When you eat alone

So, this was well-timed. The Boy is away for the month: two weeks in Puckapunyal, driving, uh, things (okay, vehicles with acronyms I’ve neither heard before nor can remember how to pronounce), back for four days, Sydney for some reason for another fortnight. I’m at home with the kitten, still not employed, enjoying DVDs, illness, and a total lack of contact with the outside world.

As a disclaimer, let it be said that I love to cook; it’s one of the few things I pride myself on doing well. I like having dinner parties. I force cakes and scones upon casual visitors. I probably drive the Boy to distraction, when all he wants is a pub meal, making elaborate, time-consuming dishes for the two of us, because “I’ve always wanted to try making [whatever].”

But these last few days, whether it be due to this rotten cold or whether I’ve just been feeling extra alone, all I’ve done is graze. Some popcorn for breakfast. A couple of dark-chocolate digestive biscuits. A green apple. Some pickles. A slice of cheese. More pickles. Some anchovies out of the jar. Jam and bread.

I’ve noticed that I tend to oscillate between the sweet, salty, and sour, brushing my teeth a trillion times a day for that extra top-note of minty freshness. I can’t anticipate what I’m going to crave if and when I do fall pregnant, given that I seem to eat like the stereotypical pregnant crazy lady… and I won’t lie; cold tinned spaghetti has featured prominantly in my diet these last few days, a few spoonfuls at a time. Between the mustard on toast and the leftover pudding, that is.

The one constant in my diet has been the giant vat of chicken soup the Boy cooked me before he left. Soup cooked by other people has curative properties when you’re ill; it’s no good making it yourself, it just doesn’t work like that. I’ve been downing it late at night when I realise I haven’t had a ‘meal’ yet, and I think, so far, it’s working. But I don’t know whether you can prise the pickles out of my hands yet. Give me a few more days to get used to being alone.

In praise of public libraries

Since I handed in all my assessment, I’ve been on an absolute book binge. A few things coincided to gift me with this ‘free time’ I’ve been hearing so much about – no school, no freelance deadlines, no Boy. (Fret not, gentle readers, he is merely exploding things in the country somewhere and will trudge home muddy and tired at the end of the week.)

Anyway, I’ve been tearing through books at a rate of knots. And now that I no longer have access to the uni libraries, I’ve been rediscovering the charms of the public library. I practically grew up in the basement of the Stonnington library – they had music classes there for toddlers – and spent a good chunk of my adolescence curled up in the fiction aisles on rainy Saturdays.

The collection at the St Kilda public library is smaller than I’m used to, but well-browsed; the lighting is predictably harsh, but there are kids shrieking in the children’s section, which is a welcome change from the strained atmosphere of uni collections. There are sharps collection boxes in the loos, posters for NA meetings tacked up in the foyer, and paste-ups from a local artist on most of the walls.

Best of all, it’s full of books! I’d forgotten how much easier browsing is in a small library. The collections are idiosyncratic, and tend to go along the lines of bestsellers, prize-winners, and the librarians’ own tastes, which makes for unexpected pleasures and discoveries. I came away with a good haul tonight; Colletes Cheri, Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, and Geraldine Brooks’ March. I checked them out from a real live librarian – no space age self-checkout here! – and nearly fell over the drunk hanging out on the steps on the way out.

The man I checked them out from joked that I had a good week’s reading; I’ve actually been averaging three a day this week, but maybe it’s a bit of a hint to slow down. I’m of a mind to review as I read, for I’ve been sorely neglecting this blog, I know. And there are a bunch of other writing-type things that I ought to be doing. But it’s so nice – such a luxury – to spend a week completely immersed in other people’s words that I’m loath to stop. Books, books, books! Really, that is all.

A cat named Henry Sugar

Right now I am typing with a kitten curled up on my lap, purring and occasionally raising its head to bat at the keyboard. The Boy brought him home the other day: by which I mean I rang my mum to see if I could borrow the car, she said, “I’m just in your area! I’ll give you a lift!”, and so the Boy, my mum, my eighty-five-year-old grandmother and I all drove to Richmond to collect this adorable ball of fluff.

But it was the Boy’s initiative. And, I’m glad he took it. Although the kitten seems to climb everything, including people, he is delightful company and very good to play with and look after. We were originally going to call him Moriarty, after this fellow, and because Morrie is a good St Kilda cat name, but everyone we told said, “Oh, like that guy” and as is well documented, I won’t have a bar of it.

So the kitten became a Henry, and in my head Henry is always Henry Sugar, and though the cat has not yet appeared to be psychic in any way, Henry Sugar he remains. And oh, he is so cute and climby. Makes the many, many words I have yet to write a little more bearable when I’ve got a kitten curling up around my neck to fall asleep.

