Blue and brown

The young man is better, I'm glad to say, and has gone off to Chinatown for his customary Saturday lunch with friends, since he hardly saw them all week.

But Paul and I are both struggling with colds of various degrees. I'm not too bad, but he and I kept each other awake last night with a barking cough.

I struggled to Italian class this morning, and made a few neighbourhood stops on the way home, so our lunch was a ball of burrata mozzarella (with gorgonzola also inside), on fresh Dench grain bread, drizzled with porcini oil. Unbelievably delicious.

I feel ok now and am doing chores on the computer. Behind me, Paul is stretched out on the couch with a pillow, a blue mohair blanket and two burmese kittens. I'd love to post a picture, but the ipod is playing and I don't want to wake him up. It's on "shuffle" so we are jumping from jazz to Leonard Cohen and girly pop songs and retro 70s and 80s pop and lots of Beethoven and Sibelius. Something rather personal about him lying sleeping/listening to my mix, which desperately needs updating, except that my laptop is too old to use the current iTunes.

The heater's on. My three brown cats (one wearing a big brown jumper) are asleep. The sky is wintry pale blue, though at mid-afternoon the shadows are already long and the sunshine weakening.

I ploughed through a huge pile of emails and chores yesterday, and just as soon as I finish these grant assessments, I'll be ready to write a talk for Thursday and finish polishing my Langland talk to send off.

Health and sickness. Winter and sun. Blue and brown.

Nasty combinations

One. A lingering cough with a bruised rib after skidding off my bike at the weekend (on the bike path, just changing direction too quickly over wet leaves). Everytime I sneeze I yelp in surprise; everytime I cough I groan.

Two. Renato the dentist's scrupulous cleaning of my teeth with a windy day and a blocked nose. Riding the streets of Melbourne with the wind whistling through my scraped gums a mild kind of agony.

Three. The University's impossible demands of our essay marking: a tightly regulated bell curve of grade distribution, an inflexible average, a finely tuned characterisation of the standards of each grade, combined with an insistence on including in the averages those students who never turned up to class and never bothered to withdraw. Statistical hell for my two wonderful tutors who valiantly battled to do right by the students and the system today.

You know it's really too hot to ride home when ...

... the water in your water bottle is almost too hot to drink.

It was not too bad when I left the house this morning, but after three hours of intensive Italian (sono nel livello quatro, ma forse questa classe e troppo difficile per me), the temperature had soared. In at the office, someone had sensibly turned off most of the lights in the corridors, so it wasn't too bad. I did a few emails, started some desultory filing, booked a ticket to Perth, filled out a bunch of travel forms, then rode home, very slowly.

When I got home, I felt a bit weak. After all it was 42 degrees out there (now 43). I had something to eat, then drank a couple of litres of water to replace the fluid I'd lost.

Now, a little Italian homework for tomorrow, then back to my paper for Wollongong. I finding myself running this very elaborate argument that the medievalism in Australian parliaments helps to define Australian notions of modernity. I might try and post a bit of this work soon, but I have to finish by Friday, so I can fly up to Sydney on Saturday morning.

The house is feeling quite schizophrenic. Downstairs and in the front, the rooms with brick walls are still pretty cool, because although it's been warm, it's not been ferociously hot till today, but upstairs and out in the back added-on sections, which are made of wood, it's downright steamy. It's going to be a hot night (maybe getting down only to 30), so no one in Melbourne will get much sleep tonight; and then the change will come through early afternoon. And then the back sections will cool down very quickly, while the front of the house will seem warm and stuffy by comparison.

Our household is so lucky we have me to police the strategic opening and closing of doors and windows.

Update: At midnight, it was still 36... hottest night on record in Melbourne, apparently.

