J.P. Chenet and breakfasty disappointments

Anne and I occasionally eat out for breakfast and we know some great places for that -- the Cafe Zagreb, K&Ks, Pommes teashop etc. Everybody like a change, though, so this week we tried two of the eateries associated with Mt. Coot-Tha -- Brisbane's mid-city scenic mountain.

We first tried the restaurant in the Botanical Gardens at the bottom of the mountain. The view out onto a large duckpond with lots of bamboo in the background was very pleasant and the food -- a smorgasbord with a good range of options -- was quite good but the coffee was terrible. So strike that one out.

Today we tried the Cafe at the summit of the mountain. Again the view was great and the food was fine but this time the coffee was REALLY bad. Nescafe would have been better. So strike that one out too.

While we were there, however, we did enjoy seeing the scrub turkeys walking in and out of the cafe. They are much smaller than the turkeys bred for eating but look good. They are a protected specieas and there a lot of them wandering around throughout Brisbane's Western suburbs. They are common in the Mt Coot-Tha reserve and the ones around the cafe have obviously become quite tame.



My father used to eat them in the old days when he was working out in the bush. To him they were just another chook to be killed and eaten. This was in the days when you had to kill your own chicken if you wanted to eat one. I saw him do so a few times. He said that the scrub turkeys are pretty tough (chewy), though.

A consolation for the coffee disappointments is that J.P. Chenet has now come to Brisbane. They are the world's largest-selling French wine so if I were the usual Leftist snob I would have to say how bad their wine is. But, being a contemptible plebeian, I have to say that I quite like the sauvignon blanc particularly. It goes down very easily.



Australia produces such a lot of high quality wine at low prices that overseas wines are mainly sold here as a curiosity so I had never heard of J.P. Chenet. But I saw one of their distinctive bottles in a local liquor shop and thought it worth a try. I am glad I did. It is incredibly cheap. It is "on special" at $7. The cheapest Australian white is usually $5 and I mostly pay over $10 when I buy white wine. Those Chenet people sure are clever guys. Maybe EU subsidies help.

The sauvignon blanc is from Gascony. The English have been importing Gascon wine for over 400 years so I suppose it was time some got to Australia. I gather that Gascony is not one of the prestigious French wine districts, though.

A smorgasbord week

This week included Valentine's day so I had something to live up to. Last Valentine's day I bought Anne a 2kg (about 4lb) box of Greek Turkish Delight. Anne is very fond of Turkish Delight and the slightly lemony flavour of the stuff I bought her last year was such a big hit that she spun the box out for about 6 months before it was all eaten. I very rarely make much of a hit when I buy presents so I was of course pleased to hit the jackpot with that one.

But where would I buy Greek Turkish Delight this year? The lot I bought last year was a one-off. I did however manage to find some Turkish Delight made in Turkey but I doubted that I would hit the jackpot twice. So I bought a couple of lots of chocolates for her as well. So overall I think I did OK.

To top up I also took her next day to a nearby Japanese smorgasbord for dinner. It was immaculate and perfect in the usual Japanese way with a great variety of food so we both enjoyed it. I was rather surprised at how many young Anglo-Australians were there. It is not a cheap place so Japanese quality is obviously much appreciated.

And Jill also has her birthday next Monday so on Saturday Anne and I took Jill and Lewis to the Hilton Buffet for a birthday dinner. It too was pretty well patronized despite the very steep price. I think the Hilton keeps putting its price up until the customers come in just the right numbers -- popular but not crowded. There is an expression for that in economics which I could have told you in the far-off days when I was an economics teacher but my old brain refuses to co-operate at the moment ("marginal pricing"?). Anyway, I certainly appreciate the quiet decorum and first-class food of the Hilton.

I put on pre-dinner drinks on my verandah before we left for the Hilton in order to introduce Jill and Lewis to a favourite wine of mine -- Tyrrells Verdelho. Verdelho as most vintners make it is nothing special but Tyrrells make something really good out of it. I despise wine-talk so I will not try to describe the flavour.

Then when we got back from the Hilton, we retired to my newly refurbished living room for port and coffee. The port was actually a liquer Tokay, which has a really grapey taste. Liquer versions of Tokay and Muscat are the only fortified wines I drink at the moment.

I once again wore Highland dress to go to the Hilton. I included a dress-shirt in the outfit which took studs instead of buttons but I am so out of practice with such things that it took me 15 minutes just to get my studs and cufflinks in. Getting into Highland dress can definitely take a while. I guess it should help me appreciate the javascript:void(0)complexities that women go through in getting dressed.

A busy week

I normally live a very quiet life -- which is how I like it. I have done lots of things and been lots of places in my life but I am a born academic anyway so it suits me these days to spend my remaining years doing very little more than reading, thinking and writing.

