Author Archives: outsidethesquare101

#48 Mess About in Boats

It wasn’t until Form One (as Year Seven was called back then) that I was introduced to the magical world of boating.

This was courtesy of Kenneth Grahame’s engaging tale of the adventures of Ratty and Mole, Badger and Toad in The Wind in the Willows.

Who wouldn’t be seduced by Ratty’s pronouncement in the very first chapter?

Alas, I was growing up in a bitterly cold, inland city without a beach or river to its name, nurtured by loving parents who… well… you couldn’t call them outdoor types. (This may explain why, on my first-ever camping trip at age 22, I had no idea that you didn’t pitch your tent in a cosy hollow under a gum tree. Especially without checking for the possibility of torrential rain during the night.) So my love of boating was entirely imaginary for many years.

What better time to change all that now though, and live the dream. A chance to…

#48 Mess About in Boats

Ratty was spot on – it’s so worth doing.

Boats, of course, come in all shapes and sizes. And degrees of safety.

There was that disastrous early experiment with three friends, when we were sent down a raging Murray River in two canoes, on our own, by the Dodgy Brothers’ Hire-a-Risky-Boat Adventures.

Thanks to life jackets and expert recreational kayakers who raced across to pluck us from the water as we parted ways with our canoes and careened towards South Australia, I lived to brave the river again one late afternoon as dusk was falling. But this time, it was in the back of a canoe with a World Champion/Murray River Marathon winner doing all the hard work in the front seat. Bliss!

Racing down the Murray and up Wodonga Creek taking curves at breakneck speed with an expert guide is truly exciting, even though he mistakenly thought he could further spook me with a diversion past a bat colony.

Amazing. Flying mammals! What’s not to like…?

If Scandi Noir is the mood you’re after though, then messing about in a boat at New Zealand’s Doubtful Sound is just the ticket. All dark and brooding and ominous. No wonder James Cook was doubtful it was navigable when he named it.

You could well be at the end of the earth. Oh, hang on a minute…

Even the silhouette of a travelling companion takes on a sinister hue in this part of the world.

Exploring in a boat means you can get up close and personal with all manner of wildlife.

Spot seals sunning themselves,

Or water birds doing a picturesque pose

…in splendid isolation

But you don’t have to travel miles away from home to find a relaxing boating experience.

The Sienna Daisy is a new cruise boat purpose built for the Murray River right here in Albury. No more worries of a river too low to support the mechanism of cumbersome paddle steamers, romantic though they may be.

Take a 60 or 90-minute scheduled river cruise or book a private function. Include the Captain’s Lunch of a BBQ and salads if you want and complement this with a glass of wine. All your worries will disappear into the water as you float along, caressed by the gentle movement and sense of escape.

And If you’ve ever wondered why Noreuil Park has such an unpronounceable name, you can find that out, too.

I could have boated all day…

and just a stone’s throw from home…

No doubt about it, messing about in boats is the bees knees.

I wonder if it’s too late to consider buying my own boat? Of course, I’d have to get a bigger car, too – with a tow bar – and a boat trailer. And learn how to reverse them all down a narrow driveway and a slippery ramp without jack-knifing. Is that do-able for a post-adult woman, I wonder?

Because I can’t help thinking that being the skipper of your own boat would make you feel like a Master of The Universe.

Wouldn’t you agree, Charlie…?

#47 Revel in a Post-adult Period

#46 Learn How to ‘Nest’

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It had never crossed my mind, until recently, that all the wonderful artefacts you see in museums and galleries need some sort of ‘holiday home’ where they can rest in safety when they take a break from being on display.

Not having owned an array of precious art works and therefore never having had a need to store them off season, I would have assumed, had I contemplated the issue, that galleries had enormous storage rooms where, in their down time, the treasures sat on shelves behind glass, a bit like a mirror image of their upstairs life, on ‘display’ but seen by no-one, until they’re let out again to be admired.

Where do you go to, my lovelies, when you’re out of favour?

But following a further stint volunteering at our local galley/art museum, MAMA, I’ve now discovered where they’re all stored. And I’ve been lucky enough to assist there, wearing white cotton gloves as I work in a locked room behind another locked room, where no sunlight ever penetrates, sealing their fate.