Food, Glorious

As predicted, a tremendous storm hit Melbourne early into our party. Undaunted, the musicians played on; the revellers kept revelling; and the little old cat Mima came inside and sprawled flat out in the middle of the area where people were serving themselves dinner from the buffet table. A shame it was really too wet to be outside for much of the evening, but so lovely, in many cases, to see people we hadn't seen for a while. The teenagers went out into the rain, of course, and came in soaked to the skin. The children explored the house (it's a mixture of very old and run-down; and architect-clever ingenious spaces), and carried the cat around a bit. For all her great age, she quite likes a party, ever since Pavlov's Cat let her play with her Christmas earrings when she was a baby. People brought food, wine, and friends; we cooked up a storm; and at one point I went around opening as many windows as I could, to let the cool air in. People drifted over to the sink, and washed or dried a load of dishes. At midnight, we lit sparklers and ate lollies.

Paul's parents were fabulous, as usual: washing dishes, and going around talking to as many people as they could. Our dear friends and neighbours, whose boys were part of the band, stayed on cleaning up and helping us with the preliminary party de-brief, but by 2.30 we were in bed. One of the girls' parents (obviously a younger generation than ours) didn't come to pick her up till after that... Joel had a few other friends stay over.

We woke late — bliss! — and did a bit more cleaning up, before Paul grilled some scallops with bocconcini, haloumi and grilled peppers, which we washed down with a wonderful Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc someone had brought along (thank you!), before we found some enormous creamy oysters in the back of the fridge that also needed to be eaten today. And the tira-mi-su was possibly even better, two days after making. During this late luxurious lunch, Mima appeared: she'd had the longest sleep-in of all of us. After all that, I am going to head out for a big ride on the bike soon...

But in the meantime, as per Meredith's request, Oyster Pies. This is a recipe from Maggie Beer that appeared in the Australian in September 2000. I cut the page out, and periodically lose and find it again. The pastry is wonderful: easy to make; very delicate but good to handle, as you can roll it reasonably thick, and it still becomes very light and buttery to eat.

Leek and Oyster Pies - my annotations in red

12 young leeks, cleaned, cut into 5 mm slices (but I've also used onions)
butter
sea salt & freshly ground butter
125 ml champagne (but who's going to measure that? I've also used a dry white)
100 ml cream & an extra dash of cream
30 large Pacific oysters - this means big fat creamy Tasmanian ones, I reckon, not Sydney rocks oysters.
1 egg

Sour Cream Pastry

200 g chilled unsalted butter, diced small
250 g plain flour
125 ml sour cream

Pastry: process butter and flour until mix resembles breadcrumbs. Add sour cream and pulse until the dough has just incorporated into a ball. Wrap in plastic film and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes. Roll out dough and line moulds, then cut out lids slightly larger than moulds. Chill for 20 minutes.

I have a tray of 24 little moulds with straight sides,  3-4 cm in diameter? definitely worth the investment: great for mini-muffins, etc. 

Sweat leeks in butter until soft, then season. Deglaze the pan with champagne and reduce the liquor. Add 100 ml cream and reduce a little more. Allow to cool. Chop oysters in halves or thirds. Put a spoonful of leek mix into each pie mould, then add oyster and cover with a little leek. Position lids and seal carefully (I use the beaten egg for this, but also pinch the pastry, and make sure the lid doesn't stick to the mould anywhere: otherwise the lids will come off when you take them out). Chill for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 220 degrees C. Beat egg and add the extra cream, then brush over pie lids. Cook pies until golden, about 15 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin before turning out and serving. Makes 30.

Excellent with champagne, but I reckon they'd also be good with stout. Fiddly to make, but absolutely delicious. The pastry's very good for other things, too. Happy cooking!

New Year's Eve

Pavlov's Cat has a To Do list for this very hot New Year's Eve in south-eastern Australia. Top of her list is "Pull oneself together," which made me laugh.

Things aren't quite that bad over this-a-way, but my list is not dissimilar.

