Hey Plain Jane

I think I do believe in race memory, whatever that may be. It is quite an intangible feeling of knowing you belong to some place, being pleasantly aware of the weight of your own ancestry, seeing unfamiliar things and having an emotional response to them that comes not from the head but from a place somewhere in the heart.

They say the heart has a brain. Scientists have discovered we do some of our thinking from a place inside our own hearts. There is evidence to show ‘brain-like’ activity occurring within the human heart, and most commonly thoughts to do with our emotional life. This is something we kind of know metaphorically, but this discovery means expressions like “thinking with your heart’ and “heart-felt” are based in fact.

When I go to Sherwood I am overcome with heart-felt memories of my race. These feelings are so easy to dismiss as fancy, but I do allow for the possibility that humans do not understand everything, and do allow for the notion that I am somehow emotionally linked to forests and especially the forests of England. It is only two generations ago my people lived there. We are all but vanished from that island now.

As we sat about Sherwood Forest and watched Harry and Jack play in the hollow log of a giant fallen Oak for well over an hour, as I took magic photos one after the other of these two boisterous and calamitous friends, it became so clear to me that a part of my being never left this island at all. In England I feel a constant sense of being drawn into the earth.

Continuum is beautiful. It is the meaning of having children. It is overwhelmingly truthful. Implanted within the idea of continuum is the utter and peaceful acceptance of life, death, joy and hardship. Continuum is almost Zen.

Another layer to this photo is that Jack and Harry are the sons of two friends, John (my husband) and Nick, who have been best friends since the age of three. Jack and Harry are both three in this photo, and they too have only just met. Like their fathers, they took to each other so well it was a pill to separate them at the end of the day. Nick’s mother commented to me that she was struck by the physical likeness between Harry and her son Nick when he was a boy, and Jack and John when he was a boy. So, John and I, and Nick and his partner Jo, had in effect re-created a strikingly similar image of the friendship between two boys forty years after it had first been seen.

Does it ever occur to you that your face is by no means unique? There are quite possibly relatives of yours walking the earth who you don’t know about who look spookily similar to you? They are part of your continuum and you don’t even know it. Even more intriguing for me is the absolute possibility that copies of your face have been seen on the earth quite a few times over the many centuries, as members of your continuum strutted and fretted their hours upon the stage, and then were heard no more.

I’ve seen several books lately, it seems, that run along the lines of “On my Table” or “So and So’s Table in Tuscany” or “Gee, My Table is Better than Your Table, Isn’t it?”.  What’s on my table, then? At the risk of sounding far too organic and posey, I seriously do have a fantastic spread of food on my table at the minute.

I owe it all to our local market place, Rusty’s, that has been keenly filmed and envied over and over again by visiting chef celeb types like Rick Stein and Neil Perry. It just has to be seen to be believed. About twenty huge fruit and veg stalls under a massive tin roof, stacked high with the most exotic and the most bountiful displays.

There are rows and rows of Chinese greens you ain’t never heard of, enough to blow your smug oh-bok-choy-steamed-in-bamboo mind. The long tressle tables are bulging with all the very best of the normal fruits and vegetables at crazy prices, but also you’ll find fun items like durian, jack fruit, kohlrabi, rambutan, custard apple, plantain, mangosteen, sunflower sprouts, for crying out.

This is all before you even mention the peripheral stalls selling organic dairy, Yamagishi Happy (free range) eggs, fresh Indian spices, coconut juice from the coconut, homemade soap, non-wheat pasta, organic bread, Middle-eastern baked goods, Shiastsu and reflexology massages, mango wine, flavoured oils, flower stalls selling crazy-beautiful heliconias and ginger plants. Rusty’s is insane.

I always, always spend too much money there. What do I expect? They are selling things like 5 avocados for two dollars. Of course I’m going to take that up. I gave three to my neighbour because I’m never going to have that much avocado in one week.

Today I also bought Kohlrabi, because I could.

Kohlrabi looks like an alien cousin of the turnip. It has white flesh, a texture like a radish, but not peppery. I had it raw sliced up in a coleslaw type salad with miso dressing I made last night. Yum.

I bought a bunch of so-called monkey bananas, because they are about the size of your thumb and too devilishly monkey-sized to resist. When they are ripe they taste like little sticks of solid cream. 

I bought a weird fruit called Dragon fruit (above left). Outside it has a gnarly thick flesh of pink and pale yellow and green. Inside…..oh, my!

Blindingly bright pink flesh and masses of small slippery black seeds! The texture of the fruit is so light, the flavour is like a fluffy sweet sorbet or sweet pink jelly. Man!!