Yes, I’ve been permitted to enter the hallowed, temperature controlled bowels of MAMA to

#46 Learn how to ‘Nest’

It turns out that each individual item needs its own special box into which to snuggle down, cosseted in folds of exclusive wrapping material and buried in foam that’s been carefully sculpted to match its shape such that when it’s all packaged up, even an earthquake couldn’t damage it.

This is called ‘nesting’ and if you loved messing about with scissors, glue guns, paper, box cutters and firm craft foam when you were young, have I got the job for you.

So…

We start with the item/s needing a holiday:

Metal disc (and stand) with $1 coin for perspective, waiting for their nest

Cut, sculpt and paste very special black foam, known only to the cognoscenti, into the shapes you need to closely fit the items:

Then cover this foam in a protective, spun bonded material known as Tyvek ® and attach it using your glue gun.

Tacking pins can help with this sometimes tricky procedure:

If your shapes and sculpting, and wrapping and glueing have all been calculated correctly, the covered foam will look like this:

And your precious items will fit like a glove:

All that’s needed is to slip this into the plastic box that you’ve previously chosen for its snug fit, place a layer of protection on top so it forms a seal under the lid, like this…

And voila!

Nest in peace safely, my little treasure…

Once nesting small items has been mastered, you can move onto much larger ones.

…scarier, too

The principles are the same, though.

From this…

via this…

to this…

then this…

To final, sealed, resting place…

There is a downside to learning how to nest, though.

I discovered this by accident after reading a recent newspaper article, with photos, about the return to Egypt of plundered sarcophagus covers dating back to the time of the Pharaohs.

Rather than focussing on the amazing, plaster-coated wooden sarcophagus decorated with hieroglyphics and brilliant illustrations, and rather than marvelling that something dating back to 3000 BC was still in existence and intact, I found myself studying the packing, the foam and the Tyvek ® very, very carefully and thinking, ‘I could have nested that. Easy as…’

#45 Meander along Sydney Writers Walk

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Did you know that Sydney has a dedicated Writers Walk?

It displays a series of over forty-five plaques containing a snatch of an author’s thoughts about the Australian land and its people together with a brief bio of the writer.

Despite having visited the site of the Walk (it sweeps around Circular Quay from the Opera House to beyond the Museum of Contemporary Art) at least – oh – maybe two or three times a year for the past twenty-five years and despite having, in all likelihood, walked by several of the plaques on each occasion, it’s completely passed me by. And I suspect nearly everyone who’s visited Sydney has walked this walk, but most of us have never seen it.

How embarrassing.

Truth be told, my pedantic writer’s streak is a little uncomfortable with the missing apostrophe in the large bronze tablet announcing Writers Walk because you couldn’t possibly interpret it to mean that ‘writers walk’. They don’t. They’re much too busy scribbling away in their attic, all alone, hunched over a manuscript.

But despite my misgivings about a monument that’s dedicated to writers and yet contains a punctuation error, once the site was drawn to my attention, a visit was essential.

#44 Meander along Sydney Writers Walk

If I were to post an image of every one of these neglected bronze gems, it would overwhelm this blog entry, so allow me to present a small sample of the witty, the poignant, the prescient or the just plain irreverent comments made by so many great writers who have visited our country or were born here.

Just for fun, I’ve added a modern Australian visual match.

1. David Williamson

…though he forgot to mention the obsession with food,too

2. C.E.W.Bean

…tho’ it seems that ‘the whole people’s’ representatives aren’t trying too hard to work it out .

3. Ethel Turner

Hey, who’d wear a bike helmet when there’s no-one around?

4. C.J.Dennis

…still knocks you endways

5. Charles Darwin

…reflections of the old and the new grandeur

6. Rudyard Kipling

We’ll do wonderful things…some day

7. Barry Humphries

…feels like home to me

So now you’re possibly asking, ‘How have I missed noticing the Writers Walk?’

Well, here’s a clue:

If writers had ball skills instead of verbal skills, would more people notice what’s underfoot?

The plaques are all in-laid – in the footpath. And shooing away hordes of oblivious tourists to get the perfect photograph of each plaque wasn’t easy!

So now you know where it is, I hope this has given you a tantalising taste of what’s on show at the Sydney Writers Walk.