I've made one batch of oyster pies; one more to go. Last night I made a crab mousse, a summer pudding and an enormous dish of tira-mi-su. Paul is cooking up an absolute storm: just keeps coming up with one amazing-sounding dish after another. This afternoon I'll be rolling bits of bacon around prunes for devils on horseback, and providing cold drinks to the "band" practice: bass, lead guitar, drums and J on keyboards. They know each other pretty well, and some of them have played and jammed with some of the others before in school and other groups; and the drummer has already cut his first CD with another band. Even if it's a little rough around ththe edges, it'll be so nice to have live music.

We've been doing a new year's eve party for ten years now (though we skipped during the summer of radiotherapy in 2006). We have it pretty much down to a fine art. The tables and plates and glasses are all out; lights are being hung around the garden, and I'll float little candles in the fishpond so long as the howling winds don't make it impossible. It's 34 already, and they are predicting 38 in Melbourne before a change comes through with thunderstorms. So we might end up inside.

OK, back to the kitchen; and cleaning up the laundry: somehow I don't think I'm going to get to the ironing today.

And... a Happy New Year to all.

The mortality of elm trees

I don't know if we'd plant them now, in this era of climate change and the move away from European "exotic" plantings, but in the front of our house, there are several "stands" of elm trees. They are probably over a hundred years old. Like other elms in Melbourne, they are part of an ageing population. They also have regular infestations of elm-leaf beetle, and so every few years we have them injected with stuff that kills the beetles. Last year we left it rather late, and so by midsummer, when the air was burning, our normally dark green canopy was riddled with lacy holes in the desiccated leaves. It was a sad and grim sight, but we trusted that the next season, our trees would recover.



(Not my photo, but this is what the leaves looked like.)

This week I've seen elms elsewhere in Melbourne coming into bright green leaf, while ours remain bare. They normally produce millions of flaky dry seeds that fall all over the car and the roof and the paths. We were starting to fear our trees would not make it; that somehow the drought and the extreme temperatures of last summer and the beetles might have combined to bring about their end. It was dreadful to contemplate: presiding over the death of these magnificent creatures. The house itself was starting to feel denuded; the bare trunks and branches a sign of our shame.

You can tell from the tenses in that paragraph that I haven't given up all hope yet. Today was warm and beautiful, and I can now see little buds and tiny flashes of delicate green leaves. Don't know what's happened to the seeds, but it looks as if our beautiful trees might be ok.

This is not my photo either, and not our trees, but this picture shows you how beautifully these trees sit in Melbourne's European style parks. Read about Melbourne's elms here.

Reasons not to be cheerful

• We lost the Ashes
• Essendon lost to Fremantle
  
• It is a little rainy today, but so windy the rain is not sticking around long enough to make any impact on the garden or the tanks
• Chapter Five is horrible
  

Domesticity

Such an odd thing. After two months of apartment living, using the loathsome dryer, or draping clothes from hangers and on the tops of doors and benches, and after months of drought, I've just had to run outside and bring a load of washing in off the line. The rain isn't heavy, but I bet after all the dust and dryness in the air, it's filthy, so I'm pleased to have everything dry inside. And then I heard a little rustling in the piles of autumn leaves, and the little cat Mima was also making a dash for indoors.

A lovely domestic routine, breaking up a day of writing on Chapter Three. Time to stop soon, anyway, to be a good mother and make raspberry friands to serve at the Middle School production of Grimm's Fairy Tales tonight. Joel and Meg, cast for their twin Germanic blondness, I'm sure, have to play Hansel and Gretel very straight, as the witch, a less than German-sounding boy called Paddy, is apparently show-stealingly hilarious.

But such a pleasure to be writing, and really feeling I am starting to finish some of these chapters. I've sent the Preface and the first two chapters to friends to read, too; another sign of finishing.

Smokey Rain

It rained, and was cold all day yesterday. I was glad of the big black alpaca coat I had bought in Boulder (on a huge sale, but still hugely expensive: still, my winter coat problem is solved for the next 20 years, I hope). We struggled with umbrellas and the worn out soles of Joel's shoes, in and out of libraries and the subway, all day, then in the evening, the rain really started pelting down. We nipped out to buy provisions at 6.30, and all you could see, at either end of 8th Avenue, was grey mist; and from our little balcony, the top of the Hearst Tower, the building we use as our landmark, a few blocks north of us, was shrouded in mist, looking like smokey rain is supposed to look. Here's the building in sunny architectural light. It was the first skyscraper to be started after 9/11; boasts some impressive green credentials; and has won at least one award.