Spectacles

Huh. I felt for sure that I must have written by now about my spectacle fetish; my lens lust, if you will. But searching through the archives, I couldn’t find anything. I cannot believe that I have been writing this thing, on and off, for two years without some sort of drunken ode to the spectacle, but there you go.

Anyway, I always felt a little bit left out by my lack of cool indie/hipster/whatever frames – I think I was the only Farrago kid not to have them. All my art friends have them. All the graphic designers I know. Most of the writers, and now – glory of glories – I shall too.

(It’s here that I cop to truly believing, in quite a smug way, that I had no need whatsoever for spectacles, despite their radness. From all the OHS training I’ve done at various publications, and all the study seminars the uni made me go to in first year, I really thought that headaches, dizziness and jumbled letters were the natural consequence of reading too long. I also thought that everyone’s vision got swimmy with only one eye open. Nope; it’s a fatass astigmatism.)

I went on a brief search for the perfect pair of specs, the ones that would make me look fifties-secretary terrific, but there were none to be had. I settled on a cheapo pair of seventies-secretary specs – an entirely different breed – and will devote the winter to happily scouring op-shops for the perfect catseye frames.

In the meantime, I hope the optometrist is done with mine soon. My eyes are fucking killing me.

The gold dress

Gold or yellow or mustard, Grecian in cut, polished cotton or linen and it fits like a glove. I’m not really in a position to be buying dresses at the moment, or anything else really, but it lit up in the corner of my eye when I walked home the other day. Our new place is two vintage shops away from the tram-stop, and hats and gloves and dresses call out through the grey drizzle. Try me on! Empty your wallet! Come back in time with us! And so on.

Anyway, I tried it on, fervently hoping it wouldn’t fit, but it did. Perfectly. I put down a deposit, thinking that rent wouldn’t be coming up for a fornight and the bond from the old place would find its way into my pocket before that. I went home feeling very pleased with myself, and went back a few days later to pay it off, so I could wear it to a job interview.

The shopgirl looked up as I walked in. “I’ve come to pick up a dress, please,” I said. She fished around behind the counter and handed it over to me.

“Well, it says ‘nothing owing’. Was there anything else?”

For a long moment my mind clicked over. I could take the dress and just stroll out, with my money still in my pocket, with a dress the colour of two dollar coins. I could use the difference to buy perfume – I haven’t worn it in a year. I could drink champagne at my housewarming and buy caviar, or more prosaically a printer-scanner I’ve been meaning to get for ages, or pay bills off, or make rent week a little less lean. I could take the Boy out to dinner somewhere nice, maybe wearing the gold dress, and no-one would suspect that going out usually means something cheap in Chinatown or a bowl of pho, and not dressed up either.

But. Could I go to a job interview in a stolen dress? What if the person who write ‘nothing owing’ got in trouble? What if they lost their job because I was brazen enough to lie to the shopgirl’s face? I could make strolling out the door seem romantic, but I couldn’t get someone in trouble, and I would never be able to go there again. The shop would become The Stolen Shop, and I would have to slink past it on the way to the tram or even cross the road.

“I think that’s a mistake,’ I said. “I wish it weren’t. But I still owe you quite a bit of money.”

I paid it off, and walked out, and hopefully no-one will get in trouble. And gadding about in a dress the colour of money, I won’t have to ever feel cheap.

Southside!

So, we’d just about given up on moving – the market is terrible, our house is charming and cosy, we’re living on a shoestring at the moment. All things pointed to a snug winter in Brunswick, and yet an art deco flat has fallen into our laps like some delapidated plum.

I’m inclined to credit my Greek Orthodox friend Freda, who, after listening to my litany of real-estate-related woes, offered to speak to Jesus on my behalf. We got the place the next day. It’s a bit shabby, but we plan to paint it up; there’s a gas stove and open fireplace, and most importantly, a lovely writerly friend at no. 8 and a geek chic amigo at no. 10. You could walk right through the three apartments; all the relevent doors kiss.

The upshot is that the Boy and I are moving to the South; away from Lebanese food, Indian groceries and mafia shootings and towards the ocean, gelati and used syringes scattered on the ground. I’m trying to let go of all the Northside prejudices, and I have to say the prospect of extremely proximate bagels and challah is going a long way. Brunswick is fine, but severly lacking in the Jews.

