I blame masterchef

... for the decision last night, after I had come home from a meeting at the school about Wilderness Week in December, to help Joel make gnocchi. He said he was going to cook while I was at the meeting (Paul was out), but I think he slightly underestimated the time it takes to boil potatoes and knead dough, etc., and hadn't actually started when I got home at 8.00. Anyway, we had a great deal of fun, made a great deal of mess, and made a couple of discoveries. First: you don't want to make the gnocchi too big, or they become a bit too solid. Our gnocchi were getting bigger and bigger, and I explained to Joel that scribes often wrote in larger handwriting at the bottom of the page (oh dear: not letting that teaching moment go by!). And second: that we are not immune to the influence of this most-watched television programme.

We didn't watch it all the way through, but we certainly watched the final. We now give instructions to each other about "plating up", and like other annoying television watchers all over the country, give "positive criticism" to each other's cooking. Hilarious.

Mind you, there was a lot of guff written and said about the popularity of this programme, and the way it provided wholesome, family entertainment all could enjoy, when obviously the main points to make were

1. it brought families together around the television, not the dinner table
2. the real fun was the thrill of schadenfreude: whose sorbet is grainy; whose pie crust has collapsed; whose fish is not cooked.
3. it still encouraged the reality tv horror of encouraging us to like and dislike people on superficial grounds (Chris's stupid hat; Poh's beautiful pink cheeks; Julie's tears).
   

The great irony is that in Wilderness Week, the year 9 kids all head off to various hiking and camping trips for a week. Joel's five day trip to Wilson's Promontory (sleeping in tents at Tidal River and doing their own cooking, with three big day hikes) is one of the lighter treks. One of the mothers was ascertaining there'd be fresh water so the kids could soak chick peas during the day. Joel's friend's mother and I just looked at each other. But maybe after masterchef, they'll all be making gnocchi down there. Actually, that reminds me of a lovely thing I learned in Italian class: gnocchi is of course a plural, but if you want to tease someone, like calling them a noodle, you can call them a gnoccho.

And what do I want to learn now? I want to learn how to temper chocolate. But even just saying the phrase is a good deal of the fun here.

Perry's stopped at the red

So, we get off the subway and were walking back to our apartment this afternoon, and a block from our front door we walk past the stage door to the Letterman Show. We have seriously been thinking of going: they tape in the afternoon, then you watch yourself on TV that night, apparently.

Anyway, there were crowds of folk, and photographers, and big black cars. J and I are on one side of the street; P with his big camera lining up with all the others, looking very professional.

And who should come out, but Matthew Perry from Friends. AND ... I recognise him! He looks around briefly, and I observe a neat jacket and rather a lot of hair (I saw an ad the other day for some kind of hair-thickener that coats your hair with texture, a bit like fuzzy iron filings: all the stars use it, apparently!). There's a riotous click of cameras, and he's off, closely followed by a small blonde woman who we hear is on the new series of 24. The convoy of cars pulls away, and things start to quieten down, and then we see two big men with big sheets of paper (for autographs?) calling, "Quick! Perry's stopped at the red," and they race off. We say, but already I know we won't, that we'll walk past every day at 5.30 to see who's in town.

Out of the mouth of the teenager

We had just watched an episode mid-way through the last season of Six Feet Under, in which David and Keith were struggling with their two new adopted children. Joel said, "Which do you think is harder? Growing up? or bringing up a family?"

Damn good question, I say. And of course, the two things are probably related, in that the way we bring up children has got lots to do with the way we were brought up, and our own experience of growing up. All those unarticulated dramas and memories that bubble along behind the day to day chaos of holding family life together.

This has been a great series. We are watching it on DVD and while I sometimes recoil at the Language - Sex - Drugs nexus, on Joel's behalf, it's been a great study in character, in family and in excess of various kinds, as nearly all the characters spiral up and down in hope and despair. And almost anything is better than watching commercial television.

And anything that triggers that kind of question can't be all bad, I think.

Ribbons of nutritiousness

Caught the ABC's doco about parrots last night (trying to fill the void left by the end of Robin Hood). Loved its cinematography: clouds of birds wheeling and turning en masse, and brilliant landscapes, whether desert, rainforest or snow slopes. Truly, spectacular camera work. But the commentary was pretty dire: uninformative and excessively anthropomorphic. I can't see why we need to hear about birds having dinner dates, etc. Worst of all was the over-writing, viz. "Ribbons of nutritiousness snaking across the continent" or some such.

But then, this is a nation that has just given TV Logie awards to the horrendously misogynistic AFL Footy Show and the appalling Bindi Irwin, so I can't claim to be with the mainstream here.

Man in the Moon

In our new upstairs bedroom, cunningly built into the old roof space, there are several windows that don't have any curtains or blinds on them yet, so we wake very early. It's a little easier, now that daylight saving has begun, but still extraordinary to wake in bright daylight around 6.00 am, after the relative gloom of the old downstairs room. I guess we'll put blinds or something up at some stage, but for the moment, I'm revelling in the pure bright light of spring, flooding one half of the room very early in the morning. I can lie there and look out at the chimney pots and tree tops and the enormous Norfolk pine two doors down.

But this morning I woke in a little alarm, feeling someone was watching me. It was about 4.00 a.m., well before sunrise, except for a bright moon, just on the turn to gibbous, shining directly onto the bed. I looked up, and for the first time, I think, could really see the man's face watching. It was too uncanny to dwell on, so I just went back to sleep, but the vision stayed with me all day, reminding me of the beautiful moons we had seen in the desert.

I mentioned it to a friend at work and he started musing about how lovely it would be if our planet had more than one moon. I mentioned that trashy movie Stargate, with its vaguely Egyptian styling, and the three moons that fell into position for some significant thing or other. He confessed he had even watched the trashy TV series, and, emboldened, I admitted I was watching Idol. But we all have our weaknesses, and this wasn't one of his, so we couldn't have a proper Idol conversation. But if you are watching, you might want to check out blandcanyon for a hilarious running account of each show. Brilliant.