A Floral Tour of Chez Flinthart

This was a bastard of a post to manage. My surly satellite connection dropped out twice, and I could only load two images at a time or the whole system overloaded and fucked up on me.

Okay: first, to everybody in Briz I didn't manage to contact over the weekend -- all I had was a flying visit. I tried to call a friend about lunch in town, but in the end, even that didn't happen. I had time to do wedding-related stuff, and bugger-all else.

The time is definitely coming when I have to bring the family north for a proper meet-and-greet Briz holiday, I think.

Second: I took a slow walk around the property this morning, by way of resting a bit. And I carried the camera. I don't plant much by way of showy flowers, except for bulbs -- Natalie liked daffodils and jonquils and irises and tulips. Much of what flowers here is edible. And yet the place is still alive...

Bay laurel. Yes, the kind you cook with. The tree is about 8m high. The flowers look like shit, but they smell great and the bees love 'em.

Fuschia

Apricot

Snowdrops

Raspberry

Blackberry

Strawberry

Blood plum

A daffodil

Bugger. I've doubled up. This was meant to be the Snow Pear. They look similar.

I have no idea. I think it's a weed.

Lavender

Lilacs

Russian comfrey, I think

Nasturtium

Wee little daisies

Purple magnolias

White magnolia

Dunno this one. A native of some sort, and a real bee magnet.

Irises

JOnquils. You can't tell, but they're smaller than the daffy earlier.

Waratah

Rhododendron

Oh! There's my snow pear

Dandelion

Dandelion with afro

Blueberries

Quince, I think

Cherries

Apples.

Slightly Tired

Friday: organised the kids outta bed and off to school and daycare. Swapped cars with Natalie. Made it home, grabbed my bag, zoomed off to the airport in time for a DeathStar flight to Briz. Why? Simple -- the wedding of my old drinking/smoking/moviemaking companion Daryl Sparkes, and the marvellous Deb Marshall. What with having been in and out of trouble with and around Daryl for more years than I can legitimately lay claim to recall, once the wedding invite arrived, it was a no-brainer. I went.

Landed in Briz, and failed to catch up with the Valkyrie of Snark - you know who you are! I do believe she opted to flee to some kind of secure rural retreat once she heard the wheels of the Party Machine being oiled up. Fear not, o Valkyrie: the fallout was limited to Tarragindi, Coorparoo, and certain areas of the inner city.

I caught an unbelievably expensive train from the airport to the city -- $14.50 one way, folks. Brisbane's public transport is just as screwed up as it was when the Lord Mayor abused me for saying it was screwed up back in 1995 -- and noodled around the Valley for a while, purely to take a look at the Old Town. I sent a few postcards to the kids, then gave up on trying to work out which bus might get me to Tarragindi, where my friend and crash-supplier Julie lives, and just ponied up for cabfare.

Question: what happened to all the fat, sleazy, balding white guys who used to drive Brisbane's cab fleet? I caught three cabs over the weekend, and every one of them was driven by a friendly, polite younger gentleman of Asian subcontinental origin. Not that I'm complaining, mind. I'm just wondering what happened to the thousands of sweaty fat balding white guys that used to squeeze their beer guts behind the wheel? Is there some kind of Epically Horrible Retirement Home for the Terminally White-Trash Racist that I don't know about?

I know: I'm generalising. But don't forget -- I drove cabs in Briz for about five years, and I met those guys everywhere. It was like there was some sort of special Fat Horrible Bastard farm designed to churn out creepy cabbies.

Times change, I suppose. Some things really do get better. Not one of the three drivers tried to tell me any gross, racist or sexist jokes by way of 'passing the time'. I count that as a huge improvement.

Anyway. I found Julie's place, and the key she'd left, and let myself in. It was hot, as Brisbane is wont to be in late October, but Julie's found a decent spot with a forested gully behind her. If I was actually capable of nostalgia, I might even have spent a few moments recalling endless summer days, cicadas singing, gum leaves rattling in fitful breezes, the iron band of summer heat clenched around your chest as the sweat trickled down the backs of your knees... nahhh. Hell with that!

