I’ve never been much of a chocolate eater in adulthood. The odd Cadbury’s Milk Tray soft centre at Christmas or chocolate egg at Easter would pass my lips, but that was about it, unless it was my lifelong favourite, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which until recently, I could buy only when I visited the US.
Lately, however, I’ve taken to having a couple of squares of chocolate with my nightly cup of tea, last thing when I’m reading in bed.
Wow, has chocolate come on in the last couple of decades! Who knew? Everyone except me, it seems.
I’ve had crème brûlée flavour, cookies and cream, dark chocolate with cocoa nibs, dark chocolate with sea salt, milk chocolate with salted caramel, dark chocolate with ginger and dark chocolate with lime and chili. The choices are endless.
Chocolate has become so exotic. In my childhood, the most exotic it got was the family-size block of Cadbury’s milk chocolate that my parents occasionally bought as a treat to be shared among the family after dinner, probably on a Saturday night. This block cost the enormous sum of 50c (five times my weekly pocket money in the 1970s).
We shared the chocolate evenly between the four of us, and I would infuriate my brother by making mine last all evening, or even having some left, in its silver wrapping, for next day. He and my dad would scoff their shares immediately and then be looking for more, and I’m sure Mum lost half of hers. But I jealously guarded mine, loving the feeling of envious eyes on chocolate they would never get.
My late dad was a dentist, so we weren’t allowed to eat much candy. But chocolate wasn’t too bad, he said, as long as you cleaned your teeth after eating it.
Dad wouldn’t be too happy if he knew the guilty secret I’m about to confide: sometimes, these days, I don’t clean my teeth after drinking my tea and eating my chocolate in bed at night!
Home and around
You don’t see this too often
The other morning, I decided to have a fried egg for breakfast. I heated the pan, cracked the shell of a fresh, free-range organic egg, and…out popped a beautiful double yolk.
I’ve seen this only once or twice before in all the thousands of eggs I’ve eaten, including the truly free-range farm eggs I used to buy in rural Thailand in the early 1990s, they of the bright orange yolks and rich flavour.
It got me thinking about other natural phenomena we love to see: there’s something about them that makes you feel lucky all day.
I’ve seen several shooting stars. They’re usually something you see out of the corner of your eye and realise only after that that’s what it was. The most memorable was in Bangkok in the late 1990s. My then-husband and I used sometimes on a Saturday night to go up to the roof of our apartment building where the pool was and lie on the deck chairs, looking up at the sky.
Unbelievably, given the pollution, you could still see stars. One night, we saw what we thought was a bright shooting star go right across the sky. I’m calling it a shooting star, but this is my name for anything I see in the sky like that: it may well have been some other phenomenon.
I’ve never seen a five-leaf clover, but I have a friend who goes running every day, and she has seen quite a few.
But then, you have to be looking for these things to see them.
It’s a cat’s life
Sometimes, I wish I were a cat. Well, I wish I were my cat, Lucy Locket. She has a charmed life, though in her typical cat’s way, she would probably dispute that, saying she has only what she deserves, as princess cat of the world.
Anyway, this is what I mean. While I was making a start yesterday afternoon on marking 92 exams of 1800 words each, this is what she did. I will let Lucy Locket tell the story herself:
“Started the afternoon with a nice nap in my upstairs bed, but was woken by Mama phaffing around with some papers.”
“Since I had been rudely awakened, it was time for a stretch.”
“And a wash. My owners have been putting some vile stuff on one of my claws lately, on orders of my doctor. Really! Hmmm, did I hear a bird out that window?””
“No, no, it was thataway. Better investigate.”
*Makes a flying leap on to desk and sidles behind computer to look out the second-storey window*
“All quiet on the western front.”
“Hmmm, think I’ll just sit here for a bit. Nice change of scene.”
“Well, that was a hard day’s work. Think I’ll go back to bed, and the afternoon is…”
“…just about…
“Done.”
What price a newspaper?
I saw a pile of local newspapers when I was at the supermarket on Saturday. They weren’t free: they wanted 40c for a copy, the cover announced.
As I’m new to the area, I thought perhaps the local rag or ‘two-minute silence’ as we used to call such publications, would be a good source of community information.
Then when I saw the price, I hummed and hahed, and finally decided not to buy one. As I walked away, I realised how ridiculous that was. It was only 40 cents! I pay 10 times that for a coffee without baulking (well, I do baulk at it, actually, but that’s what you have to pay).