#44 Correct a Mistake on Wikipedia

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It may be of concern to some readers that Wikipedia can, on occasions, make mistakes.

So when I discovered a minor, but troubling error on the popular site recently, I thought it would be interesting to learn how to:

#44 Correct a Mistake on Wikipedia

Growing up in an era when we depended on Encyclopædia Britannica to tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, discovering that a publication with the august letters ‘pedia’ in its name might, now and again, tell us a porky makes for uncomfortable reading.

Perhaps the spelling of the word Wikipedia should have alerted me. It’s missing the all important ‘æ’. Let’s be honest here, the letters ‘æ’, especially when they run together, proclaim from the rooftops that information in the publication in question has been overseen by pipe-smoking dons from prestigious universities.

Universities that look a little like this:

photo: Toby Hudson Wikimedia

Wikipedia, on the other hand, with its missing ‘æ’, admits that it’s written almost exclusively by volunteers.

Volunteers who look more like this:

Photo by Fuzheado at Wikipedia [yes, really]

Being an ex-university lecturer now turned volunteer myself, I understand only too well the stark difference between a salaried, tenured academic who produces meticulous research for peer-reviewed journals, and an unpaid hack wondering ‘when’s morning tea?’

So I’m not blaming Wikipedia at all if a mistake should creep into its pages. I’m just delighted that they allow retirees with not enough to do readers a hassle-free way to correct errors. This perfectly demonstrates The Wisdom of Crowds. Try doing that with Encyclopædia Britannica.

So…

Checking the Wikipedia site for my home town recently, I found a rather surprising mistake. It’s illustrated by the glowing yellow lines and the pointed red arrows which I’ve only just worked out how to add to a photograph.

You can see there are two problems here:

Top arrow: If Albury were only 462 kilometres from Sydney, couldn’t we drive there in under 5 hours? Who’s ever made the interminable trip to Sydney that quickly?

Bottom arrow: But then they tell us Albury is 554 km from Sydney. Huh?

Sorry, a factual mistake is one thing. A factual mistake PLUS an internal inconsistency is another altogether. One of these just has to go…

So with the help of a little button on the Wiki page called ‘edit’ I could do just that:

Voilà! All fixed!

I am now officially a Wikipedian, the name given to those who work on Wikipedia.

Or, as I prefer, a Wikipedant.

#43 Get to Grips with Twitter®

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Since first signing up to Twitter® in 2011, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the social behemoth, played out by ignoring it for the first few years.

Like Facebook®, (with which I have a hate/hate relationship due in no small part to Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network as a sociopath who should have no input into my life at all) their pervasive nature makes me uneasy. That and the fact that I feel compelled to write the grovelling letter ® after their names lest I be sued for infringement of something.

But while Facebook® can be ignored if you don’t mind having no social life – and especially if you don’t want others to know you have no social life – Twitter® has a way of popping it’s head above the parapet to pique your interest or make you laugh out loud

or compel you to pen a few lines of outrage.

There’s a skill in saying something pithy or clever or funny in a limited number of characters. What a great retirement challenge:

#43 Get to Grips with Twitter®

Like all technologies, it has a language of its own, but once you get your head around all the symbols, it makes sense. Sort of.

If you wake one morning to discover that Prince Philip of England has been given an Australian knighthood on Australia Day and you want to share this hilarious/inappropriate/that’s-when-Tony Abbott-jumped-the-shark moment, you can tweet a comment immediately and read other posts sent by people who choked on their vegemite toast that morning on hearing the news and just had to tweet about it, too.

And if you also wanted Mr Abbott to know that you thought he’d gone stark raving mad and that his days were numbered, you can include his Twitter® name – which is @tonyabbottMHR – in your tweet too, so he gets a copy.

It is not compulsory to follow the lives of starlets or celebrities.

Twitter® becomes much more interesting when you realise that you only need follow tweets from people whose opinions you value. Provided they don’t have them too frequently. (Sorry I eventually had to unfollow you, @annabelcrabb, but seriously… ).

Shortly after working out how to tweet, I discovered that narcissism takes over and you find yourself wanting someone to like one of your tweets or better still, to re-tweet it to their followers.

Sending out a tweet in which you praise a public institution – especially one that gets complaints most of the time – is a surefire way that they’ll like your message and retweet your words – to a much larger pool of followers than you could ever hope to have yourself.

