aka feathers

Miss Puss does look as if she’s up to something a bit, uh, kinky in this photo. Actually, her only intention here is to beat the stuffing out of her toy. Despite being the sweetest-looking little kitty-cat with soft fur and also being very tiny, she is the roughest, toughest cat with the baddest attitude I think I’ve ever had. I think it’s probably because she was a street kitten. Brought up in the wilds of Bega and having to take care of herself, she learned to scratch and swipe with the best of them.

She is also (to my dismay) the most prolific hunter I’ve ever owned. Fortunately we have a cat bib, which is working brilliantly. Without the bib she was known to catch up to 2 birds a day. With the bib on, (and she’s had to wear it whenever she’s outdoors for weeks now) she has only caught one bird. She knows she’s not allowed outside without her bib. Poss’s theory about Miss Puss and her hunting skills is that cats who have to hunt for a living (as we belive Miss Puss once did) have the added edge of desperation, and will leap at prey with their mouths open go in GO IN! I need food!

Miss Puss’s small size would also attest to the resurgence in a somewhat Lamarckian field of study which seems to indicate that some acquired traits can be handed down from generation to generation. The study was done in the Netherlands where a group of pregnant women who were starved during an incident in WWII gave birth. Their children were (understandably) of low birth weight because of the hard times the mothers had been through. The thing is, in the 1960s, when these daughters were having children, they also were of low birth weight. And then in the 80s, the same thing happened again with the grandchildren of the original low birthweight daughters. I’m not sure what happened in the following generation, they never got to that in the radio show I was listening to (and I can’t remember if it was The Science Show or The Health Report on ABC Radio Australia) but it was very interesting.

More cheek is the Fat Cat who has two favourite places to sleep: clean laundry and anywhere black. As you can see, he is more of a white cat with some ginger than a ginger cat with white on him. He’s a classic A-spectrum cat with lush fur and a generous girth and he has RADAR whenever there’s clean laundry about. Okay, I know it’s partly my laziness. First of all: I don’t iron. I really don’t. I don’t mean “I hardly ever iron” or “I only iron once a week” or “I only iron when I need to” I mean I just don’t. My theory is that by the time I’ve worn something in the car to wherever I’m going, it will be full of creases anyway, so who’s going to know? Okay. I know. There are some things that you can tell, but I just don’t care all that much. I don’t notice it. I figure it’s enough that it’s clean.

So anyway, when I bring a load of laundry in off the line, I generally dump it on the bed. This way I will be forced to put it away before I can sleep (because I couldn’t stand to have one thing on the bed, not even a sock. It would drive me nuts.) Maybe the Fat Cat can smell the fresh breeze and warm sunshine in clean laundry and that’s what brings him to come and sleep on it. I don’t blame him. I love the smell of it, too.

Conversely, the Fat Cat’s mortal enemy, Mr Black, loves to sleep on white stuff. Is this some sort of cat-conspiracy, that cats must only shed their fur on contrasting colours? I am currently knitting a free-range baby blankie (it’s free-range because I’m not sure who it’s intended for. It was originally going to be for one of Beloved’s workmates, but she’s gone and had her baby and I didn’t get it finished. So I’ll just have a spare). This blankie is a mostly pinkish pastels with a second ball of dark pink for contrast. You can imagine how great that looks, covered in cat fur. Fortunately my theory with baby blankies is that they should be made of bright, colourful, easy-to-wash acrylics, because the last thing any new parent needs is to be worried about hand-washing some special blankie that’s made of pure virgin lambswool. I’ll give this one a wash when it’s finished and hopefully nobody will be any the wiser (sssh).

This is my third cheeky thing of the day. Not just cheeky but ironic. A spider that builds its web on the open mouth of a pitcher plant, thus depriving the poor plant. Very cheeky, Mr Spider.