When Julie got back, we ducked out for supplies. The official pre-wedding "Buck's party" was at her place, so we had a few things to get in order. I made a smoked salmon pasta salad, a melon and ginger salad, and a large guacaomole. The rest of the watermelon went into a vodka punch, which was more like a Mike Tyson left hook, to be honest. Tasted great, but it was wayyyy too easy to drink on a hot Brisbane night.

And then I caught up with a few old friends. Hello Simone! Hi, Caitlin! Thomas, yes, you too. Pat Stewart, you eternal goddam hippie! Mick, you useless bastard! Yvette, yes, sorry ma'amselle, but you joined this menagerie of your own accord. Lawrie Mullins, looking like a streamlined hood-ornament version of himself. And Daryl... yep. Check. All present and accounted for.

Missing in action? Oh, there were a lot of faces I'd have liked to have seen. But you take what comes, and it was a good night. Good enough that I managed only three hours of sleep after walking Simone back to her residence through the danger-bestrewn Mean Streets of Tarragindi...

Sunday, therefore, was not my finest hour. But I managed. Got into my specially-chosen wedding garb in plenty of time, with the aid of ibuprofen and watermelon and paracetamol and Brisbane's God-beshitted so-called "water supply". (Anybody like a little water with their industrial chemistry?)

The official dress code for the wedding was "cocktail lounge". For some reason, most of my male friends took that to mean "funereal". I haven't seen so many black suits outside a mortuary. Points to Brian, who was actually wearing a natty grey charcoal grey pinstripe job which he admitted he'd inherited from an expired relative... dead man's suit! Cool!

The wedding went off more or less okay. Tom handed me a groovy camera, so I drifted around, looking for good photos. Got one or two that I liked -- a particularly nice one of one of the bridesmaids, who happens to be Daryl's 18-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. I hadn't seen young Emily in many a year, so it was nice to meet her as a real, live, adult-type person. She did a good job in her role - must be kinda challenging to do bridesmaid for your father when he's marrying someone other than your mother, but I get the impression that Emily and the bride get along very, very well, which speaks well of all concerned.

The wedding was a bit Godly though. Lotta Catholic stuff with responses involved. And singing. I didn't know the goddam words or the music, though, so I beat-boxed instead. Personally, I felt that the whole "alleluia" business was far, far better off with a bit of ghetto rhythm behind it, but apparently the people around me weren't quite so sure.

Oh! And then there was this bit where the priest was blessing the couple, holding his hand up like a sort of half-arsed Hitler salute, and encouraging the congregation (we were a congregation? Who knew?) to do likewise. I have to admit, I felt that a Godly blessing from me would be complete bullshit, so I curved my hand into a claw, aimed it at Daryl, and intoned "I find your lack of faith disturbing" instead.

Didn't work, though.

So we finished the wedding, and ducked into the city for the reception. Had to hang around an hour or so, sipping drinkies, before it kicked off, but that was okay. I caught up with more old friends, and made a couple of new ones. (Hi, Sue!)

The reception was very fine. Everybody was in a good mood, and the food was mucking farvellous. Seriously good cuisine. And there was wine, and booze, and lots more conversations, and possibly a bit of bread-roll hurling...

... but I had an 0700 flight to catch, so I pulled the plug a bit shy of midnight, and caught another cab to a pointless little hotel near the airport. I managed about five hours of fitful sleep before it was time to jump up and grab the final cab to the airport proper to board the plane for Launceston and home. I grabbed a copy of Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld book to keep me company - having slashed my way through Paul Haines' "Slice of Life" and Deborah Biancotti's "Book of Endings" on the previous flight. Discworld is good aeroplane fodder, and Natalie likes the series too, so it seemed a good idea.

