Pickled Gizzards

Today we had a visit from the security company technician, and long overdue despite several requests; though that’s not as simple as it sounds, and is certainly not a complaint.

As the first person into the house in weeks, his visit felt very threatening. The guy himself wasn’t threatening. He came well covered with a high grade mask, and stood very well back when talking to me. What I did feel threatening was that, although his visit was scheduled, and despite his company uniform and identifying badge, he was a total stranger, and in this time of isolation I felt very, very aware that this stranger might be carrying this dreadful virus right into our house. And yet, someone who is a friend or well known to us could also just as easily bring the virus into our house. We have to realise everyone is a threat, really.

I opened all the windows and had air passing through the house. I watched him the whole time and as he left I sprayed disinfectant onto every surface he touched, and I then totally washed my hands. And hours later, I still haven’t touched the paper customer copy of his worksheet he put on the coffee table for our record.

How times have changed – this person is possibly no more a Covid-19 carrier than I am, but, on the other hand, each of us must treat everyone we come across in such unavoidable ‘close’ situations as a potential threat. Life will never be the same again.

Keeping us informed and at times entertained, news channels are bustling to bring us the experts on everything they can about this poandemid as it moves along. We’re learning what is gradually becoming known of this new virus and made aware of how much no one knows. Experts on everything from virology, epidemiology, public health, critical care, behavioural psychology, political factors and social unrest, social groups, cultural influences, and of course, the financial costs of all of this, and the consequences and implications going forward as we emerge into the sunlight again. As we will.

People in most countries are at least 4 weeks into staying at home voluntarily for the common good or actually under strict government orders, lockdown or whatever other terms apply to this. Most who don’t have to leave the house to do essential work are only leaving going out for severely restricted purposes, only occasionally, and when we do we follow specific protocols, including wearing a mask or facial covering, maybe gloves, but at least maintaining 2-3m+ distance from the nearest person, using sanitising wipes or taking a small bottle of sanitiser in our pockets. Among those workers able to continue working at home, are many TV presenters and commentators we normally see in the studio.

This is a small sampling of what I’m finding really interesting. There’s an incredible variety of backgrounds to people now presenting and commenting from home. I’ve noticed some glorious coloured walls – saw a beautiful orange-red one last week with white bookshleves against it, and in another home a beautiful soft sightly greeny grey … behind someone else was an intriguing composition of corners and 4 doors in just a small part of a room, so interesting was it that I have no memory of what that person was talking about. I’ve noticed interesting textured walls, some nice arrangments of art or family photos, elegant decorative ornaments, collections of knick-knacks, and bookshelves packed with books in conditions ranging from orderly and neat to chaotic and crowded. And sometimes it’s clear some little people also inhabit the room at other times.

Sometimes the effect is absolutely not what glimpses I’d have expected to see of a familiar face’s personal space. Presumably if CNN or BBC ask you to be available to comment on one of their shows, they give some mimimal guidelines as to how to position your computer? How can you deal with home lighting which can be difficult? What should you wear if you this is new to you? Is there a policy on ‘props’ such as plants, and what to do with a position that is otherwise good but for a heap of unopened mail and general clutter in the background? (Does that just get swept off down onto the floor out of sight?)

As I sit and watch the evening news from now on, I’ll continue taking photos. I realise I’ve missed some good ones, but now I’ve focused on it, I feel there’s some art of some kind in this, and need to build up a reference file of aides memoires. … and wash your hands.

There’s a Facebook page currently attracting a lot of interest among people around the world currently isolating at home: View From My Window. People are posting pics taken from inside their homes. Some are very humble places, some look out onto other walls dotted with windows, some are of expansive, elevated, million dollar views. Many are attractive, many not very exciting and some awful, but together they add up to an interesting and unusual travelogue of sorts. Whether the page admin will get round to printing off the book mentioned some time in the future, doesn’t really matter; it’s just interesting how different the world can look depending on where you are.