But I do have some social life and this was a week for it. On Tuesday Anne had her birthday so I took her to the smogasbord at the Hilton. The Hilton seems to be my idea of a special dinner. I eat out several times a week so dining out itself is not a big deal. The quality, variety and unlimited quantity at the Hilton, however, is special. Another thing I like about the Hilton is that it is quiet. There is no house music, it seems to be too expensive for the loudmouths and the floor is carpeted -- all of which means that one can enjoy one's dinner in relative peace. It is not at all "vibrant", thankfully.

This year the cook had put out a lot of little hors d'oeuvres in little ceramic trays. I have only a vague idea of what was in most of them but they were delicious and I had several! As always, however, I enjoyed the fresh oysters most. The Hilton seems to make a point of getting in only the best and a Sydney Rock Oyster is very good any way -- as almost any Sydney person will tell you. They are smaller than some but make up for it in taste.

As my waistline has expanded in recent years, I had to get the straps lengthened on my kilt recently so I decided to make the Hilton outing a trial run for the modified garb. It is a good thing that I did. The modified kilt was fine but I had forgotten to get the straps on my sporran lengthened so could not get that on. So I went to the Hilton purseless. Anne however took her purse so I gave her credit card, keys etc to carry. As I live only about 10 minutes drive from central Brisbane, we took a cab to and from the dinner. It is nice not to have to bother about parking. I was impressed to note that Brisbane cabbies take credit card payments these days.

And I got the straps on my sporran lengthened the next day!

And Thursday was 25th, the birthday of Robert Burns so, as I usually do, I organized a small Burns Night celebration in honour of the poet. People with Scottish connections mark January 25th. worldwide and I am a genuine fan of Burns so Burns Night is often the only social gathering I host for the entire year.

I am not social enough to host a large gathering these days so I invited only two couples along. Jill is an old friend of mine and her partner these days, Lewis, is a real gent so they were one of the couples. The other was my stepson Paul and his wife Sue. Paul is a real livewire and we have always got on well. As he often does, Paul expressed during the dinner his appreciation of my role in his upbringing. His own father is a perfectly pleasant and kindly man but, as sometimes happens, Paul has always got on better with his stepfather than with his father.

I would have invited my own son and his mother along to the dinner but Joe has glandular fever at the moment and I didn't want anyone to catch that -- having once had it myself. And Jenny is on a gluten-free diet these days so she would not have been able to eat the haggis.

Because it was only a small gathering, I did not do most of the ceremonies customary for a Burns Night. We met mainly to eat some haggis and read a few of the poems. We got the haggis from a man who specializes in making them and he also supplied the clootie dumpling for dessert. Jill made the cockaleekie soup and Anne did a brilliant job of cooking the neeps (Swedes, a type of turnip). Neeps are basically very humble fare but Anne knows how to make them into quality food.

Paul and Sue brought along some freshly-cooked scones (what Americans call biscuits) so with oatcakes and "Dunlop" cheese after the dessert and scones (with cream and jam) to accompany the coffee it was a five-course meal.

I could not get any genuine Dunlop cheese and I have never in fact tasted the real thing but I got what I thought was the nearest thing available locally. I gather that it is a light type of cheddar cheese (definitely not rubbery). We can get English, Swedish, German, French and Norwegian cheese in Brisbane but no Scottish cheese. Dunlop cheese is named after the Scottish village where it was first made.

Since I was going to be wearing ethnic (Highland) dress, I told Lewis, who is Jewish, that I wanted him to wear his full sabbath garb. The big hat and coat favoured by Orthodox Jews look very impressive to my eyes. But he is not religious so he didn't have any! He did however bring along his kippah so we managed to induce him to wear that for a while. Jill is very philo-Semitic so I imagine that he was not allowed out of the house without his kippah in his pocket. Jill likes Jews for the same reason that I do -- the combination of brains, drive and culture that is so frequently found among them.


Addressing the Haggis

Anyway, it was a good night. The haggis was properly addressed (See above) and enjoyed, a bottle of Johnny Walker was drunk and some famous poems were read out to much appreciation. Paul is a real livewire so he even out-talked Jill, which takes some doing. Lewis had some fun stories to tell too, but Anne, Sue and I mainly listened. That is normal for me and for Sue but not for Anne. She did however have a fair bit to do getting the food ready etc. so that would have been part of it. Jill disappeared into the kitchen a few times, however, so I imagine that a proper quota of lady-talk was got in.

Hee! hee! I imagine that the paragraph above will rile any feminists reading it! Both Jill and Anne have some feminist views but are ladies first of all. If it mollifies any feelings, I did set the table, organize the pipe music, serve the haggis and read the poems. I always set the table with very old-fashioned cutlery when I have guests -- EPNS silver and bone-handled knives. It just looks better to me that way.