I do like my carnivorous plants. I have a collection of Venus Fly Traps on the kitchen window sill and I rotate them to the verandah outside the bedroom when they start to look a bit tired or go into their dormancy. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t. I’m always delighted when they do. As a kid I regularly bought and killed Venus Fly traps. although perhaps if I’d known better I might have just left them for a year and they might have come back.

I only keep the pitcher plants outdoors. They don’t seem to enjoy it at all inside. I have some short, fat ones like the one in the picture, and some long, skinny ones. One of the long skinnies made a flower at the start of summer. That flower is still there. I’m quite amazed with its longevity. The long skinnies have also caught a lot of stuff over the summer. Not sure what because it’s hard to see down their long, skinny necks, but I’m told they’re partial to European wasps, so that’s fine with me.

I also have some Sundews on the verandah. I never bought them, they’ve just hitched along with the Venus Fly Traps and been quite happy to live alongside. They have long leaves, different from the round leafed little Droseras that I sometimes find in my back yard. I am tempted to dig some of the little native ones up and add them to my collection. There’s something cute about carnivorous plants. They have a personality. They don’t even seem to mind when cheeky spiders do them out of a meal. Maybe they have that planty patience, maybe they know that if they wait long enough, that spider will someday slip to where no web can save it.

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I have never loved coffee.

I have never even really liked coffee, though I did go through a phase of drinking cup after cup of thin, bitter instant coffee during my working day. No sooner was my cup empty than I would get up and head for the kitchen and boil the jug for another cup. No milk. No sugar, just the thin, awful coffee. I did it because I thought it was a cool and clever thing to do.

These days I’ll often have a cup of tea beside me, and at night Beloved and I will often make each other a cup of milk coffee (half a teaspoon of instant is all I care for) put it in the mug and, well, this is why we really have microwaves, isn’t it? If someone offers me a hot drink at their place I seldom risk tea because I’m so fussy about it. Instead I will ask for coffee ‘weak, white and one’. Usually I don’t drink it because it will still be too strong and bitter for my liking.

Nevertheless coffee has always been a part of my life.

My family lived as an extended unit, in Nana’s house, until I was 10. Nana had an old gas Kooka stove, something like the one these ladies are using in the picture. It was green. I only ever remember Nana and Mum making cups of tea. Our kettle was different from the one the lady in the picture is holding. Ours didn’t whistle, it had a long, curved spout and sang and hissed and sputtered when its water boiled, threatening to put out the little gas flame and kill us all.

When we moved, Mum and Dad got an electric jug. I don’t know anything about its history, but it was a great, heavy ceramic monster that didn’t whistle or turn itself off when its water boiled, just sputtered and burped boiling water all over the bench, threatening to scald and then electrocute whoever was making the tea.

They also got a percolator. It wasn’t electric, but sat on the stovetop and bubbled away over breakfast, making their mornings all bitter and speedy. Percolators also make me think of a really stupid old TV commercial from the 70s. I cannot begin to imagine what possessed Dame Zara Bate to do one of those chatty “to the camera” ads where she insisted that whatever brand of instant coffee she was flogging was as good as percolated (a highly subjective call, since I prefer instant, but let’s not push it). She said she would put the instant into her percolator and then sat there giggling and saying ‘perk, perk, perk’ – honestly, this lady had been married to a prime minister. Did she really need to resort to instant coffee? – and then all her friends would be so impressed because she was making “real” percolated coffee. All I can think is that the mysterious disappearance of her husband, Harold Holt, who was Prime Minister at the time, had all been too much for her, and it had sent her just a little bit dotty. (I am assuming this, also, on account of surely it was she who gave permission for a swimming pool to be named in his memory. All very well, the man did love to swim, but a tad ironic, considering he disappeared while on a swim.)

