Monday Memories. Family members.

G'Day,
Monday memories prompt site asks us to share a memory each week. This weeks suggestion was to write about a family member.
I choose more than one. I choose my Aunties and Uncles.
I have been lucky in my life to have quite a few family members whom I identify with. My Uncles and Aunties being amongst them.
My Dad's only sister My Aunty Marion whom I loved and whom I think I am a bit like. An earth mother. I hope so anyway. I have written about her on several occasions here in my Blog.
She lived on a 5 acre block on the river bank in a small town in the Hunter valley of New South Wales. My father's birthplace, Merriwa. A life style like that would be my choice if I ever could afford a bit of land and house of my own again. But really, the material things that remind us of passed loved ones are not the things we remember best about them. It is their personal attributes and influence that we try to follow by choice in our own lives.
I loved that she was the kind of person who could not turn away a person in need. That is something I have failed to accomplish, for fear of consequence.
I loved that she was a real worker. That is something that I think I have succeeded at, no matter how unpleasant the work attempted. Ethics and hard work.
She loved her plants and animals and rocks and walks and maybe I inherited those loves of mine from her.
I loved that she stayed in the one house for ever. Something I would love to be able to do, ah well my life is not finished yet is it. I guess that you could call that a yearning for stability. I am between two worlds on that one though. Wanting to explore my country as well as have that home base stability. I don't think she ever traveled much from her own local area during her life.
She influenced me with her jam and pickle making, I love to do that and I hate to see the things I have grown go to waste and want to preserve them. This past season I made fig jam, sweet mustard pickles, bread and butter pickles from cucumber and saved herb and flower seeds to replant next spring when it warms up again. All from the produce in my garden.
Other Aunts and Uncles.
Uncle Bill for his quiet strength and family values.
Uncle Wal for his adventure, quirkiness and love.
Aunty Joan for her acceptance of me and her sociability.
Uncle Roger for his stoicism.
Uncle Charlie for his sense of humor and cuteness, my Dad's twin.
Aunty Marg for her amiability.
Love them all, and others whom I didn't get to spend as much time with due to distance or other reasons. Uncles and Aunties are a definitive influence in our lives. I hope one day I might be thought of as that by some of my family.
And the world turns.
Bye. Love Linda.

Memories on Monday "Food"

G'Day,
Monday Memories requests we write about Food.
Yep,
have that ,
done that,
over done that,
need that,
enjoy that.
Too much food.
It shows.