Self, Anne and Jill


The assembled company

And the day after Burns night is of course Australia Day -- celebrating the arrival of the first white settlers here. And on Australia day my relatives on my mother's side have for many years had the good Australian custom of getting together for a BBQ. It is almost the only time in the year that I see relatives but it is always an occasion I enjoy. It is always a particular pleasure to see the kids -- few though they be these days. The "kids" who used to be brought along by their parents are now grown up -- but most still come along anyway. Fortunately, some now have kids of their own.

I had my usual chat with Peter, my cousin once removed and with my brother Christopher. Peter is a former AOG clergyman who lost the faith and is now an academic. He is however a great loss to the ministry as he takes a great interest in other people and would be a great pastor.

As is often the case, I mainly talked about guns with my brother. I learnt that he now has SIX machineguns -- all legally -- and he has a most impressive armoury generally. We discussed why collectors have great difficulty getting hold of the OMC (Owen Machine Carbine or "Owen Gun"). I had not realized that the Owen was an Australian invention. I thought it was a great weapon when I was trained on it in the 60s during my days in the Australian Army Reserve (CMF as it then was). The party was held at my brother's place and when I arrived all the men were downstairs in the armoury admiring the weapon collection. I rather liked the look of the Bren gun. As I was not in the infantry, I did not get to fire the Bren while I was in the army.

My son Joe was there too and we talked a bit about his idea of becoming an actuary. It requires many years of post-degree study so I tried to persuade him that being an academic would be an easier life. This is his third year at university and he is again doing all mathematics subjects.

More photos

A couple more photos of my new living room

A workstation for the laptop below:



The futon and the Persian rug below:



The Tantalus below:



The new sideboard/drinks cabinet below. Probably made in the 1950s:

New Year

I had a very quiet New Year's eve -- which is rather how I like it. With all the drunks on the road, it seems best to stay home. Anne was minding her grandson so that her son and his wife could have the night out and I stayed at home and blogged. A blogger's work is never done, of course.

New years day was different, however. Anne came over and made us a slap-up brunch consisting of bacon, eggs, tomato, mushrooms and haloumi cheese. And she brought a loaf of very good fresh bread with her as well to have instead of toast. With real butter it made a very nice change. I do use margarine sometimes but I prefer all my food to be "real". I avoid anything that says it is "light" or "low" etc.

Later on in the morning, I got the Humber out and we took a thermos down to Wynnum to have a cup of tea by the water. On the way back, however, one tyre blew out so I had to change it despite the fact that I had never even checked to see if the Humber had the tools needed. Fortunately it did and I was able to work out how to do the change despite a few Humber peculiarities. Being an old guy helps as I have changed tyres on many different cars over the years and so know most of the variations on how a car is jacked up etc. Anne was rather surprised to see me prising a little green circle out of the bodywork, though.

At night Anne cooked up a dinner of roast pork which also went down very well -- helped by some good Australian champagne. We won't mention the crackling, though. For dessert we had rhubarb and yoghurt -- combining two of my favourite foods.

Christmas 2006

I always look forward to and enjoy Christmas. We actually have family get-togethers pretty often (maybe as much as once a month on average) but things are more organized and more fun at Christmas. And Christmas is one time when all the "kids" (now very much adults) are usually there together. And seeing I had a great time helping bring them up, just being once again in one-anothers' presence is always a good feeling.

For Christmas eve I invited my ex-wife Jenny and our son Joe over for a dinner. Pam, a lady-friend of Jenny's who is staying with Jenny at the moment also came along, as did "Nanna" (Jenny's mother). With Anne and me that made six at table, which is about all I can fit in on my small verandah, which is our preferred place to dine.



Part of the reason for the occasion was that I wanted Jenny and Joe to see my newly refurbished living room. There is one picture of it below that shows one part of it but I hope to add more pictures later that should give you a much better idea of it.



The picture does at least show what a good job the floor polishers did and you can see the futon plus a small corner of the Persian rug.

We had Veuve Cliquot champage for pre-dinner drinks and Kassler Rippenspeeren as the main course of the dinner. Nobody wanted to drink much so we did not have any alcohol with dinner but I did serve up some good liquer Tokay and Muscat as dessert wine. The dessert was fruitcake and Red Globe grapes. It all seemed to work well.

On Christmas day, Anne went off for a morning with her family and I joined the usual gang for brunch at Jenny's place. As usual, Jenny had cooked up a storm and there were all sorts of good things to eat. Being a bit of a sausage-freak, however, I ate mainly sausages and ham.

I had driven over in the Humber so immediately after the meal I took a few people who had not yet had a ride in it for a short drive up to the summit of Mt Gravatt -- a local eminence of no great distinction for anything but its proximity.