Being confined to home is easier for us than it is for many people, as we have a small but leafy garden, so that from every window in our house the main colour we see out there is green. As it’s autumn, this is changing, but even when many trees are bare, there will still be some evergreens, with snatches of green lawns and nature strips, and most of the pots on the patio just outside this window (right) will still be green.

My favourite colour has always been green. Some of my favourite garments down the decades were green. The very first jumper I lknitted, aged 10, was a lovely citrus green chatreuse colour. The very best garment I ever made for myself was fine dark green wool, using a technically demanding Vogue Designer pattern – reckon I could still sketch it out… My favourite evening dress was fashioned from several metres of rich malachite green Italian satin with a 30cm band of eyelet embroidery along one selvedge that Mum and I bought in George’s, on a rare trip to her home city, Sydney. Mum’s dressmaker, Mrs Lucas, must have done well from the patronage of a family of three teenagers with busy social lives, followed by two of our weddings (the third was a little later and by then she had retired) She was brilliant and cut and designed as she went. She used this fabric wonderfully – I can remember every detail so clearly. It was an A-line with halter neck and the 30cm band of embroidery was around the hem. There was enough of the embroidery to fashion a simple edge-to-edge jacket with above-elbow sleeves. I would have been 19-20 when she made that, and could see no good reason to get a new one for my 21st birthday party, no matter that I’d worn it a bunch of times – we went to many black tie, formal balls in those days, and every young girl needed several long dresses. Greens suit me, and shades of green have always made me feel good.

Interestingly, however, relatively few of the many art quilts I’ve made down the years are very green. Given the way I work, with many little bits of fabric set into backgrounds, it’s true that many do include some greens, as strips set into backgrounds have long been part of my design process, a signature style. “Lilydale”, 1991, has only ever hung in exhibitions, though it would serve well as a bed quilt (except that I’ve never had the right kind of bedroom for it) It’s an early work in my Colour Memories series:

Next is a detail of “Time and Tide”, a 2018 piece showing how my work has changed over many years.

Late last year we had the downstairs rooms painted and ditched the heavy scrim curtains we hung in front of the windows when we moved in 15 years ago. At that time the front in particular was very open to the street, and passers by could look right in: and similarly out the back there was very little vegetation between the house and the garden wall. I t was lower than what is there now, and on the other side of that wall was an access laneway to what was an internal block. We felt we were living in a goldfish bowl, and those curtains were our defence. Removing them made the windows seem much bigger, and any time we choose we can lower new blinds without cutting out the light.

I  just breathed a sigh of relief when I read an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post by psychologist Dr. James Danckert- https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/17/boredom-social-distancing-quarantine/?arc404=true.

This afternoon I phoned friend to follow up a brief, worrying conversation we had a couple of days ago, that was cut off suddenly because her dogs’ vet was calling. We connected again this evening, and I was pleased to hear the dogs are doing better, she sounded better, and we talked about some of the stresses and worries in our lives – different for each of us, but all precipitated by the pandemic and the unknown future ahead of us all. We’ll have a driveway social gathering in the next few days, we on our folding chairs at the top of the drive, they in their car parked across our entrance just outside our front gate. In the meantime we’ll work out how to handle drinks and snacks so that no one touches anything – prolly BYO, – and chat for a while. It will do us all good.

When we went into self isolation over a month ago, despite having many interests I could enjoy at home, I went into a sort of slough. Suddenly across all my own news feeds was a proliferation of all kinds of stuff live streamed – we can tune into wonderful opera and concerts from symphonic to jazz, museum tours, regional travelogues, cooking, sewing and other needlework projects, art lessons, physical activity classes/sessions, gardening projects and much more – there’s an endless list of things people are putting forward to help keep all the isolated at home interested and occupied. I have wide cultural interests across performance art and music of all kinds, (high and low brow) a keen reader (fiction and non-, books, audio and kindle) and a multimedia textile artist. I write a couple of blogs. I play mahong, and love a night of cards.  Mike and I love having friends around for a barbie or dinner.  And I’ve never done so much deleting and scrolling in my life.