A memory of special food came to my mind of when my parents took us to Singapore. I was 13 when we moved there and we stayed for just under a year and a half. My Dad was in the Australian army and the year was 1972. It was just after he returned from Vietnam. We found out later that a trip on active duty was a pre-requisite to a posting to Singapore and he had wanted us girls to experience another lifestyle and country. We had lived in Malaysia as babies but of course had no memory of that time. So off we went. I was christened in Penang, but that is another story.
Singapore to us was a gourmet paradise. So many wonderful foods to try, and we did! We had some friends amongst the local community and they introduced us to wonderful food. Food from the night markets and street side stalls. We were warned that those places were unsafe and we should not eat food from them. But... we did and loved it without any ill effects. The satay stalls along the waterfront across from the Padang. Oh Yum, hot spicy and delicious. The market down on Orchard road that was in a big car park, only at night, full of great stalls of all kinds, and all cooked on site in front of you while you waited. The steamboat, cooked in a simmering silvery stockpot in the middle of a rickety table on fold up chairs, in a skinny crowded lane way with light bulbs hanging over head.
There was a big open air eating area near our friend's flat. We often went there for noodles or soup, and I always got sugar cane juice. That was crushed through a thing like an old fashioned washing machine wringer. I tasted it many years later in Sydney and thought it was foul stuff, but when we lived there I loved it. Ricky Wong was our hosts name, and my sister went out with him for a while. Anyway his family adopted us and took us lots of places when we lived there. They would send their driver in a big black Mercedes around to chauffeur my sister and I when we went out. I remember sinking down into it's soft leather seats. Talk about hospitality. Ricky's elder brother Anthony became my big brother, hehe. His Mum and sister used to ooh and ahh over my whiter than white skin and pinch it. Not the sort of skin a teenage girl wants, I never could tan, but to them it was a novelty. Lovely times to remember.
Ricky and Anthony took us to a street vendor stall once and we tasted real birds nest, not the fried noodle type that you usually get called bird's nest. Real bird's nest is just that, birds nest. It is a particular type of bird that makes it's nest from it's dried saliva, very rare and expensive.
I remember once Anthony took me to a huge banquet with him and I was shocked and horrified to learn there was a room out the back of the restaurant. When you were too full you went out there to vomit so you could go back and have more to eat. And No! I didn't use it. The trick was to have just a tiny taste of each course offered and there were many courses. I think there were 20 something. It was the custom to eat and enjoy food offered by your host and to not do so was an insult to them. Also it was a compliment to burp at the table because that meant that you were enjoying your food and also that you left the scraps on the table cloth and made a mess because that meant that you were enjoying your food too. Those table cloths were snowy white and perfectly starched.
We lived in Changi when we were there, in the area that is now part of the Singapore airport. They started building that after we left there.
Just a few blocks from our house and around the corner was the infamous Changi prison. The same one my poor Uncle Roger was held as a prisoner during WW2, before being sent to Burma to work on the Thai Burma railway. He survived and came home, many didn't, he was never a well man due to illness from that part of his life though. I went to a party in there once. Inside the prison. The guards used to live on site. The party we went to was one of the guards children. Dancing and loud 70's teen music.
Anyway, we would hop on the bus and go down to Changi village and there was a curry house type shop down there that we loved. Mum would send us down there to get take away curry. When we went to the village to shop ,we used to go to that curry place and get a bowl of curry gravy and a paratha and tear bits of it up and dip it into the gravy and eat it. We got some looks off the locals until they got used to seeing us around. Or sometimes just have that paratha with lemon and sugar on it. Paratha are India bread type things, sort of like a buttery flaky big pancake, cooked on the griddle. Changi village does not exist anymore. I remember the little wharf there too with those old boats that went out and came back each day with their catch. They didn't look very seaworthy.
And the markets. We would go there to buy our vegetables and fruit. Smells and sights and sounds and colors and, and, and, wonderful. We would buy rambutans, lychees, pawpaws and jackfruits straight from the farmer.
Live animals at the markets were slaughtered on the spot and taken home with you , many didn't have refrigeration so it had to be fresh. Live chickens and other poultry, seafoods, we used to buy big live crabs and take them home and our Amah would cook for us.
There was, (reputedly though it may have been a story to shock us girls), a place in China town where you could go and eat monkey brains while the monkey was still kicking. Ew! Well if it was only a story to scare us , it worked.
Dad , Mum and us girls had a favorite restaurant that was down by the beach at Changi. It was called the South China Seas restaurant. It had great food and was open on three sides, under a big tin roof . We loved to go there and sit by the water and watch the sunset and have our meals. They had the best chilli crab there. I remember that we always had chilli crab. Mmmmmm Yummy. Then we would walk along the beach. The beach being just a narrow strip of sand littered with coconut trees and their associated debris, but it was still a beach and quite close to home for us to get to, a short taxi ride.
I loved to go down to Changi beach and had some friends at the kampong there. I went out with a boy called Ringo, a Malay boy and when I went to his house one day his mum was all dressed up because I was coming and served us tea and tiny cakes on a decorated tray. I was honored. Ringo died in a motor bike accident at the age of just 17 when I was there. I have a lifelong fear or motor bikes and never got on his bike with him. He used to follow the bus I was on and meet me where I got off the bus. Hehe. We would go across the road to the beach and have coconut drinks straight from the coconut. Little boys would climb the trees and cut them down. Then the vendor would chop off the top with a machete, mush it around a bit to cut some of the soft pulp inside then serve it straight from the shell with a straw sticking out the top. Then we would hire little canoe boats and float on the water in them. I loved that. I still love canoes. I remember the sun beaming down and the little canoe, floating, rocking gently with me laying down inside it. Beautiful. Just beautiful.
About a block and a half from our house was another kampong that had a funny little shop. I used to go in there and get the home made ice blocks and tins of jam that was made with eggs and orange and had a strange kind of creamy texture. I guess that is not there anymore either.
I also remember buying these funny pickled sweet and sour apricots from street vendors that I loved but they always made me cough, they almost took my breath away, god knows what preservative they were made with. Another strange snack, bought in little packets, was dried salted cuttle fish that you could chew on for ages and made your breath stink, but tasted very good. I wonder if I would like that if I tasted it now I am an adult. Hehe.
And the chewing gum was called chiclets. And the soft drinks came out of a bottle and were poured into a plastic bag at the shop, they kept the bottle, with a plastic pull string at the top which when pulled shut acted as handles, with a straw sticking out the top.
We also ate dried salted sunflower and pumpkin seeds for snacks. Don't know if I am spelling this right, but we called them kwachi seeds. Good because you had to shell them as you ate them so they took a long while to eat.
Sometimes while we were waiting for the school bus in the mornings an old man would come riding along on his bicycle with a tin box type thing on the side of it and we would buy little bundles of rice, topped with some type of salty dried fish stuff and wrapped up in banana leaves to form a little triangle thing. They were yummy too, but very hot with quite a dose of chilli in them. We took them to school for our lunch. Another old man also came around on his bike selling hot buttered corn on the cob from the back of it. We often bought that too.
At the cricket club in the city they made big platters of fried rice topped with chilli, so so hot, burn your mouth out. Hehe. But we ate all that stuff then. I still have fads every now and then for things with chilli. We often went there with Dad when he played cricket at the Padang and another club in town that I can't remember the name of. It was a life time ago. Singapore has modernised and changed so much since those days.
When we came back to Australia there was Asian food available but nothing of the quality that I had experienced in Singapore. Of course now things have improved. Cities having their own areas where you can get great Asian foods. When we came back to australia we went to visit Wagga (a country town) and were taken to Choy's, the only chinese restaurant in the whole of Wagga. It was very popular and well patronized by the locals, but it served what I came to know as Australian Chinese food. Dumbed down for Australian palates. Nothing like the real stuff. The Malay, Chinese, Indian, Nonya food of Singapore.
We have caught up I am pleased to say, in many ways. In and around the westfield shopping area at nearby Woden town center where we live now, are a plethora of multi cultural foods to be experienced. Very good.
That's all for now.
Bye.
Love Linda.