Still, I’ve come to know this little nook of the world intimitely, and I’ll miss it. I’ll miss my housemates especially; eating pie with them in the kitchen, watching DVDs, piling into the car to go on driving adventures. Last night, after half a bottle of whiskey, the kitchen table got pushed to the side, the shoes came off, and the music came on. It was a drunk and lovely send-off, as we’re signing the new lease tomorrow.

And then a fresh, bracing start in the South. A cosy home for just the two of us, a dining room for dinner parties and an open fire to lie in front of with a book. A million schelps with a million boxes. Friends, I cannot wait.

Food and drink round-up

Since assessment has finished, I’ve found myself on a cooking rampage. In the last week or so, I’ve made (apart from normal breakfasts and dinners and things); mushroom ragout with soft polenta; gnocchi; hot cross buns; rhubarb cake; plum cake; scones; and two semi-experimental loaves of bread, which turned out a bit like damper after I couldn’t find any bread flour and the shops and decided to just make them with the soft-gluten kind.

The bread and hot cross buns were the standouts, in terms of small accomplishments; I’ve never baked with yeast before. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lovely housemate who’s a dab hand with an olive and rosemary loaf, and even when she went away, I found that I had kind of assigned bread baking to her arena of expertise. However! It turns out that yeasty things are just time-consuming, not particularly difficult, and the hot cross buns turned out exceptionally well with the last-minute addition of some mandarin peel.

Frankly, I’m not sure how I even decided that Bread Is Hard. It’s a bit like how I never cook rice, either, because I got it into my head that rice takes a long time and is a very delicate operation. Oeufs a la Neige? Tarte Tatin? Easy. Rice? Freaks me the fuck out. It took me a very long time to realise that you could just boil it.

I also learned how to make my Nagyi’s super-top-secret chicken soup recipe, which I will now use to combat all and any illnesses that come my way. Oh, and kneydl too, as part of a weirdly hybridised Seder meal that ended with (non-leavened) tiramisu. What else? A couple of very boozy dinner parties have me thinking I might need to give my liver a rest, there was too much cheese, and I wrote this for a very cool new food website. I’m beginning to think, given the amount I cook and eat, that food writing might just be my calling.

Either that, or morbid obesity.

Not dead yet

Lest you think I have succumbed to tonsillitis, I just wanted to assure you that I am not dead. Yet. I may be by the end of this essay – I just read an abstract containing the following sentence:

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu rejected philosopher Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Immanuel Kant’s concept of aesthetics.

See you on the other side.

Illin’

Well, the sore joints and scratchy throat persist – it turns out I have an exciting dollop of tonsillitis. I went to the doctor the other day to get cold and flu medication and got the dizzies in the waiting room. Apparently fainting is a great way to skip the queue – they made an appointment for me while I lay down in an empty room, shivering, sniffling and feeling mighty embarrassed.

The doctor was nice, and tonsillitis did explain my grotesquely swollen neck and fevery head. I’ve spent the last few days in bed, drifting in and out, watching episodes of Mad Men and drinking hot honey and lemon (spiked with whiskey for it is medicine). The Boy, bless him, has cooked me soup and brought me icecream. Paulina brought home three colours of jelly, including a mackerel jelly. Toby gave me whiskey. It’s nice to be taken care of.

Still, I feel very blergh. That is all I have to say. I just thought you would want to know. Blergh.

Rainy weekend

This weekend has been lovely, in an exhausted kind of way. Lots of bread-and-butter pudding, and stewed apple and rhubarb, and period drama (this, and this, and my God I need to read the novels now). (There’s a longer parenthesis in there about how the period drama and the pudding are related, and how Paulina and I have decided to cook like Depression-era frontierswomen/ poverty-stricken Ruth Park characters, but I am tired, so tired, and have no room for parenthisis (apart from this (and I guess this.)))

It’s lovely having a housemate who both cooks and drives. P and I went to the Collingwood Children’s Farm farmer’s market on Saturday morning, as research for an article I’m writing, and wound up dashing through the downpour and eating hot pancakes in a barn while the rain bucketed down. We had coffee, and it was all very charming, and we didn’t mind that we were soaked until the car broke down in the turning lane of one of the busiest intersections in Melbourne. Gaaargh.

The upshot of that immersion, and I suspect our other housemate’s return from Burma with the flu, means that three-quarters of our household is tired, achey and cross. (Should the Boy fall ill, we will have the complete set. But who will bring me tea in bed then?) (Parenthesis!) I went to bed feeling great – the Boy and I went out for dinner and drank champagne in bed – it was a gift from a friend, as ‘Jon Faine champagne – and woke up feeling like somebody had hit me with an old shoe in the night. Who knows. Maybe someone did. I suspect a course of chicken soup should clear me up, but if not, expect griping. Oh, so much griping.