So I began my Twitter® experience by sending this flattering tweet accompanied by photo:

Sure enough, one ‘retweet’ and one ‘like’. Yay!!

Pretty soon your eyes are peeled for anything clever or funny you can tweet about in the elusive search for more likes and more retweets.

Watching Arthur Sinodinos interviewed in front of a Sydney ‘backdrop’ (aka a blue screen) recently, a camera malfunction left him looking like this:

Childhood memories of crudely painted graffiti on brick walls in back streets suddenly returned, and after a quick search for the right photo and a bit of rejigging, I was able to tweet this:

Suddenly 8 ‘retweets‘ and 4 ‘likes‘!

Twitter® was becoming dangerously addictive by now.

Most recently, Mike Baird, the Premier of NSW, decided to ban greyhound racing after an impeccable investigative report found it to be so steeped in systemic and entrenched cruelty that it was unsalvageable. (Thank you, Mr Baird)

What should happen, but our Deputy Prime Minister – who claims to speak for country folk – came out in support of the greyhound racing industry with these am-I-reading-this-correctly words:

As the owner of a smallish sighthound who avidly followed these greyhound reports on television:

I had no option but to go down the path of outraged tweeting and post this one:

It hit the spot.

It’s up to 20 retweets and 21 likes now. Who’d have guessed that an outraged tweet against a politician would be popular?

But that’s it. I think I’m done with Twitter® now, because at the end of the day, how many retweets would be enough? Fifty? A thousand? A hundred thousand?

Best go out on a high before I get sucked in further…

#42 Contribute to the Greening of Winter

4 Replies

Winter’s a tough time for many amateur gardeners, especially the less robust among us.

It’s too cold and too wet to spend much time outside, and even for those prepared to toughen up and bring out the woollies, macs and gumboots, the rewards are few. Nothing much wants to grow.

Sure, there are jobs to do – we can prune and compost, rake and prepare garden beds for spring, but wouldn’t it be better if instead, we could:

#42 Contribute to the Greening of Winter

Sadly, it seems that almost anything you plant this time of the year withholds its rewards until Spring.

A close friend of mine who’s dipping her toes into the waters of green thumbed-ness this season (pardon the mixed metaphor) by experimenting with bulbs for the first time is coming to realise that something she planted way back in April may barely be sighted again until September, despite lavishing attention on it and providing it with a gorgeous hand painted designer pot.

miles to go before I bloom…

The pace of growth in winter can only be described as glacial.

The glorious crimson and scarlet leaves that floated off the persimmon tree a few weeks ago –

– have now shrivelled and dried to this:

yes, it’s still us (sob)…really

The green lawn is balding, too …

ageing, patchy and way past its prime

Honestly if it weren’t for the camellias and the mandarin trees, bless their little hearts,

winter might have to be rebadged. Just as the North Americans call autumn ‘fall’ in honour of what they see happening around them, so we might consider renaming winter ‘brown’.

But all is not lost. Notice the line “almost anything you plant this time of the year withholds its rewards until Spring”?

I’ve managed to find a project for winter that will deliver plenty of green:

You know wheat grass – the ludicrously expensive additive that’s cut from a tray of living green blades of grass sitting on the bench at hipster cafés. The stuff that’s thrown into smoothies and juices to persuade you it’ll counteract the fructose and glucose from the added banana and maple syrup.

Here’s how the wheat grass project goes:

Begin with a cup of wheat bought from your local produce store:

Soak it in lukewarm water for 24–48 hours until it’s swollen and just beginning to sprout:

Then layer these grains over some potting mix in a well drained tray, cover with damp newspaper, spray with water regularly and keep in the dark.

Within a couple of days (I kid you not) you’ll have real mid-winter growth:

And after another couple of days of watering and covering with newspaper, it’ll look like this:

Now it’s time to throw off the coverings and let in the light.

Go away for the long weekend and when you return, you’ll come home to the real deal:

…the wire cage was to keep the blades upright, but believe it or not,
mother nature knows where the light is!

No wonder sprouting wheat seeds was such a popular pastime in primary school.

It’s ‘instant horticultural gratification’.