After that came the present opening and after that was a lucky dip of small presents with each participant taking turns to dip in. Also, however, people are allowed to seize one-another's presents rather than dip into the wrapped and unknown presents on the floor. That is always a lot of fun with much good-natured argument about the desirability of the presents concerned. I ended up with two small cotton "throw rugs" that I have not the faintest idea what to do with.

Anne came over to my place in the afternoon and cooked roast turkey for our dinner that night -- which again went down very well. So I had, in effect, two Christmas dinners that day!

That night we listened mainly to Christmas Carols on the CD player and I was rather taken with one that you do not hear very often: "God bless the master of this house". Some of the words below:

God bless the master of this house,
And all that are therein,
And to begin this Christmas tide
With mirth now let us sing.

(Refrain) For the Saviour of all people
Upon this time was born,
Who did from death deliver us,
When we were left forlorn.

Then let us all most merry be,
Since that we are come here,
And we do hope before we part
To taste some of your beer.

For the Saviour of all people...

Your beer, your beer, your Christmas beer,
That seems to be so strong,
And we do wish that Christmas tide
Was twenty times so long.

As a fairly regular drinker of Crown Lager, I was pleased to see beer honourably mentioned, among other things

Then on Boxing day, Anne and I Humbered down to the seaside at Wynnum and got some brunch goodies from a shop named (I am embarrassed to say) "Pierre's". It was good food anyway and we had it with takeway coffee in a picnic shelter right by the water.

So no complaints about Christmas 2006.

Update: I mentioned Kassler Rippenspeeren above in the belief that anybody interested in what they are could Google it. But Google has failed (or the net has failed) -- as all you get when you Google the term is previous posts by me. So: The term is a German one and means "pork rib spears (spare ribs) the way they do it in Kassel". Apparently they smoke their pork in Kassel. My Brockhaus German-English dictionary defines them as "smoked ribs of pork". What I get from our local German butcher, however, is chops rather than ribs. It's great stuff.

More Music

Another musical weekend just past. On Saturday, Ken invited us to a meeting of a group of musicians that he is part of. I gather that they meet at one-another's place and "jam" from time to time. This meeting was at Ken's own place so his friends and family were invited too. The music was what I would call "light" music -- folk songs, blues and the popular music of yesteryear. I know heaps of folksongs so was rather tempted to sing along at times. Anne and I both enjoyed the occasion. Paul and I chatted a lot as usual and I was pleased that Brian Ruffles was in attendance. Brian is a great character and, despite his name, not easily ruffled. He lives in Indonesia these days running various speculative business ventures but was back home in Brisbane for a couple of weeks.

On Sunday there was the Christmas party of our Westside Music Circle. It comprised a BBQ first followed by the usual concert. Anne had been to another function that afternoon so we skipped the BBQ and just had a light meal together by the Brisbane river at a Lebanese restaurant called "Cafe Laila's". I may be wrong but I fancy that the name of the place is taken from the character Leila in Lawrence Durrell's once-fashionable "Alexandria Quartet" of novels.

The concert was unusually good. The performers are usually amateurs and that can led to uneven quality but there were very few sour notes on Sunday. One of the performers played the usual Spanish guitar favourites quite impeccably. I was mildly surprised to see some delicate Mozart played on the piano with perfect expertise by a rather large young chap. Such delicate music from such a large person seemed faintly odd to me.

As usual, I got into the supper afterwards with gusto. There was some excellent apple and raisin strudel that I can still remember and some very fancy sandwiches. After such a big day of socializing, Anne was just about staggering by the time we got home. Even her great social capacity has its limits. And neither Anne nor I had any alcohol all evening.

Photos 2006

I thought it might be a reasonable idea to put up here a few of the photos taken during the year.


Below are Anne and myself:




Below is Joe and his girlfriend Sam




Below is my lively stepson Paul and his good-humoured wife Sue

Another year down for Joe

Last Sunday, we had a small celebration at Jenny's place to mark Joey doing well in his 2nd year university exams. He did all mathematics subjects this year so at least some of his subjects must have been pretty demanding.

Jenny (Joe's mother) cooked up a storm of mostly Korean food and I bought along a couple of bottles of champagne -- one of which was Veuve Cliquot. Present were Jenny, Joe, myself, Anne, Paul and Paul's Susan. Since there are two Susans in the family, we have to say which one.

Paul was loquacious as usual, which is good as Joe and I are both pretty quiet on family occasions. Paul (Joe's half-brother) is very family oriented and is a great support to Joe -- as he is to his other brothers. And the fact that Korean egg-rolled pork was on the menu absolutely ensured his presence!

This year was actually Joe's third at the University of Qld. as he also did a subject there during his final High School year.