Got in, grabbed my bag -- oh, and here's a big thanks to Brown Banana Lady, who tried to smuggle an elderly and rather unappetising banana past the Quarantine Beagle. Couple-hundred people trying to get off that damned flight, and we're all standing there, jammed shoulder to shoulder while you and the dog-handler went grubbing about in your onboard baggage in pursuit of a banana which frankly, any self-respecting chimpanzee with rabies would have violently rejected... jeez, lady. If you're going to piss off that many people, couldn't you at least have done it for a halfway decent piece of fruit?

But the weekend wasn't done with me. Not yet. Nope.

I made it home. Natalie reminded me I had to go and visit Historian Mike. And then she got me to wipe down the high bathroom walls with bleach. Shortly after that, I loaded the kids up, and went to Mike's place.

Mike particularly wanted me to meet some academic chap from the university's English department. Tired though I was, I felt it politic to agree. And lo! In one of those unbelievable Brisbane/Tasmania coincidences, the academic in question turned out to be the director of a comedy revue I'd been part of in UQ about twenty years ago. So instead of a meeting, it was a friendly reunion, and what had been a vague plan of some kind of project on my part has now swung firmly towards the near-certainty end of the scale.

But I was dead on my feet. I had a couple of desultory arguments with passing philosophers... and I'm afraid I was tired enough to laugh hysterically when one of them (Jamie) spoke firmly of "getting the truth out of" the other (Graeme.) I couldn't help it: it just seemed too much like a set-up for a Monty Python sketch - one philosopher interrogating the other in order to "get to the truth". Do philosophers use waterboards? Or do they simply subject one another to Existentialist poetry?

Still not over, though. Because Natalie wanted to go into town for her weekly music session, so I had the reins for the evening. No sleeping permitted! I fired up the chargorilla, cooked sausages, hamburgers, and a truly wonderful roast chicken stuffed with many good things. Then I threw the kids in the bathtub and washed their hair. We retired after that to watch Pinky and The Brain for a while... and honestly, I don't remember a whole lot after that.

I do know that it was damned hard to drag myself out of bed at 0700 this morning, though.

Must Be Springtime For Sure

Everything is green. In the greenest possible way. There are shades of green down here in Tasmania that could make Ireland sit up and take notice -- and I'm not even taking into account the weird shit down the back of my fridge, where the kids put their leftovers.

In between all the green, there's the rainbow of flowers. The cherries. The apples and pears. The late bulbs -- daffodils, jonquils, irises, tulips, and a shitload I don't know. Then there's all the other stuff. Rhododendrons - I know them, sure. But what about those orange things? And that mass of white? And all those purple things? Does ANYBODY actually know what all those flowers are?

But the surest possible indication of Springtime is my relentless need to Cook With Charcoal.

I love charcoal. I have done so ever since I did a high-school trip to Indonesia, and ate my first goat satay from a street vendor somewhere in Jogjakarta. Oooooh, yes please. Charcoal is, so far as I'm concerned, the finest food technology ever created. A handful of chips from a hickory tree (or a sassafras, if you're down here in Taz) and you've got pure goddam foody bliss.

The absolute, final indication of springtime is this:

That would be the shiny new Weber barbecue thing my good wife purchased yesterday, in Launceston, after her weekly yoga outing. She knows when she's onto a good thing, that woman. Because, of course, this would be the first chunks of meat in the Weber...

A couple of nice, locally-raised, organic bits of lamb, dressed out with garlic and rosemary from the front garden, lemons from the tree at the front of the house, sea salt and black pepper.

Toss in a couple Small Blue Things*, and I'm set.

*Small Blue Thing: Shot of decent gin, shot of blue curacao, splash of lime juice, tonic water to taste -- over ice.

Whoa. That Was Spooky. Seriously.

Just a quick note today.

I went to the mostly regular movie session with the Cool Shite team last night. When it came time for the main event, Bruce suggested something about the Baader-Meinhof group, but I felt it sounded too damned thoughtful and serious. Wasn't up for it. Dion wasn't too fussed about it either, so we turned to plan B -- a pile of what Bruce said were probably silly slasher/horror flicks.