And the long and very short of this is that I have gone vego. Not strictly so, because I’m still having salmon and tuna, and once in a long while, some organic chicken. Not because I have any great bee in my bonnet about red meat. I have cut out bread and red meat because maybe, just maybe, it will shift some of my weight.

If there was any town in the world to go vego, this is it.

Every once in a while Better Homes and Gardens manages to rise above its suburban mediocrity and its creative rigor mortis to cough up a recipe that’s a keeper. I have in the past found exactly four such recipes amid the thousands of editions of this quite charmless magazine I’ve purchased over the years; the pistachio and ginger cream biscuits, the Earl Grey Tea biscuits, the polenta corn bread, and the Walnut and Beer Bread (pictured above).

Ridiculously simple….mix 3 and a half cups of SR Flour, half a cup of full cream powdered milk, a teaspoon of salt, and one and a half cups of chopped walnuts. Make a well in the centre, pour in a 375ml bottle of room temperature beer. Stir it together with a knife. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, knead it until it’s smooth, flatten it into a rectangle, roll up the rectangle, brush it with milk, sprinkle on some sunflower seeds or pepitas, bung it into a medium sized loaf tin that’s been lined with baking paper, brush it with milk, sprinkle on some sunflower seeds or pepitas, chuck it in the oven at 200 degrees C and in 35 minutes you will have a lovely unsweetened nut bread to call your own. Whacko the didley-o.

The problem is that I am the only one in my house hold who would be interested in a slice of this healthy and attractive repast. And lately I’ve sworn off bread a bit. I no longer eat sandwiches for lunch, just a plate of what-nots and salad. 

I had a bit of a foray into super-mad health food today too, which ended better than expected; Adzuki Bean and pumpkin casserole. I ate it for lunch; it was delish.

Ellen and Jack, cousins in a cuddle. I took this photo beside the site of an ancient ring of stones near Ellen’s house in the far North of England. I just adore the shapes and the sensibility of this photo. I love Ellen’s hands, and the way she is staring so fondly at the camera lens. There is something magnificent about Jack and Ellen embracing in such a sacred place: a sense of continuity, of culture, of bloodline and love. 

Speaking of unfinished projects, this photo reminds me of a series of really lovely photos I’ve been threatening to have framed and hung in my house for over a year. Now it looks unlikely to happen until the new house is up.

And tomorrow is a bugger of a day. I’m working.  I should go to bed, but sleeping in so boring when there is so much to think about, so much to do and see. I hate sleep. I have always hated sleep.

My small but perfectly formed life is near to exploding with Junk. I give Junk the favour of capitalisation here, for I believe it is personal. Personal Junk, that is. No, I do not refer to my personal drug stash, nor to anything unbecoming such as personal body fluids. No, real Junk, real personal Junk.

My life is a-clutter.

I’m stretching my brain backwards, trying to determine whether my life has always been junked up with projects, possessions, ideas, unfinished dreams and detrius. Or was there indeed a time when I and mine was a simple affair, with simple projects tackled one at a time and a general sense of relaxation about how things were panning out.

God, though, it’s a tangle. A monumental one.

I never get anything truly done. No, that’s not true. When I do actually get things done, more often than not there is a sense of it not being complete the way I wanted because I didn’t/couldn’t give it my full attention. 

Is it a time management issue? Is it all really since I’ve become a parent? Is it a sign of a deeper issue of self development or indeed self-stalling?

I have so much stuff. Too much. All this stuff is about projects I want to tackle. My heart is burning to tackle them, but it seems there is always something else more pressing. Books, craft supplies, notebooks cramped with ideas I didn’t take up.

So frustrating. I would like to dejunk, but just cannot. I love these things I have gathered around me. They please me, they amuse me, they inspire me……..inspire me to sit on my computer an dwrite about how I don’t have enough time. The irony is not missed.

A couple of books came in the post for me yesterday; Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes, a wonderfully exotic cookbook to go with the author’s sojourn through the spicier locals of Europe, and the book seen above, an utterly delicious quilting book by two Australian women who own their own quilting business Material Obsession. I’ve already made one of their designs, a king single quilt called Annie’s Garden. I’m twitching to make this one of theirs:

known as Holiday Morning. Oh yes, just what I need! More projects! Please, more projects, because I’m so bereft of things to do here.

One day. I swear.

The linen stacked under the Material Obsession book is a small haul I took this morning at a thrift store in a country suburb, Freshwater. This particular store, which is tiny I will add, was having a linen bonanza sale. I was going to leave it until this afternoon because I am up to my tiny nostrils with a serious play writing commitment, but thank goodness I didn’t. I shot out there as soon as Jack was ensconced in his day care. The shop was chockas full of hunters, all rummaging madly. Alas, even at 10am, we were all a bit late. The store had sold out of most of its very beautiful old linen by 9 o’clock. I managed to scrimp a few tablecloths, a couple of embroidered tea towels and a doily or two. Oh..and a small crocheted lap rug:

When my mother comes to stay this Winter, I’m going to have to insist she teach me how to crochet. I adore this fuddy-duddy crocheted squares look. My mother is ace at it.