Handel and the Skeptics

On Saturday night Anne and I went to St John's Cathedral to hear Handel's Messiah. It was a bit early this year. It is usually in December. As usual, it was put on by the Bach Society. The Bach choir always puts out a good sound despite most of the members being fairly elderly and the soloists were excellent this year. I enjoyed every minute of it. I go to it most years. The photo below is one internal view of St. John's -- with the current architect, Michael Kennedy, in the foreground.



Anne and I had decided to wait until after the performance to have dinner but the performance went from 7.30 to 10.30 so a lot of restaurants had closed by the time we got to Southbank -- which is probably Brisbane's busiest restaurant precinct. We eventually found a Chinese that was open, however, and their food was excellent. I had Satay chicken.

On Monday night I gave a talk on global warming to a meeting of the Brisbane Skeptics. There were about 50 in the audience. There appeared to be a few who already were skeptical about global warming so I hope I added a few more of those attending to the ranks of the global warming skeptics. I think there were quite a few who went away still true-believers, however. Skepticism has its limits. My talk seemed generally well-received. I described environmentalism as a return to mankind's original religion of nature worship and said that global-warming belief is so counterfactual as to prove that environmentalism is a religion.

I did not prepare my talk. Even when I was a university lecturer with an auditorium of 1,000 students in front of me I never prepared anything either. I have always felt that if you have to prepare a lecture you don't know your subject well enough. And speaking extempore always engages the audience more. There is nothing more boring than having a lecture read to you. To speak well extempore you have to be the type to whom public speaking gives no jitters at all, however.

On Tuesday night, I went out to Anne's place for dinner and she cooked us some good roast turkey in her recently acquired Schlemmertopf. I stopped at the big bottleshop on the way over and found some South African pinotage which I grabbed. South African pinotage can be very good. This one was a Nederburg, however, and had too much tannin in the aftertaste. KWV does a better job.

Gruene Veltliner

I went out to Anne's place for dinner on Tuesday and stopped by at the big liquor barn near there. They have quite a few overseas wines in stock and among them I spotted some Gruene Veltliner (Domain Wachau). I knew at once that it was a well-known Austrian wine but had never tasted it so I bought a bottle.

We opened it for dinner and, much to my surprise, it was a dry wine -- much like an Australian Hunter valley Semillion or Riesling. I had expected it to be fruity -- as German wines are. The rules must be different in Germany and Austria. It was a pleasant drink, though.

The Darby and Mozart

Rather a good weekend just past. The biggest highlights: dining with Michael Darby and another Mozart concert.

Anne and I dined at the Stone's Corner Thai on Thursday evening and we were pleased to see that they have developed a good clientele. They make excellent food and people obviously come back when they discover that. I always have the Penang curry myself. When we first started going there they were pretty empty as they are in a rather out-of-the-way place but they were pretty busy there last Thursday.

On Friday morning we Humbered out to Wynnum and breakfasted at Pommes Teashop -- and heard that the Immigration Dept. is reconsidering its order for them to return to Britain -- which is hopeful news. We both had the English Breakfast, rather unoriginally.

On Saturday night Michael Darby was up from Sydney so Anne and I dined with him and a lady-friend at Ahmet's Turkish restaurant at Southbank. Michael seems to get larger every time I see him. Like me, he spends too much time sitting in front of a computer. True to form, Michael recited some Australian poetry for us -- from C.J. Dennis. He is very good at that. It was a delight to see him. He is such an original.

On Sunday Anne was singing in a choir that was doing an all-Mozart programme at a suburban church in Chermside so I went along. I was glad I did. The programme was a bit odd: The Vespers interspersed with operatic arias. That worked well though. The glorious arias from Figaro etc. brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion.

In praise of Janacek

Leos Janacek is not everyone's cup of tea -- to put it mildly. He was a very innovative classical composer who has a following only among very musical people. Probably only a minority of even classical music fanciers like his work. But I and several of my friends DO like Janacek.

One of the unsung virtues of Janacek is that he has a powerful room-clearing effect. Years ago, when certain friends and I used to give parties, we would sometimes get sick of our guests and wish that they would go home. It is a not-unknown problem -- one for which many people find no easy solution. But Janacek is a solution! When we got tired of our guests, we just took the popular music off the stereo and put on Janacek. We would be alone in 5 minutes after that! People would even leave things behind in their desperation to escape Janacek!

I recently had reason to re-use the Janacek effect. Some young people moved into the house next door to me. And like most young people, they like popular music and they like it loud -- music which I do not like at all. I at first tried the polite thing and went next door asking them to keep the volume down. That did not work. So I deployed Janacek.

Now if they turn their music up I give them a few minutes of Janacek's Lachian dances. If that does not work, I bring out the heavy cannon -- the Janacek Sinfonietta -- with its very discordant-sounding opening fanfare on the brass. The first time I did that, they went out. They could not bear it. Now they just take the hint and turn their music off.