Lying in bed last night, listening to the rain rushing through the pipes and splashing onto our little patio, I couldn't help but wonder (Oh, sorry for SATC syntax there) about what such a tremendous amount of rain could do for parched southern Victoria, and how at home, if we heard such rain, we'd rejoice at the way it would soak down a few inches and relieve the terrible dryness of the earth. But all I could see in my head, as I drifted off into sleep, was rain running off grey buildings, into the grey streets, and down into the East and the Hudson rivers. Manhattan was a long thin island floating on the water, rising in the flooding rains; and water running away off the land, and never finding a single tree.

Imagining the Weather

I've just come back from my morning walk. I drove Joel to school with the cello, and paced around Princes Park at top speed for half an hour. There's light rain coming down, and I was wearing jeans, t-shirt and long sleeve fleecy. But today is a day of total fire ban, and for the first time last night, with millions of others, I received a text message from the Victorian Police warning of severe winds and fire danger. The radio is full of emergency warnings, but the burden of many of them is that we must stay alert, despite the rain. Forecast top for Melbourne is only 31, but the fire index — that measures temperature, humidity, wind, drought conditions, etc. — is rated over 200 in some parts of the state. The index is designed to range from 1 - 100; and it was well over 300 on February 7. The real danger is the cool change that's going to come through this afternoon, with the possibility of lightning strikes.

It's almost impossible to imagine today as a day of hot wind and fire. Let's hope I'm right.

Meanwhile, The Age website has an article about snowstorms in New England, Washington, New York and Philadelphia. I will have to think very seriously about the coat question before I leave for that last-named place on Sunday week. I do have a couple of coats, but they are all too short, too light, or not waterproof enough for snow. I bought a beautiful green tapestry-style coat in St Louis with fake-fur collar and padded lining, the November we were there, and the locals laughed pleasantly at my sense that I was set up for winter. And by mid-December, when we left, I could see what they meant. I guess I should wait till I'm there to buy something appropriate.

It's very difficult, despite the best evidence of a range of media, to imagine yourself experiencing alternative weathers. I went to New York in July a few years ago, leaving a cold Melbourne winter, and loaded up with coats and jackets I never took out of my suitcase once. Of course this would not be a problem in England: I had to buy a leather jacket there last July.

But what is it about the weather, that even with the help of the fanciest websites and predictions, you really only believe it when you see it with your own eyes, feel it on your own skin?

Update: Oh. I see. Here comes the wind.


Evening update: Winds are still high; and it's still warm. There's so much wind the firefighters in the four major fires still burning have had to be pulled out; and there are trees and powerlines down all over. Apparently there's rain in the south-east, but nothing here yet. We've just been sitting over a glass of wine and some home-made bakewell tart (thanks, Kt!), and I realised there's a thin film of dust or grit on the table. We went outside to say goodbye and the sky is that yellow grey that presages a storm, but the wind is still hot and northerly. I heard someone on the radio on the edge of an area that was burnt out a few weeks ago: she said all there was around the house was ash; and the wind was just lifting it up and blowing it everywhere, so she had lost count of the number of times she had wiped the kitchen bench; and could not get the taste of ash out of her mouth.

Royals and ribbons: public and private

There is an article in today's Age about the young princes signing the condolence book for the victims of the Victorian bushfires at the Australian Commission in London. They are wearing yellow ribbons*:

*Photo is attributed to Getty Images: I'm never sure about rights and issues of reproduction here. I wrote to associated press before Christmas for permission to use an image of the Queen in her garter robes and haven't heard back yet, so I'm assuming these big companies don't care when their images are so widely available. Will take this down if anyone objects....