I have finished just a couple of books, and listened to most of a very long audio book, and read a lot of stuff on my kindle. Daily I read the several newspapers from Australia, USA and Uruguay, countries in which our family are located. I’ve started but not finished a couple of fairly minor textile art projects., like this one:

Unlike some of my book club or mahjong group friends, I haven’t tried out new recipes. I’ve hardly watched more movies than we normally did pre-pandemic, that is, about 2 per week. Late last year we did a whole lot of spring cleaning and turning out of cupboards, so I haven’t gone down that rabbit hole, either I’m not a gardener, so haven’t done what one of my sisters has:- she’s started winterising her garden.

Three weeks ago Mike bought a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle which now occupies half of the dining table, and he dips into it an hour or so at a time, several times a day.  In the 51 years we’ve been married, until he took this action, I never knew he used to make jigsaw puzzles when he was still a kid, and has always been interested in them.  That interesting information certainly explains/backgrounds some of his professional interests and aptitudes.

When I read these words from James Denckert today: “Maybe right now we can’t pursue all the things we normally find meaningful, but spending the time deliberately thinking about what matters most is never a bad thing. Then we can choose to act. The scope of what we do — learning a new language or just baking a cake — matters less than the fact that we are the ones doing the choosing” I felt very reassured. I’ve chosen to ditch some activities and focus on things that mean most to me, and it feels very good. Keep well and stay safe, everyone. And wash your hands!

We all know this sentence, but I thought that as I’ve often briefly wondered how anyone thought to write such a stupid thing, and never wondered why or how it became so widely known, that should look into it before mentioning it here. Don’t worry about why it popped into my head this morning – that could become clearer as you read on. Anyway, I decided I’d google it before writing anything about it, and became so engrossed I almost forgot what was on my mind when I began today’s post!

First, I learned that this sentence is a pangram. As often happens when you go to Wikipedia, I then wandered off on a trail of discovery, which you can follow, too, by getting out your own googler – you do have the time today I’m sure, as you’re most likely not going ‘out’ anywhere. You’ll come across references to early printing and computer technology, learn of testing various systems like morse code and flag signalling, typing speeds and more. You’ll learn of lipograms and analysing a pandammic lipogram. And there’s an ancient Chinese heiroglyphic 1000 character poen from the Song dynasty, known as the Thousand Character Text in which every character is used just once, which also makes very interesting reading.

We take all kinds of things for granted, and this quarantine we’re all caught up is producing the realisation of this reality, often with thoughtful comment, even confessions and promises of the “I must do gooder… ” nature (this sentence was a lines detention, written out 100 times on the blackboard by Nigel Molesworth as I remember in a wonderful cartoon from “The Compleet Molesworth” that Dad and Mum had. I would just love to get a copy of that book. Kids today would have absolutely no idea of what a detention is/was, and how frequently it was of laboriously writing out lines over and over many times, sometimes hundreds, on paper or the blackbroard. Ah, the memories …

You can find images of some of those cartoons on line, but apart from the generational culture gap, they’re all copyrighted, so I can’t reproduce one here. But anyway you have time to go and look at some of those brilliant drawings by Ronald Searle , and I really enjoyed this marvellous interview with him, aged 90, around 10 years ago – very revealing of the influences of the times and of his attitudes.

Now, where was I? Oh yes: last night as we finished our episode of a gripping series we’ve started watching on Netflix “Fauda”, the little routine of switching back to the TV wouldn’t work – we were stuck, and Mike determined the failure was due to the batteries in the controller were flat. We were going to bed, anyway.

Around mid morning Mike went out for the needed AAA batteries, and fitted them. We then found we could get visuals+sound, but couldn’t go where we wanted to be – which at that time of day was NOT the BBC news, but the music tv radio station for the day – (70s hits, beautifully playing upstairs) Downstairs the Cable TV/radio system was essentially totally messed up. I took command of the controller, switched it off for the 20 seconds that often works – with no change. Pressing seemingly every button on the unit, and going to the menu several times (different results each time) finally, finally, we got to the point that all systems work properly when you touch the relevant button.