So, Mum and Dad and coffee in the morning. I would sometimes help by grinding the beans for Mum with one of those little hand-wound mills a bit like the one in the picture. Later, though, they started having mills in the supermarket. You would choose your blend, choose how fine you wanted it ground, empty the beans in, place the bag under the grinder, and Bob was the proverbial parental sibling. I tried to like coffee, I really did. I tried it black and except for that time when I was working, well, I really didn’t like it. In milk, okay, but I have it so weak, it’s only the milk I can taste. I just eat the foam off the top of cappuccinos, and I just stir lattes and play with the sugar packets.

Beloved, on the other hand, is a bit of a coffee desperate. His life, like Kathryn Janeway’s, is a quest for the great coffee. He admits that when he was studying, he used to chain-drink coffee. Unlike me, he probably did this because he actually liked it.

He had a percolator, much like Mum and Dad’s but said it made the coffee a bit bitter (a bit???) so he got himself one of those little aluminium octagonal pots that you always see in the Italian delis. It became his constant companion, so much so that he got a second pot to take when we went camping, and later I got him a tiny pot so that he could take it when he went on trips on the bike, and even for bushwalking.

I got one of those dripolator/filter things from a second hand shop. You put the coffee into the disposable filter paper and the water into the reservior. Plug it in and turn it on. As the water heats up, it drips through the coffee and into the jug. Very handy thing to have at parties, because it basically looks after itself, just has to be freshened up when all the coffee’s gone. Beloved was never a big fan of this. I think it just didn’t make the coffee strong enough for his liking. He also has a number of mini-versions of the dripolator. Little things with grids on the bottom. You put the coffee in, sit it on top of your cup, pour in the water and wait for gravity to work its magic. Oh, and the plungers, too. Big ones and little ones. Again, they fill our cupboards, but seldom get used.

When Beloved first became obsessive about hsi coffee, he bought this. I’m not sure what its real name is, we’ve always called it the coffee siphon (although “George” would have been a good name, too). You put hot water in the bottom jug and coffee in the top jug. You can see that it’s sitting on an odd metal plate, but that’s because our stove is convection and convection doesn’t work on glass, the plate heats up the water though.

The water goes up the pipe and bubbles into the coffee. When it’s all gone up, you turn off the heat, and it sucks back down again into the bottom jug, so it gets filtered through the coffee twice. It’s much gentler than regular percolation, and I can almost drink this coffee (almost).

Of course it’s all about the beans and Beloved has found this nice little place in Balaklava that does its own roasting. They send the beans nice and quick (and a nice mango sencha for me). Many’s the morning we’ve had the parcel man at the front door just in time for breakfast.

Beloved would love to have one of those magnificent Gaggia machines that cost thousands of dollars and take up half the kitchen, steaming and hissing and roaring like a steam engine. We’ve had a couple of espresso machines, but both have died. One died just in time for Beloved to need to buy another one for the new kitchen. He did his research and got a machine that he was very happy with. It was loud, though. Such a noise first thing in the morning, the hiss and scream of it. It died a few months ago. He still hasn’t been able to replace the part that carked it.

So what did I get him for Christmas?

A new coffee machine, of course. This is an elegant thing. I bought it from a wonderful coffee shop in the Queen Victoria Market. I thought it was called a French Press, but apparently that’s just another name for the things we call plungers. No, this one is pure USA. Clever people those Americans.

You put the coffee into the grip, just like with a normal espresso machine, and you put hot water into the clear bit on top. You raise the two wing-like handles and leave it for a few seconds to soak into the coffee. Then you press the handles down, which forces the water through the coffee. Basically, it’s a manual espresso machine.

I love the elegant lines of it and the serenity of its silence. The only noise in the morning now is the scream of the grinder (or, as we like to call it, “the Poss Signal” since if she is within hearing range of the coffee grinder, Poss will appear like magic, cup in hand, and insist on being given the first coffee.)

It was a good gift, though.

Poss, like her dad, is a coffee drinker. Radio Boy is more like me. Not that interested in coffee, but will drink tea or herbal tea.

