A "mystery breakfast"

On Sunday I invited a few people over to my place for a "mystery breakfast". The mystery was what the breakfast was for. There was apparently a lot of speculation over what it could be. As soon as everybody had arrived, however, I announced the answer. It was held for two reasons: 1) As a birthday bash for Jenny, who turns (somewhere in her '50s) on Tuesday. 2). To celebrate my restoration (at absurd expense) of most of the windows in my old house to their original form. The house originally had casement windows throughout but someone before I bought the house had replaced some of the casements with sliding aluminium windows -- which was very out of keeping with a 1930s style "Queenslander" house.

There are two common traditional patterns in Queensland for the coloured glass in the quarterlights of casement windows: One with all amber and another with alternating red and green. I put all amber down one side of my house and red/green across the front, as I like both patterns. For the benefit of any non-Queenslanders who come by here, below is an illustration of some casements without any colours in their quarterlights.



In attendance at the breakfast were Jenny, Anne, Ken, Maureen, Jill, Lewis, Henningham and Helen.

Anne prepared a marvellous Bircher muesli for starters and we also had lots of cold meats and bread in the Northern European style. We ate out on the verandah with a bright winter sun shining in. It was very pleasant. Several of the people present had recently been on visits to Austria and central Europe so a lot of the conversation centred on that -- and on travel generally.

Below is a picture of the verandah. As you can see, I have not yet defeated ALL the aluminium windows in my house. Festina lente



A little joke I had centred around a black octagonal dinner plate that I had found downstairs. It had apparently been left behind by a departing tenant. I happened to know that Jill had an octagonal dinner set which she very much liked so as soon as she arrived I presented her with her own special black octagonal dinner plate for her to use during the breakfast. She got the joke immediately and I afterwards insisted that she take the plate home with her to add to her collection.

Some of the people present seemed very favourably impressed by my amber-quartered casements and Helen particularly liked all the brass and copper fittings I have on both my windows and my doors. I was rather glad about that as I had Jeff over the day before to do various cleanup jobs, with buffing up all the brass being a big part of that. Ken in his usual way thought that all my casements, brassware etc was a lot of nonsense. Ken has always strongly favoured new things over old things. De gustibus non disputandum est.