I went through the small pile, reading ratings-tags like "strong violence" "strong horror" "supernatural themes" "extreme violence"... you get the picture. Eventually I came across a Finnish flick called 'Sauna', and noticed that the ratings tag included a bit about 'occasional nudity'.

Well, fair enough, I figured. A Finnish movie called 'Sauna' incorporating occasional nudit would probably at least be entertaining to watch. So it got my vote. And Dion lackadaisically joined in.

First note: the nudity was all male. (Ba-bow! FAIL!).

Second note: holy shit, what an amazing film.

Look, I don't much care for horror flicks. Mostly, I find them manipulative, repetitive, and irritating. The characters rarely interest me, since they're inevitably bland, white-bread 'everyday folks' to maximise the so-called 'horror' of their situation. And the storylines are usually banal. And I don't really respond to most people's idea of horror. The world is a horrific place already. Tossing in bad fantasy about demons or immortal murderers... meh. Doesn't faze me.

But 'Sauna'? Holy fucking sheepshit.

First off, it's a remarkably well-made film. Camerawork: excellent to remarkable. Cinematography: excellent to remarkable. Acting: very good. Writing: very good. Production values: excellent. Soundtrack: restrained, orchestral, excellent. If you got this kind of quality in a typical Hollywood flick, you'd be surprised. Finland isn't widely known for its cinema, so this is a real surprise.

Second: this film is fucking creepy as all hell. There's very little gore and/or violence. It's mostly implied. But the implication is ugly, and nasty, and pervasive. There's an atmosphere about this film from virtually the opening onwards. It feels paranoiac and threatening. There's a constant sense of dread, and the film-makers successfully build it up to end with some of the most skin-crawling footage I've seen outside the best of the Japanese horror films.

Most importantly, the characters, the setting, and the actual story are interesting. It's set in the late 16th century, at the end of a protracted war between Russia and Sweden. Two teams of mappers, one from each country, are establishing the new border between the countries as set down by treaty. The men are tired -- tired of war, tired of travel, tired of suspicious locals, desperately tired of each other. They want nothing more than to finish the job and go home, but first, they have to run the border through the middle of a cold, desolate swamp.

And that's where things really start to go bad.

I'm truly amazed. By pure chance, I've just seen a film that's gone straight into my top five for the year -- and it was a horror flick! Not only that, but it genuinely gave me the creeps: full-on gooseflesh at least four times during the movie. That's a record.

You like horror at all? Do yourself a huge favour: rent or buy 'Sauna'. Hell, even if you simply like really good film-making, 'Sauna' is a treat.

Just... don't see it at night, on your own. And if you do -- well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Ha. Things Got Away From Me There...

Been busy, yep.

I've just read and written a review of Roadkill/Siren Beat from Twelfth Planet Press. The review should be up in a day or two at Cool Shite On The Tube, so you can check it out there -- but the short version is: good reading, well worth the money. You get yourself two decent-length stories from two very different, but very interesting authors, all in the one book with two nifty covers.

Meanwhile, I also read and reviewed William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition", and I 'spect that review will find its way up to Cool Shite sooner or later. The book was very interesting. Gibson has slowly but very steadily moved away from his science fiction writing, in a progression you can trace from his seminal trilogy starting with 'Neuromancer', down through the 'Virtual Light' books which were much closer to present-day in their tech -- and here we are with 'Pattern Recognition' and its sort of sequel (well, it shares a few peripheral characters) 'Spook Country' which I am presently reading with great eagerness. Set in what is very much the present day, near-enough-real world. But it's still Gibson, with that lovely prose, asking all those interesting questions about humanity and technology, and I'm still loving it.

Rather less enjoyable was the task of reading Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol". The Shiteheads sent me a free review copy. Now, I failed to finish Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" for the simple reason that it was amateurishly written crap, so I wasn't expecting much this time around. And I got it. I did manage to finish the book, but honestly, it wasn't worth the effort. I'll link to the review when it goes up because I suspect anyone who reads this blog regularly would probably enjoy my... frank and open thoughts on Mr Brown's latest opus.