Do I know how this happened? NO. Do I care? YES, only in so much as it means our listening and viewing enjoyment continues uninterrrupted at this difficult time.

Have a great day everyone, stay safe, and be patient. Mike has lunch ready out on the terrace = so I’m out of here for a(nother) wine and some vitttals 🙂

Well, the most exciting thing about the mystery food was the fact that it was a mystery waiting to be uncovered!

Mike bought a pack of them at the local sunday morning street market a few weeks ago. If I’d consulted him before I wrote yesterday’s post it wouldn’t have been half as interesting as a ‘mystery food package in our freezer’. There was no label on the package, so I haven’t worked out what they’re called, and will only be able to point if I see them again!

Today’s background music is hits from the 80s, and Xanadu (Olivia Newton John) that was playing when I tuned in. The backing sounded really like ELO and prolly was. One of the family music whizzes will probably confirm this. I Ioved their music. Aerosmith coming up …

We seem to have had a lot of cloud this autumn. Though humid, autumnal and dank, with intermitten flashes of sunlight, the weather’s meant to turn fine tomorrow and the weekend … but what does “weekend” mean these days? With Mike retired it had come to mean less of a change in activity and routine, certainly; but until The Plague forced us into seclusion, we tended to choose to do certain things on a saturday or a sunday, anyway.

For some years I have been playing mahjong with a group of expatriate women of a wide range of ages, from many different countries, here for different reasons. We currently have someone from UK, The Netherlands, Japan, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, South Africa, 2 from USA, and one Aussie. As people come and go the mix varies, and only one other person is still in the group who joined about the time I did. In real time we meet at someone’s home on thursday morning at 10.30, and over brunch have a general chat/catchup before settling in to play for 2-3 hours. We still meet at 10.30 am thursdays, but of course, for the duration of this isolation it is over Skype. We’re getting used to this now, and during this morning’s chat we found ourselves laughingly agreeing that the one main marker for the week for most of us is ‘Thursday, 10.30 am, mahjong”.

Everyone looked pretty well held together this morning, despite some weighty problems that surfaced in the conversation: someone desperately needs documentation for a job change and transfer to another country in a few months’ time, and another friend has family on the other side of the world, but can’t renew her passport and has had to accept that she just won’t be able to go if any one of several family members with health issues passes away. Someone commented: “In a way that might be easier than having to decide whether to stay or go – the decision has really been made, and you can’t go.” At least none of us is stuck like these poor passengers at the Indian railway station in Varanasi !

After hip surgery a few years back, I had the complication of a grave sepsis crisis followed by a lengthy convalescence. At that time I basically lost contact with, and any semblance of control over, the contents of the kitchen cupboards and freezer 🙂 Far from complaining, I’ve been very grateful that Mike is a good cook, and with him in retirement, we now share the cooking, which’s great.

As a result I occasionally find interesting things in the food cupboards that I know I never bought, or even would never buy, either – such as potato flakes, for instance. I grant you, they can be useful, but they’re not ‘me’. Another difference in how we handle things is that I often deliberately make enough of something to freeze a portion of it for the future.

So this morning I was thinking of tonight’s dinner, and while rummaging found two candidates. One was a clearly labelled roll of cooked pork belly stuffed with prunes and onions , and with baked veggies and some kind of apple sauce, I know it will be lovely. The other package I pulled out simply because I didn’t recognise it. The plastic around it has nothing written or printed on it, but suggests that two or three pieces of whatever the breaded shapes are have already been used.

The uniformity of these ‘things’ suggests commercially prepared chicken kiev. If true, those would also be lovely hot with some nice veggies, or cooked and eaten cold with salad – if that is what they are!!!! They’re still frozen solid so I can’t detect any identifying smell yet … but when Mike comes downstairs in a while he might cast some light on these mystery things. If either of us have reservations, we’ll chuck them out, I promise! But either way, I’ve got dinner tonight covered, and maybe tomorrow’s too !