I guess I'm a mean old guy but what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If they can play their choice of music as loudly as they like, so can I. And I do.

I get a living room

Although I live in a large old traditional Queensland house with 9 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms I don't use all of it myself. I have lived in quite limited accommodation for most of my life so, although I like large houses, I don't really know what to do with them. Filling them with kids was great fun at one stage of my life but that period is now long gone. So I normally let out my unused bedrooms to overseas students -- mostly from India.

Even so, I have for my own use 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, dining room, library, anteroom and verandah. So I thought I was treating myself fairly well. Anne has however told me often that I also need a living room so I have just converted one of the larger bedrooms that had become vacant into a new living room.

It is a largish room of about 4 meters square with a big East-facing window that gets the morning sunlight so is basically quite pleasant. It did however have an old carpet down so I bit the bullet, ripped the carpet up and had the timber floor underneath sanded and coated. The floor needed a bit of rehabilitation before the sandman came but at least no boards needed replacing. Anne and I just had to get all the staples, tacks, nails etc. out. I have done that sort of work on floors often over the years so it was not intrinsically difficult but was a bit onerous for an old guy like me.

Anyway, the sandman came on Thursday and for $440 I now have a gleamingly beautiful timber floor of slash pine. They used good timber for floors in the old days when my house was built.

I am furnishing it a bit sparingly. I have bought a brown velvet futon (sofa-bed) to sit on and also have a good single TV chair. Other than that I intend to have in the room only a TV, a coffee table and a computer desk. I am also on the lookout for an attractive traditional oriental rug ("Persian carpet") for the floor but I may get a Belgian cotton (machine-made) version rather than a hand-woven one. It will depend on what I see that I like. The Belgian ones are so cheap that it is embarrassing so I think I will look first at the Asian ones.

Donizetti and the 39 articles

On Saturday afternoon, Anne and I saw a performance of "Lucia di Lammermoor" by Gaetano Donizetti -- an opera about Scotland written by an Italian! It was performed at the Lyric theatre here in Brisbane -- a beautifully designed large modern theatre that gives just about everyone in the audience a good view of the stage. We had seats in the first tier up.

The scenery was pretty invariant in the modern way and the costumes were a bit mixed. I was pleased to see that the clergyman wore advocates' tabs, as Presbyterian ministers do, but there was not a kilt in sight! Very strange for something set in the Highlands. The odd Tartan cloak or sash seemed to be the only recognition of Scottishness in dress.

There were of course only the four main performers but I was amazed that the cast of chorus/extras was so large. There must have been 50 people on stage at times. I thought I could see government subsidy somewhere there. No wonder opera is so expensive to produce!

I am not much of a fan of 19th century Italian opera (opera for me stops at Mozart) and I usually have a nap of an afternoon so that combination was not good. I had trouble staying awake -- for all the drama unfolding on stage! The plot is incredibly silly by modern standards but I guess it made sense in the time it was written.

It was Anne who particularly wanted us to go along so she enjoyed it, fortunately. I gather that she particularly wanted to see the famous "mad scene" performed. That scene is a major role for a soprano and Anne herself is a singer (soprano) so I can understand her interest.

The opera had a curious aftermath. Anne cooked us some excellent sausages for dinner afterwards and a big storm with lots of thunder and lightning got underway as she was washing up. That inspired her to start singing "How great thou art", because of its allusion to thunder:

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power through-out the universe displayed.

That hymn is one of the most powerful evangelical hymns ever written and it is a tremendous favourite of mine so afterward we put on a CD of hymn tunes and sang along together! Anne referred to it as "Religious karaoke"! We are both unbelievers these days but share a Presbyterian background and we both love the old hymns. But following Donizetti by hymns had to be a bit eccentric! I enjoyed the hymns a lot more!

Curiously, although Anne does not appear to believe in God in any way, she still has Presbyterian beliefs. How come? She still believes that: "it was all meant to be". The Scottish churches are of course all originally Calvinist and even the 39 "Articles of Religion" of the Church of England accept predestination in a convoluted sort of way but you never hear that belief preached from any pulpit that I know of these days.

But what the preachers have forgotten, the people have not. The old belief is still passed down in families. I remember my own mother and Aunt Maude also telling me with great confidence: "It was all planned out before we were born, John". Yet neither Maude nor my mother were very religious in any obvious sense. I guess there is a religious instinct there -- and I have certainly inherited that. So I happily sing songs of praise to a God I don't believe in. I may be the only atheist in the world who keeps a Presbyterian hymn-book by the side of his bed!