So that’s our morning. The scream of the beans grinding, our kettle, which doesn’t sing or whistle or sputter and has 5 different settings, depending on how hot you want your water, and beeps politely when it’s ready.

There’s so much quiet now.

BF’s parents bought him an espresso machine for his birthday last year. I suppose it’s just as well. He and Poss will be making their own coffee soon, as he has bought a house for them.

Life goes on. Another generation of coffee.

I think I’ll go make myself a cup of tea.

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For a little while last week I was almost feeling organised. I put a diary here on the desk and started making my lists and ticking them off as I achieved each objective. You know. World changing stuff: hang out laundry. Bring in laundry. Research poem. Go to the gym. Let’s just say there’s not a whole lot of structure in my life, and trying to get things done on the kitchen table is confronting for me. The high point of my life was in about grade 2, when I had the inside of my desk so neatly arranged that I didn’t have to lift the lid in order to pick out which of the six identical exercise books I needed for the next lesson. I mean, it just made sense to me that my English book (fun) should be kept on top of the stack, and my maths book (yukkie) should be kept on the bottom. And that the dictionary (small) belonged at the top, where it was neatest, and the atlas (biggest) belonged at the bottom where it could support all of the rest.

Neatness and order. That’s what I’m trying to do with my life at the moment. And the pantry and loft are all coming into line at the moment.

I painted an undercoat onto the loft stairs during the week, so that they would be ready to go in on the weekend. Beloved’s leg and back are still playing him up a bit, but he soldiered on like a brave little Vegemite, and it got done. There was some exasperation as we had to put the stairs up, measure a bit, take them down, cut a bit, put them up a bit, swear somewhat (Beloved’s secret ingredient to all household chores) cut a little bit more, and put them up again.

Here, though, finally, is a view of the stairs in place in the loft. They are bolted in and ready for the first person to walk up them and into the exaulted storage space above.

I said Beloved should go first because he had dome all of the work. He said I should go first because I was lighter. This absolutely floored me. I was lighter. And it’s true! Not by much, but for the first time in many years I am actually lighter than Beloved. Now impressive as this sounds, bear in mind that he’s 185cm tall (6’1″) and 10kgs overweight according to the doctor, and I am 160cm tall (5’3″). But no! Less is less and I weigh ever so slightly less than does Beloved and he let me be first to go up the new stairs. It was massively exciting, even though I left dirty footprints on my white undercoat. Oh well. I’ll be painting over that soon enough, so not to worry. In this first photo I am standing in the (now removed) doorway that backs into the bedroom. I couldn’t get any further back because I’m against a wall. This part of the bedroom was once a hallway. Eventually this doorway will be filled in with a bookcase so that we can have a “secret” entrance to our hidey hole of a loft.

So here I am, looking down into the pantry. As you can see, we still have only half a floor in the loft, so it’s a little scary if you’ve got a tendency to vertigo, but when it’s all filled in it won’t be a problem.

I know I had that big rave about neatness and order before, and as you can see, there isn’t a whole lot of it in the pantry. Okay, stuff has been pushed out of the way while work goes on for the day, but things like the flour box and freezer are a source of constant annoyance. Not because there’s anything wrong with either of them, but because they serve as temporary storage space for the porridge oats, the cake box, the muffin/fairy cake carrier, and the metal shelf thingy that used to live in my locker at work. Now, every time I want to get some flour or rice out of the flour box, they get moved onto the freezer, and every time I need something out of the freezer, they get moved back onto the flour box. This happens at least once a day in each direction and it doesn’t fit in with my view of how the world ought to work.

And here it is. The loft. It’s just a little bit on the junky side at the moment. A lot of what’s in those boxes belongs to Radio Boy who says he needs it, but I reckon if I got rid of it he’d never even notice. I could donate the books to the local hospital, give the sick kids something to read while they get better.