Sunday Scribblings "May"

G'Day,
Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is "May". Well! That's my middle name.
My sisters were both born in the month of may.That makes it a significant month, doesn't it?
Plus in my part of the world, the month of may heralds autumn.
These few photos were taken late last week around my own back yard.
The above picture is of the nasturtiums I planted in my vegetable garden. Over the last few days they have withered from the first frosts of the season. I planted them as companions to the veges, but at this present moment have forgotten their particular use. But I really did plant them for... um? Can't remember.
I am watching a show at the moment on ABC talking about IQ and race. I used to get high scores when I was young with those tests, believe it or not. Mine has dropped with age, I am sure. Lol.
May is mother's day and mother's day in Australia is accompanied by beautiful chrysanthemums. These brilliant gold ones are flowering merrily at the moment in my back yard. I didn't plant them , so I can't take credit, but they are still lovely. There are a bunch of them right in front of me now on the desk.
May is autumn and with that comes harvest of the last summer growing vegetables from my garden. I grew great butternut pumpkins this year. However the original owner of this house treated his soil, it sure was great. The biggest ones must weigh 6 kgs or more.

The bright sunlit leaves on this big tree brighten my day, it drops mess all over our cars when we park out the front underneath its branches. The seed pods roll under my feet when I walk there and are quite a hazard. But it sure is pretty isn't it. Canberra is known for it's autumn colour. In the summer time, this tree gives shade and shelter and in the winter it lets the sun shine through. I think it is one of the maples, is it?
Over the last week the temperatures have been dropping dramatically towards wintertime. The wind was cold all day today when I was working around the yard. I cut back the strawberries and worked on tidying the potted plants,and trimmed and tied the espaliered pears tree on the back fence. I do enjoy filling my lungs with the cooler crisp air of autumn, which is more pleasant than the hot dry air of high summer isn't it. Each season holds its own pleasures.
May your May be lovely,
Where ever you May live.
Cheers.
Linda May.

Sunday Scribblings "Cake"

G'day,
Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is "Cake".
I am sitting here eating my breakfast as I type this. Wondering.
When will it be your turn
when will you get to eat your cake again.
Weighted down by responsibility and duty
That nobody else wants to have to comply to
the wheel turns slowly
if it spun any faster you would fall off the edge
So you wait for the circle to return to you

Sometimes I feel like I have spent my whole life pandering to everybody's needs except my own.
When will it be my turn.
Or is that just life in general.
In my case shut up and put up.

Bye
Love Linda

Sunday Scribblings "Shine".