Immigration nonsense

Anne and I made a very sad discovery on Friday morning. We Humbered out to Wynnum with a 3-tier English morning tea from the very English Pommes teashop in mind and discovered that they will be closing down soon. What a loss! They make the best sausage rolls in Brisbane as well as providing the fanciest morning tea.



Apparently, Australia's idiotic Immigration Dept. has said that the proprietors have to go back to England. The fact that they employ 7 people and provide a greatly appreciated service does not matter, apparently.

They have done nothing wrong. It is just that they do not fit into any category that the bureaucrats allow to settle here.

Queensland State parliamentarian Paul Lucas is appealing on their behalf so emails to him deploring this silly decision would be a great idea.

Australia allows lots of unemployable people from places like the Lebanon and the Sudan to settle here and live off the Australian taxpayer but hard-working English people who create jobs are sent home! Only a bureaucrat could makes sense of it.



On Saturday I was out at Wynnum again. My old sweetheart G. came over to take up my standing offer of a trip in my recently acquired 1963 Humber Super Snipe.





We had ham & salad bread rolls on the verandah first for brunch then drove out to Wynnum and got takeaway coffee there to have by the water. Both Anne and G. are very outdoorsy but the only bit of the outdoors in the Brisbane area that I like particularly is the seaside at Wynnum.





On Sunday, Anne and I went to church.



Ann St Presbyterian is our old church for both of us (some notes about it here and here) and we have a sentimental attachment to it so we do go along on rare occasions. The church was pretty full and there were quite a few young people in the congregation. I was a bit sad to see that ALL the young people were Asian, however. Ann St has a big Korean congegation with regular services in Korean but many of the young members of the Korean families have gone to school here and obviously feel more at home with the English services. I am pleased that they come but sad that the older British-based congegation is not being replaced too.

Mr Brown

I thought I might put up a photo of the most frequent visitor to my place. I am holding him below. He is a beautiful Burmese cat from next-door who seems to visit everyone in the street regularly.



Why would I call him "Mr. Brown"?

A musical weekend

My "weekend" started auspiciously when Anne brought over a piece of lamb on Thursday evening and made us a roast dinner. There's no roast as good as a roast straight from the oven to the table. We listened to the music of Purcell and Beethoven afterwards, including Beethoven's 6th., one of the few symphonies I put on often.

On Friday morning we had a very humble but still excellent breakfast -- meat pies. We got them from Muzza's at Coorparoo. Muzza is in my view the best pie cook in Brisbane, which is a bit ironical as he is a Kiwi. Australia is undoubtedly the world headquarters of meat pie eating so it is a bit surprising that it is a New Zealander who makes the best pies. His cakes are good too: Definitely sinful. He even has tiny mini-tarts for weight-watching ladies!

We took our pies to the Brisbane Corso (by the river) to eat, together with takeaway coffee. We found a shady nook there, overlooking the wide brown expanse of the Brisbane river. The birds that came to share our breakfast were a couple of magpies, rather unusually. We usually see either ibises or seagulls. We listened to a couple of the late symphonies of F.J. Haydn after breakfast.

On Friday evening we went to another classical music soiree at Bill's. Bill had dug out some excellent recordings for us and we started off most auspiciously with "Steppes of Central Asia" by Borodin. We also heard a Vivaldi cello concerto, which was new to me. It didn't sound much like Vivaldi but was good nonetheless. I went to sleep that night with "Steppes of Central Asia" playing in my brain -- a pretty good lullaby!

Saturday night was the night of G.F. Handel. There was a choral concert at St John's of the anthems originally played at the coronation of King George II -- with Handel's famous coronation anthems featuring prominently, of course -- though music from Purcell, Tallis and others was also heard. The grand music of Handel and the grandeur of a great stone cathedral were a good match. And, as a monarchist, I was pleased by the frequent cries of "God save the King". Being a bit of a hermit these days, I would not even have known the event was on but Anne grabs every opportunity to get me out of my hermit cave and music is the best lever for that. Anne is as social as I am reclusive. She is definitely a "lady who lunches".

On Sunday morning we Humbered down to the seaside at Wynnum and found a place that sold quite fancy takeaway food. We got takeaway chicken sandwiches, frittata and quiche which we ate in a picnic shelter by the water, followed by a walk along the esplanade. It was a good morning for a walk, being bright and sunny.

On Sunday evening we went to another meeting of our private live-music group. Hearing classical music live has a certain edge over recorded music but I have never quite figured out why. I got a clue from a Haydn cello concerto we heard, though. I was sitting only about 3 feet from the cello player and the cello sounded completely different from what one hears on recorded music -- much deeper, more resonant and dramatic. I thought I knew what cellos sounded like. I didn't!

The cello player was a young but very competent girl. Since Jacqueline du Pre, the cello seems to have become a female's instument. I will forbear from the usual jokes about that. The ladies do an excellent job and that is all that matters.