The article goes on to report that the princes "promised privately not to remove them before the Ashes series is over". Fantastic! Just like the Garter, really. The Ashes? cricket test series between Australia and England. So named after the first occasion Australia beat England, and the stumps were burned and preserved in a tiny, now exceedingly fragile urn as a trophy for England, to remind them of the day they were subdued by their colony.

What part of this promise is "private", then? And will we truly see them wearing yellow ribbons throughout the cricket season? And how do we read royal emotion? The report says the princes "expressed deep shock and sadness" about the fires, but then goes on to talk about Harry, "jovial and relaxed" making the "quip" about the summer cricket.

This little report encapsulates much of the fascination with the Order of the Garter, and the much-discussed story of its origins (woman drops garter; courtiers laugh at her; king puts garter on own leg and promises to found a chivalric order all those now laughing will want to join): the way it teases us with the possibility of access to the private emotion of public figures; the playfulness of royalty and its love of making symbols. It's also a reminder of how ribbons and garters (or green girdles [Gawain]) function, too.

And can I just say, for the record., that it started raining at 8.30 this morning, and it's still going, though it's very light. I think this is only the second time this year we've had any rain. The roof tiles are so dry it's taking a while for there to be any run-off, but I'm hoping the tanks might start to fill. It's great as we gear up for another horror day of heat and wind on Friday. Hope it won't be as bad as Black Saturday. Best description of the weather that day? The emergency services co-ordinator who said he was out at midday, as the temperature climbed to 47C, before the fires had really got doing, and knew we were in for horror when the wind was hotter than the sun.

It's the end of the world as we know it

I'd get us all to sing along, but it's too hot. At 45.3 we are only .3 of a degree away from our all-time record heat for Melbourne. (I see it's 47 at Avalon, 50 ks south west of here.) What makes it particularly apocalyptic is the dreadful north-westerly wind blowing at gale-force. The garden has been struggling for two weeks, and there has been no rain for a month. So many of the plants today look as if they are just giving up, and I've just been outside to bring in anything in a pot, and put it in the bath.

All over Melbourne the deciduous trees are just dropping their leaves, so it looks weirdly autumnal or wintry, except for that constant checking, just to make sure you haven't accidentally switched on a heater or an oven. How else could you account for that movement of hot air inside the house?

The perch we had to move a week or so ago have all died: they are really cold water fish, and couldn't withstand the shallower levels of a pond with a leak.

It's not been too bad (relatively speaking, of course) over the last few days, which means half the house — the downstairs, brick part — is tolerable; but the upstairs and the back half, made of timber, are both unbearable. It's quite schizophrenic, moving into the kitchen and out again. But I'm only just now, in the early afternoon, switching on the fan in my study.

And of course it's worse further north and east of here; and worse again if you are old; or sick; or fighting a fire; or losing your power.

It also feels apocalyptic because of all the warnings that this is increasingly what our climate will look like (I just looked out the window and the sky has suddenly gone a dirty white: is that smoke? dust? topsoil?).

So it's surreal, but slightly calming, too, to be reading about Bacelli, the mistress of the Duke of Dorset who was reputed to have worn his Garter across her forehead while dancing in Paris...

Taking Refuge from the Heat ...

... in a cinema is a good idea. Meeting our friends to see Revolutionary Road at 4.45 was also a good idea, as were the iced drinks and ice creams we devoured. And given that a bit of a cool change arrived while we were inside, our timing was also perfect. The only problem was the enormous blackout that plunged the cinema into silent darkness about ten minutes before the end of the movie, just after Leonardo has eaten his scrambled eggs.

But people were pretty calm and resigned. We picked up our refund (not that it was really the cinema's fault), argued about the possible endings on the way home, then sat outside in the breeze, drank home-made ginger beer, then some Little Creatures, then some sauvignon blanc, and then, with pizza, because it was Friday night, a little cabernet merlot as well. We played Scrabble in three teams, but were too lazy to move around the table, so it was the two fathers, a mother and a goddaughter, and a mother and a godson. Much hilarity. But I hate the new little book of stupid Scrabble words like Qi, whose meaning no one can ever remember. But worse, my brain was so addled by the heat I only realised three moves later that IQ is an abbreviation, and therefore not allowed. Rats!