On top of the rug is a picture of the chocolate slice I made this afternoon for Jack’s Oyatsu. Oyatsu is a special Japanese word that means an after-school snack for children. I never fail to think Oyatsu instead of the phrase ‘afterschool snack’. Weird. Chocolate slice -this version of it anyhow- has special meaning for me historically; my sister Carmel and I always made it to cheer ourselves up on cold dull afternoons.

I popped into our local Asian food store this morning. It’s run by a Filipina woman, who informed me that tonight was the monthly Filipino get together, church service and feast in the city. I’ve known about this event for ages but have never been organised enough to make it. Long time ago now but I was invited to come to it by a Filipina baxter* who owns a bakery and restaurant in the middle of town. Her lovely name is Milla, and she bakes the most superb Pinoy doughnuts imaginable.

So tonight we rocked up to the Catholic church service at St.Joseph’s, a modest crowd of Filipinos, singing a combination of Tagalog and English hymns. As the only Anglo-Australians there were conspicuous as all get out. Jack was jumping for joy at it all at first. Surprise, surprise, Jack is a spiritual soul, and at the tender age of four comes out with statements and questions about God, heaven, hell, life and death that would make the hairs on the back of your neck rise up. He has taken to Bible stories, speaks often of God, and loves the Lord’s Prayer as I’ve been teaching him this week.

More than this enthusiasm for Biblical stories and prayer wordage, Jack is seriously and keenly a seeker of religious doctrine.  A couple of weeks ago, just as we were in a hurry out the door, running late for something, he asked  Mum? Who’s the devil? I told him I’d explain later, but he put his little foot down. No! I need to know now!!! he pressed with all the urgency of a boy headed for the seminary. A brief history of Beelzebub and his indecorous fall from Grace, ensued. Jack was slack-jawed with fascination.

Just where he’s come up with this soteriological gene, we are unsure. Well no, scratch that, I’m very sure he got it from me. I am the ex-missionary around here.

But as the hymns and the prayers went on in this evening’s service, Jack got more than just fidgety. It was like he swallowed some worms or something. I’m sure my mum never let me get away with wiggling about the church pews. The second the service was finished Milla came over to us and invited us to stay for supper. She immediately fascinated Jack, revving him up about the noodles and the chicken she’d made, and how he would be eating like a prince. Jack thought this was all good. He ate several of Milla’s sumptuous Adobe chicken drumsticks, licking his chops and glowing with multiculturalism.  Jack never has seen fit to eat chicken drumsticks in his life. Suddenly it’s manna. He was so unusually excited at it all, and declared Milla was wonderful and that we should come back to the church again. Upon leaving he threw his arms around her waist and hugged so long I was obliged to prize him off.

In any case it was a fun introduction to the local Pinoy community. They were all so open and welcoming, just like every other Filipino crowd I’ve come across. We have been invited to the June 20 Philippine Independence Day celebration. Jack is beside himself. There may be more chicken.

* Not often I get to use this archaic word, baxter, meaning a female baker.

Through a series of rare and miscalculated events, we ended up going bowling with our neighbours today, this fabulous Labour Day holiday. Jack’s bowling style proved to be more dash than flash, more roll than bowl, much more about the yahoo victory lap than technique, strategy or indeed hitting pins. Here he demonstrated his bend-it-like-Beckham salutation after having guttered the ball for the twentieth time running. Later, in a tender, private and vulnerable moment Jack whispered his secret fears of being a big fat loser at the entire sport. Damn near broke my heart.

The photo is a photoshop manipulation based (in a very hurried fashion) on this photoshop tutorial. I’ve been around photoshop for, oh, too long, and still this tute taught me a couple of tricks and shortcuts I hadn’t yet noticed. The photo turned up a treat too.

I love this boy.

Honestly, the lead up to the markets, and the debut outing of Hey Plain Jane wares, was so full on, so humungous and so thrilling, that I could not even think about posting here. Smack my hands, but my hands were very very very busy else where.

Now, two days later, I remain exhausted. I have one of those grinding, indefensible coughs and buckets of phlegm, and sinus clog headaches and nothing it seems is prepared to give. So I’m sitting still and not doing anything in the vain hope it will all settle down. That happens though, doesn’t it? You work yourself up for some event and after the event your health caves. I’ve caved. Really.