Today, I went back to the supermarket to buy the Berwick News. As a former print-media journalist, my profession for more than 20 years, I feel I should support old-fashioned newspapers, even in their dying days.
Unfortunately, there were no copies left. And the joke’s on me: the assistant informed me that those copies were going free, because they were left over from earlier in the week, when they were sold at the nearby news agent. Today I went to the news agent and got one: also free, though I’d happily have paid.
I know most community newspapers are run by big media chains, but they’re still important. The other night, in my street, there was some sort of emergency, with sirens and evacuation loud speakers, after midnight. I asked on the newspaper’s website if anyone knew what had happened. Someone from the paper has replied and is looking into it.
I met an old friend at a party recently who used to work with me on a national magazine in the 1990s. The magazine moved interstate, then she was out of the workforce for a few years as a full-time mother. Then, about seven years ago, she started looking for a job again. She found one as a sub-editor at a local paper, and loves it.
“I think we make a real difference in the community,” she says. “Everyone in the office cares about the paper, and it’s so nice working in the same suburb I live in.” She’s been promoted, too, and is now chief sub-editor.
It was a heart-warming story. Here’s cheers to all the journos I know who have reinvented themselves, retrained, or found work on a different sort of publication than they once imagined themselves working on. It’s a difficult terrain out there for our profession at the moment. You have to take what you can get: but sometimes, what you get turns out to be surprisingly OK.
Oh, and if you see a local paper for just a few cents, do buy one.
Tree change
I haven’t been blogging as much as usual lately, because we’ve just moved house, and also, I’ve been really under the pump at work. In fact, I’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do.
When you’re overwhelmed by work, it’s easy to forget you still have to live your life, that great things still happen, and that every day, you should be just glad to be alive.
I was reminded of that this morning as I walked to the train with my heavy briefcase, on my way to work.
Suddenly, I looked around me and saw the trees. The outer suburb to which we moved two weeks ago is like a country town, and our street is full of well established trees.
Who wouldn’t be happy, walking to the train, with this vista?
Picture: Caron Eastgate Dann, 2014
It was a glorious autumn day – the best season in Melbourne. Blue skies, trees with multi-coloured leaves. Heavenly!
People say “hello” here. There are a lot of people much older than me, and no one passes me without us saying a hearty “good morning” to each other. The men even tip their hats! Lots of people are walking their dogs, whether it’s 7am or 10.30am (I start work at many different times).
So instead of worrying about work, I’m just going to look at the trees from now on, and think about how lucky I am – to live in such a nice street, to have a job (albeit one without any security whatsoever), and to be able to enjoy every day.
In the end, it’s the little things that count.
The cat’s verdict: unimpressed
Little Girl Lost: Lucy Locket in her new house. Has decided she doesn’t like it. Picture ©Caron Eastgate Dann 2014
While we humans are loving our new two-storey townhouse in the country, there is one member of the household who is not. Lucy Locket, our tortoiseshell cat, is not impressed one bit.
In the old house, she and I used to play a game I called “The Lost Girl”. She would go into a mini-courtyard at the side of the house between my office and bedroom. Then she would howl at the bedroom window, as if unable to find her way back to the door at the other end. I would take that as a cue to come and stand at the door and call her, and she would then make her way back through fully two metres of ‘jungle’ to find her way back to me.
Dopey, yes. Her, not me. Well, she’s an indoor cat—she’s amused by small things.
Anyway, from playing ‘The Lost Girl’, she has become the Little Girl Lost. The best she can do at the moment is sit on the middle of the bed, looking plaintively out, as if to say, “This is all I have left of my life, a shadow of its former self”.
If all your stuff was packed away, what would you miss most?
I have access to 5% or less of my stuff at the moment, because most of it is packed into boxes awaiting our big house move on Tuesday.
Do I miss that other stuff in the 60 boxes? Well, yes and no.
Books aside—because I still love mine (though I’ve given loads away) and I’m a specialist collector—do we need the ornaments, piles of kitchen gadgets, knick knacks, souvenirs, shoes, bags, bathroom paraphernalia, cushions, pictures, 25 wine glasses and 20 towels?
The answer? I think it’s no. We just kind-of acquire this stuff and then become attached to it, because we think it has something to do with identity.