Aside from catching up on some reading, I've had the usual set of duties, plus a few extras. Today, for example: a couple of my ju-jitsu students are in line for one bar of the three-bar Brown Belt grading, junior status. They've worked and trained hard for quite a while, but since there have been a few newcomers and a few time constraints on classes lately, I haven't been able to put them through their paces. So, since I knew Natalie would be on call today, I arranged to have both lads turn up here.

I put a movie on for the offspring, and then the students and I repaired to The Shed Dojo, where I put them through two hours of reasonably fierce testing. They did pretty well, too. They still have to work through the multiple-attacker scenarios -- we'll need some of the other students to get involved for that! -- but if they carry those off with the same degree of surety, I'll be very pleased.

Meanwhile, the weather's been all over the place again. I'm behind on laundry, and damned if I know whether to put the dryer on 'overkill' to catch up, or just hope that the three lines worth out there in the back yard right now will get enough sun tomorrow to become clothing once more.

Other news? The Mau-Mau discovered bull ants at Day Care. Big red lumps along one shin, but she was only cranky for a while. Those bastards hurt like hell, mind you.

And elsewise? Plenty, but minor. So, it's on to a recipe, I think.

This one involves charcoal-grilling, and I've posted it before. But since I've only recently got myself a functioning char-gorilla once again, I made this the other day -- and holy fuck, it's good.

Smoky Char-Grill Vegetables

Grab a bunch of chunky, juicy vegetables that can stand grilling, and cut them into slabs about a centimetre or so thick. I like to use a mix of ripe tomatoes, zucchini, portobello mushrooms, brown onions, red and green capsicums, and maybe some baby fennel. Put all the slabs of veg into a big bowl, and liberally souse them with good olive oil. Sprinkle a decent helping of sea salt, and grind a shitload of fresh black pepper on them.

Now, fire up your gorilla. When the coals are ready, spread your vegies on the grill. Nice if you can put a big steel bowl or something similar over them to help keep the smoke in place. Then toss a handful of damp, non-toxic wood shavings onto the coals, and step back.

You should get a nice, thick column of fragrant smoke that gets trapped under the bowl (or lid of your grill if you have that kind). One handful of shavings will do. Don't over do it.

Cook the vegies until they're softened, and maybe a little charred here and there. Put them back in their bowl. Add a little more seasoning if you like, and then toss a bit of decent balsamic vinegar at them.

Results: hot, smoky, sweet/salt/sour juicy vegetables. These are so damned good I can easily eat a plateload on their own... but with a little marinated grilled chicken, or a good rare steak they are the most outrageously delectable things going. Perfect with a robust red wine.

Woohoo!

Okay... fans of Science On The Edge will appreciate exactly why this represents a "woohoo"! moment. Those of you who aren't such fans -- jeez, you don't know what you're missing. A superconducting material that works at -19C? That's totally bloody amazing. Your goddam home deep freeze gets down to that level!

Of course, it still requires Thallium, which isn't exactly the most common element on the planet - but it's not super-rare, either. And of course, -19C is still pretty cold. But... shit! They could just about wire up the Antarctic facilities with this stuff as is!

And the fact that they're still climbing the temperature scale with these new superconducting substances is even more fantastic. If the day comes when we get decent room-temperature superconduction.... hot damn!

I'd like to see further tests from other labs to confirm this one, but they seem pretty sure of themselves, and it fits with the pattern of the other complex superconductors they've been discovering. Fantastic!

Right. Okay. Enough geeking out. On the home front:

Weekend was pretty good. Natalie took the kids to Launceston on Saturday, leaving me a day on my own. Unfortunately, it takes me a good half-day to decompress these days, so I didn't write nearly as much as I should. But I watched some Robot Chicken, and I ate lazily, and I read a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to read.

