at Owenga and alongside the wharf. It was low tide and the wharf was high above the boat.

Last time I came back by fishing boat I needed some help to get up off the boat. Today I climbed up and pretended I was back in the gym doing stretching exercises.

The inflatable was last to be hoisted up, together with the pig. I must remember to get a photo of the pig on display tomorrow. Very large, very red, long-haired and very dead.

Making friends and not bacon

Kunekune on parade

Last weekend Kay and I enjoyed a very pleasant visit to Martinborough, a small town in the Wairarapa that owes its continued prosperity to a proliferation of vineyards at which there has been a general recognition that survival depends on quality as well as some skilful brand marketing. The wines produce a sort of honeypot attraction for swarms of discretionary spending, weekend tourists from Wellington, as well as some rather canny folk who identified the desirability of the town for a second home before the prices soared.

It is a very pleasant place, even when the winter winds blow up from the coast. If you haven’t spent a few days there , you should.

Green gold

There are also some folk who have sought the rural life to balance their daily grind in the city, in spite of the time taken each day to commute. I know that attraction of the lifestyle block. I also know that some succeed and some find the countryside can eventually pall, particularly if there is a drought, or the vet has to be called because of inexperience or downright incompetence.

But there are others who take to the lifestyle easily, meet its challenges and (probably most important of all) have understanding neighbours on whom they can call for advice.

We had a coalescing of blogs, if one can call it that. My friend John (Musings from Martinborough) arranged a visit to the home of Moon over Martinborough, a lifestyle block and olive grove owned by two young Americans, Jared and Rick, whose previous experience of rural affairs was limited to say the least. I’ve enjoyed Jared’s blogs immensely. They are a frank appreciation of the newcomer’s inexperience and the satisfaction of achieving success, often in minor and mundane matters, such as overcoming the vagaries of a patent chook feeder.

Jared took us for a walk down across the fertile river flat below the terrace where the house and garden are. The grass was long and lush and cried out for several cattle beasts, but that is not far away. The olive trees were set out in the same spacing as the olive grove my son planted at his place at York in Western Australia some 15 years ago. The trees were healthy and well shaped, and I had visions of them loaded with fruit at harvest time.

Back up towards the terrace we met the kunekune pigs, happily munching grass and clover and enjoying a scratch behind the ears. I suspect these two unlovely creatures are safe from ending in the pot. By making friends they have probably avoided making bacon!

the heart doth swell in darkness grown

We wandered on to examine the wayward chook feeder (this story is one of Jared’s gems) and the garden, and finally took our leave with the purchase of some of this season’s pressing of Moon over Martinborough olive oil.

I tried some as soon as I got home to Paraparaumu on a bread rusk. Wow, it has character. I have been trying to work out a dish that would do it real justice

Postscript: There was something else that impressed me at the weekend. Liz loves her Martinborough garden, the fruit trees and the vegetables she grows. Not everyone can achieve broad beans that exceed two metres in height without falling over in the next wind! But I like her innovative mind. I’ve never before seen clothes pegs used to protect the cabbage hearts from the sun.

Elections, what elections?

Over the years I have enjoyed opera, ballet and drama. Most of this has been passive, but there was one occasion in 1956 when I appeared with the touring Borovansky Ballet Company in Christchurch for seven performances of “Sleeping Beauty”. I was a spear carrier, recruited with several others from the Canterbury University Drama Society. As I remember, we were paid 7s 6d (75c) a performance, and the union rules required that we did not move while the curtain was raised.

I’ve also stage managed a number of plays and a small opera, for which I had to memorise the entire libretto to be able to cue the curtain and lights because I am not able to read music. My greatest achievement was, I recall, if I am to believe my friends of the time, to play the role of the eunuch Mardian in Ngaio Marsh’s production of “Antony and Cleopatra”.

We are currently engaged in the democratic process of a general election, which of course means our political leaders and would-be leaders are, in one voice speaking of the dire economic threats to our continued existence, and in another are offering to throw money around like a drunken sailor. In the 1940s Walter Nash used to be laughed at for his extravagant “…’undreds of millions of pounds” budgeted for major works, while today we allow references to billions to slip easily by. The accusations of arithmetical errors and double-counting are all part of the general confusion.

There is very little commonsense spoken in these days of photo opportunities and poll-driven advertising. Equally, there is a great deal of naivete, that seems to extend to the misapprehension that blue tooth has something to do with morning teas that include blueberry muffins, and to free-lance journalists who just happen to neglect to pick up their microphone bag from the table at the prime minister’s elbow!

I have been thinking about how the present election campaign resembles some of the plots on which operas and ballets have been composed.

In a small Ruritanian rural village there are two contenders for the mayoralty, but having tired of political wrangling they have transferred their attentions to competing for the love of the village belle. Insults have been exchanged and they are proposing to fight a duel in the town square watched by a somewhat disinterested group of bystanders. They also have bags of money which they commence to throw around.

A dishevelled runner appears and announces there has been an earthquake and a huge flood is expected to engulf the town at any time. He is ignored.

The girl’s uncle, a retired professional tap dancer, appears and endeavours to sell her favours in return for the post of deputy-mayor.