When our friends had gone, we moved in on the Verdasco-Nadal match, coming in at the third set, and staying on till the end. It was completely and utterly absorbing, to see each player pushing and extending each other, each with immense respect for each other's game. And now there's an additional thrill to any such event: will the power hold out till the end of the match? Either at Rod Laver arena, or on our little bit of the grid? I turned off every single light in the house, while we were outside...

Admittedly, these are exceptional circumstances: the hottest week on record for Melbourne. But it does seem as if the infrastructure is very fragile indeed. Refrigeration, trains, power are all vulnerable. And what is worst of all: it's our children who are really going to bear the brunt of climate change and failing systems in twenty or thirty years time. And it will be our fault.

You Know You're in the Middle of a Heat Wave When...

• you welcome the little breath of cool air that comes out from the air-conditioned bank when you withdraw cash from the ATM
• the hot air coming out of the bottom of the fridge is heating up your kitchen so much that you think someone left the oven on
• you are too scared to turn the fans or the little air-conditioner in the bedroom up too high in case it triggers a black-out in your suburb
• and when you think it's better to be riding your bike home at 7.00 at night, when the temperature is still 43, than being stuck on a crowded train platform because the train tracks have buckled in the heat.
• and when you know that however bad it is in Melbourne, it's worse in Adelaide

[Update: later that same day: still 43C]

• when your sunglasses get almost too hot to wear on your face
• when the pavement burns your feet through your sandals
  
• when the thermostat inside the car registers 50C
• when the bitumen is breaking up on the roads
• and when there are fires on Hoddle St and a bookshop in Carlton, because the air conditioner exploded. Watch this space.
  

Really looking forward to that cool change they are promising: just 35 tomorrow!

Fish, water, wind, trees and sun

For the record: it's currently 42 degrees outside at 3.00 in the afternoon, and climbing. That's hot! And it's just day 1 of the four days above 40 we are promised this week.

My plan for today was to put on my old white cotton dress, which weighs little more than about two handkerchiefs, and sit quietly in my study at home, which is still pretty cool in the old downstairs brick part of the house. I had just opened up email when it turned out today had to be the day that we emptied the fishpond. There is a little leak, and the wonderful Bill was coming by this afternoon to start the repairs. This meant the pond had to be emptied and dried out by 5 this afternoon. The drying part was not a problem, in the sun, but the emptying was horrible. It is quite a complex system, and the process involved moving most of the rocks and plants to make sure no fish were left behind as we emptied the filter and ferried buckets of water around the garden. Which may at least mean the plants have a chance of surviving.

It was really more than a two-person job, so this meant persuading the resident teenager, who was all showered and changed (Obama t-shirt and cherry red jeans bought second hand for $5), and ready to go out, to change into old shorts and spend half an hour ferrying water. He did do it, but he said only because I made him feel guilty. Which I guess was fair enough...

There's not much wind, so while it's hot, at least there is not that soul-destroying northerly wind we sometimes get in summer, but every now and then, a little breeze would float by, and the citriodora would drop, as if on purpose, a little group of leaves it had decided it could do without. A bit like the whomping willow in whatever Harry Potter film it is, when one leaf drifts slowly to signal the beginning of autumn, and then the whole tree gives itself a shake, and they're all gone. Giving a whole new meaning to the word "deciduous".

Anyway, we scooped up bucketloads and ice-cream container loads of water and all the regular muck that's always at the bottom of the pond, at the same time as trying to catch fish and move them into areas we weren't emptying. (It is quite an elaborate system, with different levels.) Some of the perch would leap out of the net as soon as we caught them: remarkably frisky, and suddenly a whole lot bigger than they normally look. When the water was ankle deep, I was standing scooping out water, and they would come between my feet and nip me. Cute! We lost only one that got caught out in the shallow hot water when we had gone inside because we were starting to feel faint.