A 3-tier brunch

Anne and I Humbered out to my favourite seaside suburb -- Wynnum -- to have brunch this morning.

We went there to go to the English tea-house. It is run by a patriotic Englishman who has filled his cafe with memorabilia and photos of England. Last time we were there we noted that he was offering a traditional English morning tea served on a 3-tier cakestand like the one in the pic below. I had never had such a morning tea before but Anne had encountered them before in her travels -- at the Raffles in Singapore, for instance.



We chose Darjeeling tea, which was served in a pot! A change from the teabags that have now become the norm in Australia.

We ordered rather a lot of food so we got a first course of pastries before the cakestand arrived. That man sure knows how to cook pastries! There were the best mini sausage rolls I have tasted plus some excellent slices of pork pie, which I had with English mustard.

When the cakestand arrived it had sandwiches on top (cheese and ham), filled sponge-cake and a lemon meringe tart on the middle tier and scones (which Americans call "biscuits!) and jam ("jelly") on the bottom tier. And it was all served up in a most polite and helpful way by the proprietor -- who was obviously modelling himself on a traditional English butler.

We could not eat it all of course so waddled out of the shop with the leftovers in a box.

A long weekend

Anne and I had a more eventful weekend than usual last weekend.

It started out on Thursday night, when Anne and I went to the local Stones Corner Indian restaurant. I had Balti curry (my favourite) and Anne had Moglai curry. We also ordered two spinach and cheese naan, which were superb. We ordered two lots but could not finish it so we took the remainder home and polished it off later as a midnight snack.

On Friday morning we Humbered out to K& K's Austrian Konditterei at Sinnamon Park.



Anne has recently returned from a trip to Austria but finds that the food at K&Ks compares favourably with what is available in Wien ("Vienna"). I usually have the Bauern Groestl at K& Ks but I changed for once and had their big breakfast. It included some herbed sausage that was especially good. Before we left, we bought an Austrian teacake for later.

We took the teacake with us that night as a contribution to the supper at a classical music soiree we went to. This soiree was a bit humbler than some we go to in that the music was recorded rather than live but it was very good nevertheless. We heard an Italian group playing the popular Vivaldi Lute concerto that was quite inspired. Plus lots of other good stuff.

On Saturday morning we Humbered out to the seaside at Wynnum and visited an English teahouse for brunch. Anne had a ploughman's lunch and I had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. I am something of a devotee of Yorkshire pudding but you have to get a good version of it. This version was OK. We went for a stroll along the esplanade afterward, which was pleasantly breezy.

On Sunday we attended a family gathering to celebrate Ken's birthday. It was held in a park beside the sea on the South Coast at Paradise Point. It is a very pleasant park. The gathering centred around a BBQ lunch. Anne and I brought along Cevapi for the BBQ, which went down well. I gave Ken a bottle of Tyrrell's Verdelho for a present. Ken and I of course had our usual long chat -- this time about abortion, guns and other serious stuff.

A much more active weekend than I usually have.

Joe Green and British cars

I had an unusually interesting weekend just past.

On Saturday afternoon, Anne rang and informed me that there was to be a performance of the Requiem by Joe Green (Giuseppe Verdi) at the metropolitical cathedral of St John here in Brisbane.





St John's is a magnificent Gothic revival church with soaring stone pillars and arches inside that give a brilliant sound to music performed there and it is in fact a popular concert venue when not being used for services. There is not much faith left in Anglican churches these days (about the only thing sacred to most western Anglicans these days seems to be homosexuality) but they sure own some magnificent buildings.

St John's is only 10 minutes drive from where I live so we went along to listen. I am not much into 19th century opera (opera for me stops at Mozart) and Verdi is of course an operatic composer so all I really know of his music is the famous arias. So I had never heard his Requiem before.

It turned out that St John's was a magnificent venue for it. It is the strangest Requiem you can imagine. There was nothing religious about it at all. The music was pure opera -- with lots of crashing and thundering and drama -- all of which came across splendidly in the vast stone cavern of St John's.

I enjoyed it but the contrast with the dignity and restraint of the Mozart requiem or the Brahms Deutsches Requiem was severe. Still, the most famous piece of religious music there is was written by an operatic composer -- Handel's Messiah -- so Verdi cannot really be criticized for his approach.

And on Sunday morning we went along to an "All British Day" -- a gathering of British made cars -- mostly old -- held in a local park. I of course drove my 1963 Humber Super Snipe and joined fellow owners of Rootes Group cars. Anne and I did however have quite a big wander around the many wonderful old cars that had emerged out of Brisbane garages for the occasion. There was a big old Jag and a Riley that I particularly admired but there were all sorts of rarities there. Most pleasing.