The mattress and base and bed head were Radio Boy’s too. He doesn’t need them any more since he bought himself a nice queensize set when he moved to Bega. Someday, when we have the room space, we will probably use these as a spare bed. Who knows. Maybe someday we’ll have a grandchild sleeping on that mattress. Poss’s old single bed mattress is there too. The bed (one of those nifty bunk/desk/shelf arrangements) has a new home now, and like I said, maybe someday there will be a grandchild who comes to stay and sleep on dad’s/mum’s uncle’s/aunty’s old bed. Am I turning into a cluck? The other thing, right in the middle there, is my Fowler’s Vacola canning kit. Been ages since I’ve done stuff in that, but one year I made the most brilliant mango chutney. Looking forward to the day when I have the storage space to do that again. Down the the Queen Vic market for a box of mangoes. Yummy.

I’ll have to do a blog on the market one of these days. It’s a fabulous place. Beloved and I used to shop there regularly when we were first together. Going in on a Saturday morning with the backpack on and stocking up on fruit and veggies.

I hadn’t been there for ages, but since I was there just before Christmas, I  spent a day there and it was even more fabulous than it used to be. I bought Beloved the most amazing coffee machine (will have to do a blog on that, too) and had a good wander round all of the shops.

Aside from anything else, the market has a mysterious and spooky history. It was the place of Melbourne’s original general cemetery. When the market took over, some of the graves were opened and their contents moved. Some. Not all. Headstones were moved, but beneath  the carpark are the remains of a good many of Melbourne’s early citizens.

It didn’t feel at all spooky on the fine day in December when I was there, though.

The next step in the loft and pantry story was to box the stairs in. Don’t want any gaps showing since Poss and BF use that bedroom (the one behind me in the photo, so you can’t actually see it). Also stops the cats from sneaking in.

Don’t look too closely at the paint job. In the end I will paint it all black so that it merges into the dark and spooky heights of the loft. Yeah. Spooky. I mean, what’s the point of having a loft unless it’s just  little bit on the spooky side?

Spooky? Yeah. That’s what I want. And just to show you what I mean, here are a couple more hints. These cobwebs are just part of our life here, living with very high ceilings and open beams, and a person (me) who is disinclined towards housework. As I read in a cross-stitch pattern this morning “if a woman’s work is never done, why bother starting?” That’s a profound thought that I am tempted to turn into a personal credo. Besides, if you sweep down cobwebs then your hair gets all dusty and cobwebby. I am more of the school of thought that says “if I chuck a handful of glitter into it I can call it a decoration.”

The other spooky moment came when I took this photo of Sophie. Now I know there are those who insist that orbs are nothing but artefac. That they’re all about light reflecting off the lens or dust in the air or dud pixels not processing properly or something else that sounds plausible and sensible and frankly quite boring, but I like to think they’re just a little bit spooky, so I was pleased when I took this photo of Sophie during the work on Saturday, and found this orb hovering over her. Nice one Soph. If anyone’s going to communicate with orbs, it’s that old grimalkin.

On Sunday we bought the final bits of flooring for the loft. They haven’t been installed yet, mainly because Sunday was hot and the loft gets really hot. Instead, we did a bit of work cleaning out the pool, which should be ready for swimming in about March, when the weather turns cold again. Oh well. So my plans for spending part of today putting Christmas into its own corner of the loft have been somewhat stymied, but that’s okay. It’s beginning to look like a real possibility now, instead of just one of those wonderful fantasies I tell myself as I’m falling asleep.

And this is what the pantry looks like, now that the staircase is in place and boxed in. I’m not sure if I’ll paint this side of it black or white. I’m thinking white, as black might be a bit heavy and make the space look too small.

Not sure what I’ll put on the side, but I have decided that the sloping bottom of the staircase could be a very good place to put in some hooks for hanging up herbs for drying.

In its position over the freezer, it’s nicely out of the way. Not even Beloved (who is notorious for banging his head on stuff) has banged his head on the stairs.

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