A group of displaced peasants and a travelling troupe of players decked in greenery enter from either side, followed by a small moustachioed organ grinder with his monkey, and a mendicant friar recently released from prison.

The preparations for the duel are interrupted by an exploding samovar in an adjacent teashop. The monkey attacks the tap dancer, the peasants chop down trees and set up a free market, and the players seize branches and rush upon the peasants. In the melee, the friar, unable to take up a collection, resorts to his former occupation of pickpocket.

The girl is trampled to death in the confusion.

The flood arrives at last and all are drowned except for the organ grinder and the monkey who sought safety on the one remaining roof. He sings the final aria: “I’ve seen all this before.”

 

A dog’s life

Age creates a certain sensitivity.

My neighbour came across the other day to tell us the news of the demise of her sister’s dog. It was quite a nice dog – large, black and friendly – that she looked after on occasions.

“He had to be put to sleep,” she said. “He was old and had become arthritic.”

I made appropriate comments of sympathy and understanding, and refrained from looking in the mirror.

 

Quel dommage!

After the gale

Each year, without fail, we have a severe gale in the first week of November. Its main effect is to thrash any soft spring growth in the vegetable garden, particularly tomato plants and zucchini, and to break off and leave hanging about a tenth of the fruit-bearing grape branches on the pergola and on the frame across the front of our office..

I know that I will come out the next morning, when the wind will have died down and the sun is shining again, to find bruised and broken leaves and shoots that have to be picked up and put into the compost. There will be gaps in the continuity of green growth that soon fills with unproductive replacement shoots.

This morning was such a day that followed two days of wind gusts and rain. There was an interview on National Radio with a man who grows grapes at Martinborough and worships at the altar of the Pinot Noir. Apart from his enthusiasm, which was a bit over the top, he was sufficiently a realist to recognise the balance of nature, which takes with one hand and gives with the other. I admire a man who can suffer an 80 per cent loss of his potential harvest with a later spring frost, and waxes eloquent about the rare and exotic flavours of his reduced vintage.

I have to acknowledge that, even with the loss of fruiting vines through wind damage in November, we still manage to harvest more grapes in autumn than we can usefully turn into desserts, jelly and Grandma’s Black Juice cordial that makes our hot toddies in the winter.

I thought again about Martinborough and Pinot Noir. It is good for a once vigorous country town to be rejuvenated by a new industry. The district’s vineyards and wineries have provided a solid base to another economy of the weekend tourist and resident. We will spend next weekend with the MacGibbons at Martinborough and, if the weather is right, I think we shall pack a picnic lunch and spend Friday visiting one or two of the vineyards (to check on possible wind damage, of course).

It was Omar Khayyam who penned the line: “I wonder what the vinters buy, one-half so precious as the goods they sell.”

It seems somewhat prosaic to think this may apply in Martinborough to the hiring of a helicopter to generate a warming downdraft on a frosty October night.

“Oooh, that was sooo good!”

Over the past year our television programmes have increasingly dwelt on cooking and culinary delights, prepared by well-known and less well-known personalities, some of who are better actors than cooks. I suspect some of the viewers who watch these shows end up the day sending out for a takeaway. They are too exhausted to cook.

To that end I suspect a number of television viewers watching the final of Masterchef Australia ended up sending out for a home delivered pizza!

But not to be too grumpy, there are some of these shows that have been quite delightful. Rick Stein and the late Chalky have provided great entertainment as well as a stimulation of the taste buds; Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (“We feed our spirits”) at River Cottage is fun, and; closer to home, Kai Time on the Road, and a couple of other Maori send-ups of more serious catering make for some local enjoyment.

Kay and I have enjoyed a lot of good food on Maori marae where the “aunties” still make wonderful ginger steamed puddings that are served with old-fashioned Edmonds custard and cream. We had such a pudding at a marae up the Wanganui river last week. It goes without saying that it was preceded by chicken, smoked eel, a boil-up that included muttonbird, and a range of vegetables.

But I would have to confess my favourite television food shows are not the finals of the Australian Masterchef contest, but Peta Mathias “Unplugged in Morocco” and Annabel Langbein. Peta combines a fascination with traditional cooking and a pleasurable delight in its taste and the people who make it. Annabel produces some great food, but my delight is in the casual way she wraps up the morning’s produce from the oven and sets off in her little boat to cross Lake Wanaka to provide lunch for a neighbour, and when she takes an exotic morning tea in her battered old ute up the hill to provide sustenance for the musterers bringing in the Merinos for shearing. It’s no wonder the programme has gone down so well in Australia and Europe.

She has a rather attractive way of completing a dish and then surreptiously slipping her finger into the sauce, tasting it and declaring with orgasmic delight: “Oooh, that is sooo good!” She should know. It was her creation.

Kay and I have adopted this way of expressing appreciation for the time spent by the one or the other of us slaving over a hot stove. We had such a meal tonight. It was only a pasta, and I have to confess the sauce incorporated some of the leftovers from yesterday. It warranted opening a bottle of Merlot.

Best of all, we enjoyed it together.