All that’s left to do is cut off a small clump of this vitamin- and mineral- enriched goodness, throw it into your next smoothie and charge yourself a fortune.

But if you find drinking the stuff is about as exciting as eating grass and if it spoils the flavour of the yummy banana and maple syrup, don’t panic.

Just gift it to someone who’ll be more appreciative:

#41 Take up a Sport

#40 Create a New Word

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It wasn’t until 1977 that two psychologists introduced the phrase ‘Flashbulb Memory’ to explain the vivid and enduring recall many of us have of the circumstances in which we first heard stunning and emotionally arousing news.

While it’s since been debated whether Flashbulb Memories are any different to normal memories, it’s been a helpful term to use when referring to momentous events in our lives.

‘I’ll never forget the moment I heard about Diana’s accident that Sunday morning…’ or ‘I was in my parent’s bedroom, when my father rushed in announcing President Kennedy had been assassinated …’

So the idea that we haven’t always had the perfect word for every occasion interests me, and it sounded like a worthwhile retirement activity to:

#40 Create a New Word

The perfect opportunity arose with David Bowie’s death in January this year.

Such was the outpouring of grief around the world that it was impossible to ignore. The tributes, the expressions of angst, the replaying of his greatest moments, the documentaries, the wall to wall news coverage were pervasive.

But it struck me that I couldn’t join in because I wasn’t in any way grief-stricken. My knowledge of the deceased was – well – miniscule. Sure I knew his name, knew he was a performer but somehow, David Bowie’s talent and flamboyant showmanship had passed me by.

I was hard pressed to name even one of his songs. Was there something about Ground Control and a Major Tom? Or was that another artist’s song? When someone asked me years ago if my whippet, Ziggy was named after David Bowie, I’m sad to report that my response was, ‘What do you mean?’

…we are not related

I soon realised that there was no term in existence for my inability to join in the collective grief.

So I turned to someone who could cut to the chase instantly, someone with a sharp, witty, legal mind who’d find a solution.

I sent a quick text message to my sister:

Quick as a flash came the reply:

Yes!

A perfect concoction that borrows from the marvellous German concept of expressing a complex idea with one clever word – think doppelgänger or schadenfreude.

Grieflosst simultaneously captures both the grief and loss experienced by people around the world as well as the lost experience from an inability to share that grief by those who wander through life oblivious to what’s happening around them.

But could it ever have a serious place in the English lexicon?

It was time to road test it. I awoke recently to news of the death of Prince, an artist whose music I’ve never heard. Seriously, never heard. When I confessed this omission at lunch that day, a kind friend forwarded a YouTube link for his performance of When Doves Cry, assuring me I might remember dancing to it. I didn’t. I’d swear on Ziggy’s life that the song evoked nothing. Zilch. Nada. Nor had I ever heard of Purple Rain. In fact, my sum knowledge of Prince was that he’d once called himself a symbol. Whatever that was about.

But so many people are devastated by his premature passing that the new word was able to establish a solid hold in my vocabulary. I sent a text message to the only person who’d understand:

She replied with her only memory of Prince:

(…courtesy of the brilliant J C Duffy, The New Yorker)

So here it is: a brand new word which has been tested, found perfect and is now available, at no cost, for anyone to use:

#39 Create Your Own Kitchen Rules

7 Replies

It was while watching a popular cooking show recently – one whose name you’d never guess – that I was inspired to run with my next fun and frivolous retirement activity:

#39 Create Your Own Kitchen Rules

One of the contestants was – well there’s no other word for it – boasting that she would be making ricotta from scratch for her zucchini flower stuffing.

That’s the thing about these cooking shows. Apart from all the tinned, processed and packaged goods they’re allowed to buy at the major sponsor’s supermarket beforehand, the contestants are expected to make everything from scratch. And their competitors must then either slam them if they don’t, or state how impressive their culinary skills are if they do.

It was at this point I fell off the couch laughing. Have you ever made ricotta from scratch?

Honestly, it’s about as difficult as boiling an egg.

No, I’m exaggerating, as usual. You have to set a timer when you boil an egg, which isn’t necessary for ricotta making.