G'Day,
Sunday Scribblings prompt site this week has given us the prompt word "Shine".
I went away over night for the Easter break to the south coast of New South Wales.
Peter was given tickets to see Bob Dylan at Woolongong for his birthday so we got to see the sea and Bobby too. Bob Dylan is approaching his 70th year. Or so I was told. I liked the way he always changes and does not give what is expected of him. Free thinker and performer.
While Peter and I were away we had a lovely wander around and explored some of the high lights of the area. The city and beaches, the countryside in general and crafty shops. We also visited the Nan Tien temple which is at Woolongong and is the biggest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. Very very impressive.
We stopped in at a roadside pottery and had a lovely and informative talk with the potter and his wife .Roger and Pauline Graham. What a lovely way for them to spend their retirement years, running a pottery, sharing their work and knowledge with people dropping in to visit.
As you have seen before in here, I love the south coast. It is so clean and fresh and lovely. The beaches and the bush. It shines, it really does. Nature's treasure.
The photo above is one taken of a rock pool sparkling in the sun, probably a month ago at Lake Tabourie. I live for my short trips to the coast, just a few hours drive from here.
The next picture is of a small beach near a seaside town called Vincentia. Blenheim beach. Taken on Easter Sunday on our way home. Encompassing pure, whiter than white sand and the clear turquoise waters of Jervis bay. Jervis bay is actually bigger than Sydney harbour and was under consideration as a site for what is now Sydney. I think they decided it was too shallow or something. I can't remember. But it is a beautiful spot.
Poppies. Bright and shining in the sun. Sunlight highlighting their beauty.
My husband shines . At work he has been given the honor of being called "Uncle" by the indigenous people who are there. A big honor for him and he is very proud to have it.

Shine sun shine
as the seasons cycle
soon it will be cold
but still you shine

Give us life sun
and heat our days
warm from the cold
until spring returns again

Bye
Love Linda.

Monday Memories. "Food...shopping"

G'Day,
I am back in here today to add my two Bob's worth to the Monday Memories prompt.
Just an addition to that last sentence," 2 Bob's worth" is an old Aussie saying. It harks back to the time of pre-decimal currency. What is equivalent to todays 20 cent piece was called 2 shillings, or 2 bob. So translate as "my 20 cents worth".
When I was 8 years old we were living in Darwin at the army base there. We lived in Darwin for 2 and a half years. It was called Larrakeyah Barracks, anyway there was a asko shop there that was run inside the camp for the army families. It sold a bit of everything. Groceries, gifts, tools even. We would go there with my Mum and of course ogle over the selection of lollies placed strategically near the check out, just to tempt children and hassle their parents into buying them to shut their children up, get a bit of peace and therefore out of the shop and back home quicker. Ha ha.
On a high shelf in the shop was a bright yellow plastic kick board. It was bigger than the normal size kick boards. The lady at the shop had seen me eyeing it off each time I went in there and one day she got it down for me to look at. It was about the same height as I was, something more like the size or today's boogie boards. Oh how I wanted that board. I wanted it so bad. The lady let me put a deposit of my pocket money on it and I eagerly waited for the day when I had it paid off and could take it into the pool on the barracks and float on it and kick around in the pool with it. I wanted that board so bad! I paid every cent I got into paying it off. In those days you were able to collect 5 cents for each glass soft drink bottle you took back to the shop. So I scavenged at all the cricket games my Dad played at the weekends for them too. That poor lady at the shop, I must have driven her mad taking my collected change in and her having to add up everything until my beloved board was paid in full and I was able to take it home with me. I was so so proud of myself, what a big achievement I had accomplished. Ha ha ha. I kept that board for years. I grew taller than it and I think by memory I eventually gave it to some other little kid who loved it, or....I hope they did.
The other memory that came straight to mind from this prompt was when I was 11 years old and living in Sydney. My Dad was in Vietnam at the time and my job was to do the grocery shopping. We lived probably 3 blocks from the local shops at Bondi road and Mum would give me $20 to go down there. She used to say that I got more for her $20 that the shop keepers gave her. We had a butcher shop on the corner and a small general store there too. We bought our meat at the butchers and other basics from the corner shop but the bigger choice and better prices were to be found elsewhere.
So proudly I would trot off down the road and do my duty. First stop was the fruit and vegetable shop on the corner, run by a Greek family. They knew me well and I would carefully choose my goods, checking them off my list and adding a few extra bits along the way.
Laden heavily, I would then struggle up the road about a block and a half into the grocery shop. It was a funny little shop, an old fashioned, dull overly cluttered version of today's big bright supermarkets. Probably a quarter the size of them, but everything was there.
My treat, in those days on the T.V. heavily advertised was a product called "Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs". Ha ha ha. What a name. Each week I was allowed to buy a box of them, if I had change left over, to take home to share. They were popcorn coated with toffee and nuts. They were so yummy. I always made sure there was enough change for a packet. Then I would struggle home like a mini pack horse, back to the flat we were living in. I remember the bags cutting into my hands they were so heavy, my fingers felt like they were about to fall off and turned purple. I often had to stop on the foot path, and put the bags down to relieve my hands for a few minutes. I can also remember being scared if someone walked up behind me. And thinking if I just pretend to go in that house there they will think that is where I live and they won't hurt me. Nothing ever happened to me though. But I was nervous. I would day dream for more change on the way home, I would be rich enough to catch a Taxi who would carry my heavy bags home for me and ease my hurt hands.
I loved that job though. I was proud of my talent at doing the the weekly shop. I was learning and got a sense of having achieved something useful for my mum , sister and I.
Oh and that butcher shop on the corner. Many times, on our tight budget of those days, we would have to buy the very cheapest cuts of meat. Meat that is now back in fashion, like tripe or lamb shanks and sausages, but in those days wasn't. The butcher used to make good old fashioned sausages.
Many meals, and one we loved, were as simple and cheap as pancakes with golden syrup or lemon and sugar. Novelty added by cooking them in the electric frying pan on the lounge room floor with us girls crowded over it, waiting for the next batch to be cooked. I did this myself for my own children when we were broke and had no money to buy much else, but they always were fed. Nothing cheaper than pancakes to feed the kids and make them happy. Flour, milk , a bit of butter, you can even make them without the egg if you haven't got one.
When my Dad came home from Vietnam on leave, he went down the corner to the butcher and ordered a couple of boxes of his sausages. The butcher froze them for him so he could take them back to Vietnam when he went, as you couldn't get Aussie style sausages over there. hahaha. He was very popular with the boys for doing that.
I still enjoy shopping. My Mum lives with me on and off and she spoils my fun because her mind is not working as it used to anymore. She gets annoyed with me and can be quite sarcastic if I try to go the shops without her. She goes into withdrawal to spend her money. When she gets in the super market she goes into sensory over load becoming all excited by the products on offer. She took an hour and a half to go through the Woolworths shop down the road from here the other day. She calls me back and forwards and if I try to hurry her up by walking in front of her she calls me back to ask me if we need her latest wonderful grocery discovery. Her favorite products, which she can't be persuaded to leave the shop without are Cuppa soups, lemonade, lollies , biscuits and cakes. Arrrrrrgh! I am sure by the look on my face when I have to take her to the supermarket, everyone must think I am the meanest most horrible daughter there ever was.
Oh well, one day I will be 89 years old...if I am lucky...or maybe not so lucky.
Bye for now.
Love Linda.