And I did sword training. And some archery. And a good session with the kickbag. So that was all good. Got the sword grading coming up in a few very short weeks - still got plenty of work to do there.

Come Sunday, John E flew back in from Queensland, where he's been propping up his indigent brothers for the last five or six weeks. I zipped into Launceston and met Nat and the kids. Then we all took off to the Evandale markets, not too far from the airport. I found a nifty secondhand recurve bow for Younger Son, and Natalie got a great pair of boots for the daughter, and there were all kinds of interesting movies to buy... and I found an orange seedling, and a nice-looking apple seedling, so by the time I went to collect John E from the airport, I had to use Natalie's car 'cos mine was full of Stuff.

John didn't seem to think that hanging around Launceston with the Flinthart Family was the Key to Happiness, so I took him back to Scottsdale and dumped him... the ungrateful swine! What kind of chap DOESN'T leap at the opportunity to spend an afternoon with three noisy children just because he had to get up at sparrowfart to take a two-hour flight on DeathStar Airways? Ha! The man's got no stamina.

Anyway, I turned around and went back into Launceston, and hung out at the new Aquatic Centre with Nat and the kids for an hour or two. The Aquatic Centre is pretty cool. There's a humongous splash-pool complete with water playground -- slides, hoses, showers, climbing tower, and giant bucket that periodically dumps a metric shitload of water from about five metres up -- plus a range of kid-friendly pools, plus two whacking great lap pools for training proper. I did a quick kilometre, and decided I definitely need to factor more swimming in this summer, even if it is a bastard of a thing to timetable.

After the splashy afternoon, the kids were properly tired, so I took 'em home while Natalie stayed in Launceston for her weekly dose of the folky stuff. The Younger Son and I tried out his new recurve... bit of tech-talk for archery types here: the new recurve is a simple fibreglass job, but it's a little shorter than the cheap-ass springy red beginner's bow he's been using, and it's also a good deal stiffer. This means that Younger Son can actually get a decent flight by drawing to his chin. With the red bow, his arms were just that bit too short... the bow required too much draw to really put any power behind the arrows. This new one is just what the doctor ordered.

So, yeah -- then we had toasty sandwiches and salads, and watched an interesting and rather clever "Batman Reunion" sort of movie, with Adam West and Burt Ward not quite reprising their famous roles. Actually... for any fans of the old 60s Batman, the movie is well worth the effort. It's kind of a weird retrospective on the series, with West and Ward playing their modern selves but camping it up in the fashion of their iconic roles as they try to track a stolen Batmobile... while at the same time, an ensemble of very decent actors tells the story of the Making Of The Series as a sequence of flashbacks.

It's quite clever, and actually succeeds in being deliberately funny in a lot of places. And of course, some of the stories from the original series are pretty cool. Who knew that poor old Burt Ward had so much trouble controlling his wedding tackle as "Robin"?

Monday: I planted my orange and my apple, and the heavens obliged with rain. I did a lot of editing and reading, and a little writing. I tried out my nifty new charcoal gorilla around dinner time, and then took off for an evening of sword training. Long day.

And today will be just as long.

Northern Territory: It's A Special Kind Of Place

For those of you in far-off countries who occasionally look in on this blog for a bit of amusement, I offer this rather funny article.

It's funny on several levels. First, I think it's marvellous that the news-outlet should give so much space to a woman making a denial that she was committing oral sex on the driver of the ute she was in when it crashed. Seriously: they quote this woman at length, and apart from reducing "offensive" words to mere f***s and s****s and so forth, they let her speak in what appears to be the authentic vernacular.

And that's the second reason it's funny: her command of the good old Australian language. It's gorgeous. It's not laden with cliched Australianism. It's just blunt, and clear, and remarkably effective at conveying her feelings on the matter.

And those feelings are the final level of humour, for me. In her forthright approach and her choice of priorities here, her absolute candour is endearingly funny. This isn't a woman permitting herself to become any kind of victim, nor bewailing her situation. Nope. Read for yourself. She'd definitely want you to do so!