All you do is heat full-cream milk gently to just under boiling point, take it off the heat and season it, then slowly drizzle in lemon juice or vinegar:

The second that happens, you can watch the curds form before your eyes. Leave for 10 or 15 minutes – the time isn’t critical – scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon and drain them in a colander or cheesecloth. Voila! Fresh, creamy ricotta.

This, of course, got me thinking. Might it mean that all the cooking techniques these chefs speak of are, in reality, reasonably simple to do? Might I have been scared off preparing something delicious because of the hubris that some aspiring chefs indulge in?

The answer is probably yes.

So here are a few more dishes that you may have been too intimidated to attempt, but which turn out to be within the capabilities of anyone who enjoys cooking.

Raspberry coulis

Yes, that delicious-looking bright red sauce that all apprentice chefs seem to add to any dessert so they’ll be judged favourably: ‘…you’ve balanced the flavours well with the tartness of the raspberry coulis cutting through the cloying sweetness of the mango.’

So I had a go at making this magical sauce that balances flavours so well. It entails pulverising a punnet’s worth of raspberries in a food processor then pushing the resulting mess through a sieve and discarding the seeds. Yes, that easy.

And my conclusion? Well… Just between you and me, I found it spoiled the mango somewhat. A bit tart, really…

Labneh

Labneh has become the go-to yoghurt cheese that’s a creamy yet piquant addition to any food served on a wooden platter at trendy restaurants – or your own kitchen – right next to the pile of smashed avocado.

So how difficult is Labneh to make?

Would you believe it if I said it’s easier than ricotta, because no heating is required and no lemon juice or vinegar has to be drizzled in?

Just take a cup of thick, Greek Style yoghurt. Season if desired. Spoon onto cheesecloth, tie the top corners together and suspend over a bowl in the fridge for 2 or 3 days. There’s your labneh.

If you need to store it, you can roll the compacted yoghurt (the whey has dripped out) into small balls, coat with chopped parsley or your preferred herb and store covered in sunflower oil in a jar in the refrigerator. (I choose sunflower rather than olive oil as it doesn’t solidify when cold). It’s yum.

So…

Now ricotta, coulis and labneh have been mastered with nary a sweat raised, maybe it’s time to move onto something more challenging.

Ganache

Oh yes. Every budding chef peppers their conversation with the word ganache. It’s drizzled on their cakes, or piped into their biscuits or used as a base for their home made truffles. This is sounding a bit more difficult.

Except ganache isn’t difficult at all!

I hope chefs are starting to feel embarrassed.

Ganache involves nothing more than heating thick cream and pouring it over well chopped chocolate. That’s it. Allow it to sit for a minute or two then blend for a smooth, rich, luscious tasting treat that screams Eat Me!

The only secret to the perfect ganache is knowing the proportion of cream to chocolate and that depends on what you plan to use it for. One part cream to one part chocolate for a pouring consistency and one part cream to two or three parts chocolate for piping between biscuits or rolling into truffles.

…so deserving of the Royal Albert plate

Right. Now that creating ganache has been licked (pardon the pun, but wait till you make some and have to clean the bowl…) it’s time to move on to that pinnacle of (alleged) difficulty:

French Macaron

This little morsel has been the death of many a budding cook on TV shows, but if you follow the recipe to the letter it’s not at all impossible.

There’s fear about your piped macarons ending up irregularly shaped or mismatched, but that’s easily overcome by using a pre-drawn paper template under the baking paper while piping, then removing the template before cooking. The template can be reused as often as needed:

Then there’s the fear of getting air bubbles in the mixture that you’ve piped, but that’s overcome by carefully banging the tray flat on the bench before cooking.

The fear of ending up without the all important ‘feet’

…complete with ‘feet’

is a matter of carefully folding your ingredients after reading the amazingly helpful ‘How To Cook That’ page on Google which will cover every question you ever had about making macarons.

And having previously mastered Ganache, filling the perfect cases you’ve just made is, ahem, a piece of cake.

…not as perfect as a french pâtissier might make, but tolerable

It struck me that most of these dishes have an exotic sounding name, which may be what’s given them their reputation.

I can only hope that there’s a parallel cooking show somewhere in a non-English speaking part of the world where the competitors are in awe when a contestant plates up soft boiled eggs with toasted soldiers spread with – wait for it – an exotic thick, black, salty spread that they’ve never seen before and that tastes simply delicious.