Sunday scribblings "Design"

G'day again,
Sunday in most or the world is Monday here. Monday evening to be precise. So time to play with the Sunday Scribblings prompt word for this week.


DESIGN

This bit goes there
That one over here
No let me change that
Ah that is better
Now where does this piece belong?

Stand back and look
Twist, poke, prod, straighten, stroke
Add another piece of clay
Play with your imagination
Does this work?

Design is something I enjoy playing with in clay. Clay has the advantage of being three dimensional. Not flat like pencil or paint on paper.
Design covers form, function and decoration. Heaps of fun to play with. You can choose to concentrate on one of these elements or use them together in different combinations. A balanced design.
I have recently had discussion at pottery with another potter on perfection. She is a purist and has everything just so. Tied up so tight that there is no room for a mistake. If there is an imperfection in something she makes it goes back in the recycling bucket to be worked up and reused again later. I guess that makes for a better potter than I am. It annoys me though. Everything fresh and new and perfect annoys me. I love the subtle imperfections of hand made items. If you want something perfect you can go to a shop and buy it. Pottery shouldn't have to be perfect.
I have driven through newly built suburbs and admired the houses, but when you take a second look, what have they got to add to individuality. I want to dirty them , muss them up, shake and ruffle them a bit. Give them some character.
There is a Japanese type thingy called Sabi Wabi. It recognizes and finds the beauty in imperfection. Nature has no straight lines and is not perfect. It does not need to be to work, and in that, there is a particular type of perfection.
I don't like that we get so tied up trying to be perfect when we should , by our own, and natures design, accept that we are all imperfect.
We can improve on elements but why do we have to turn ourselves inside out to do it. Surely there is enough pressure to conform.
That is all.
Bye
Love Linda.