I’m still me without the ceramic cats from Thailand that hang over my bookcase, without the enormous glass fish I bought cheap at auction when a favourite bar closed, without the three wise men statues I bought in Beijing, and without the coloured-light replica of The Space Needle building I bought in Seattle (pictured, above). But actually, I do want these things, because they’re sentimental.
But there are some things I could happily divest myself of.
Ninety percent of my clothes are sealed in a box now, but I don’t care, because I wear only a small proportion of my clothes regularly.
I think about it this way: last year, I went to the US for about four weeks and I took a small bag the size of carry-on luggage (though I always check mine so I don’t have to carry it). That was fine, as long as I remembered to find a washing machine every three days. So, if I can survive for four weeks with this small bag of clothes, why not forever?
The other thing we’ve done is not replenished the food in our fridge or cupboards as we usually do. We’re down to loaves and fishes-type dishes now, if you know what I mean, but they’ve worked out just fine.
We spend a lot of extra money on whims with food, and we end up throwing some of it out. In fact, I’ve read government statistics that say about 40% of the food Australians buy ends up being thrown away because it goes off before people can eat it. You can read more about that here.
And the thing I miss most about not having access to my stuff? My art equipment! I wish I’d put aside my little travelling paint kit to keep me company this week. Oh well, I’ll see it all next week on the other side of the city.
My Winsor & Newton travelling water colour set. Picture by Caron Eastgate Dann
Moving on: my 46th address, 50th move
This is what my house looks like today:
My study…or what’s left of it.
Yes, we’re moving in a few days, after our long-time rental accommodation was sold and vacant possession required. It will be my 46th address, and I’ve lived in 13 cities or towns in five countries.
We are moving from the inner-city funkiness of Northcote, Melbourne, to a cute double-storey townhouse in an outer suburb that still has a country village feel to it.
We get much more for our money out there, and we’ll be paying $60 less a week in rent. AND, we can hardly wait for next summer and the first 40-degree (Celsius) day, because guess what? Now, we have airconditioning!
In another advantage, it’s easier for me to get to work, and I’ll be catching one train each way instead of two. It’s also closer to my mother: instead of a 145km round trip to her place, it’s about 35.
Miss Lucy Locket doesn’t approve much of the move, as most cats wouldn’t:
She was on high alert last night, doing her spooky Bat Girl impersonation:
Spot the cat
But she’ll be happy when she gets to the new place and sees her new little private courtyard—this is one of the main reasons we took the new place, because she is an indoor cat, but she likes to have somewhere safe on which to sun herself and chase moths.
Despite all the advantages of the move, we will be sad to leave Northcote. It’s strange when the packing’s been done but you haven’t quite moved in to the other place yet: you’re in a kind of limbo, not really living at either address. You haven’t moved on to the next place, but you can’t go back to life as you knew it at the other.
Update: Through a glass darkly: the strangest house in my suburb
In February last year, I wrote about a house in my suburb in Melbourne, Australia, that seemed incongruous with its surroundings. The street is full of period homes: Victorian cottages, lovingly restored to reflect the tastes of a bygone age. You can read more about the house here.
This was what it looked like then:
As the months went on, I grew to like the little glass house, as I called it, strange though it seemed in its setting. I would often see a young man hard at work on it, early evenings and weekends. It seemed like a labour of love: someone’s dream home, slowly taking shape. A fabulous ball-like light fitting was put above the stairwell, and the kitchen fit-out almost completed.
But late last year, all work stopped. In the months since then…nothing.
It looks like the house has been deserted, and I can only surmise that the young man ran out of money, his dreams dashed, at least for the moment. Yesterday, I took this photo of it.
We are soon to move far away from this suburb, so I don’t expect I will ever find out what happened to the little glass house. But perhaps one day I will visit, just to see.
“Stupid” award of the week
What’s wrong with this picture?
Yes, there is a drawer missing. There wasn’t a drawer missing when we put these two sets out in front of our house this afternoon, free to a good home.
We’re moving, so we’re taking the opportunity to give away what we don’t need. These two little sets of drawers have served me well, but it’s time to update and get a proper dressing table.
So out they went. In our area, good used furniture placed out on the nature strip usually lasts from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. I like the thought of someone coming across it and taking it home to be useful again.
But when we looked after a while to see if the drawers were gone, we saw this: some bright spark had taken away just one drawer, meaning that chest of drawers is now useless for anyone else. Stupid as all get out!
The Crayon Files 