It was a horrible, job, really: very hard on the back, and very hot. But I kept thinking: this is the pond, and these are the fish that gave me such comfort when I was convalescing, so it was not that hard to keep shovelling. And all but one poor fish are now safe in cool deep ponds. It's hard to imagine it ever raining enough to fill up the pond again when it's fixed, though: I think we will probably have to buy some water.

Now I'm back in my white dress, about to read an ARC draft, translate the last stretch of Havelok for our reading group tomorrow, then reading another chapter of a PhD thesis. Haven't even put the fan on yet...

P.S. Aaargghh! Weather pixie has put her bikini on!!

Adelaide one day; Melbourne the next

In all the vagaries of summer weather, one thing is pretty sure: whatever they're doing in Adelaide, we'll probably be doing half a day later, though not always in such an extreme fashion. Same goes for blogging, with Pavlov's Cat and me. Not for the first time has she pre-empted me on a bloggy topic.

This morning she mentions the hot night, and opening up the house when the temperature drops. In our house I am the one who obsessively patrols the doors and windows, opening and closing according to the time of day, the angle of the sun, and the direction of the wind, constantly modulating to maximise comfort.

Last night was Melbourne's third hottest night on record, going down to a minimum of 28.1 (that's 86, by the double-the-number-you-first-thought-of-and-add-30 method of conversion). We were heading for 39 today, but the cool change came in much earlier than expected, and we only got to 32 before the south-westerly breeze blew in. I'm now sitting with the french door in my study open; and it's perfectly pleasant. Because we'd had only one day of extreme heat, the old brick part of the house hasn't heated up at all, so we are off the hook for a few more days, I think, till the temperature climbs again. Hope it's pleasant on Saturday when we are off to the tennis for the final of the Open lead-up tournament. I also hope Roger Federer makes it through to Saturday...

OK, back to work now.

Bayeux down; Roland to go

One lecture down ... twice.

It's 39 in Melbourne today: people are moving rather slowly around campus. But a respectable number of first-year students turned up to hear a lecture about the Bayeux Tapestry (Ok, I know: it's really an embroidery) as the first of two lectures on medieval romance warfare. This is one of our new interdisciplinary subjects, called Homer to Hollywood. They have already looked at the Iliad, for example; while my lecture on Wednesday is on The Song of Roland.

Today's lecture couldn't help but frame its discussion with the problem of medievalism that occupies me these days: how can we tell the medieval thing from the medievalist contexts and frames around it?

It was also fun to think about the difficulties of actually observing the tapestry, short of heading off on a field-trip to Bayeux. I had access to a good CD-Rom, but I couldn't easily download jpeg files for a powerpoint presentation. There are lots of good pictures in books, but they cannot give anywhere near an idea of the scope and scale of the thing.

One picture I got onto the powerpoint, but can't translate into a format blogger will recognise is a photograph of the tapestry hung around the walls and arches of Bayeux cathedral, too high for the eye to read comfortably, suggesting the tapestry's commemorative and possibly civic function: "look what a big tapestry belongs to this town!"

But there are lots of great web resources. For anyone interested in how technology facilitates the study of the middle ages, here are three great sites.

Images of discrete panels, in terrific colour and detail.

A panoramic thread, which you can scroll backwards and forwards.

And the YouTube link. This animates (only minimally, and that's all it needs to do), the second half of the narrative.

I also found a great drawing of the winch the linen used to be stored on, with a big handle. Presumably when curious visitors asked, it could be rolled out for inspection, then rolled up again.

There's no doubt in my mind that our modern mediated digital images make it easier to study and read the images, though they do tend to flatten out the textual/textile "thatness" of the thing as object.

And thanks to Wombat World, and the link to it I found at In the Middle, here's a recent example of many appropriations of the tapestry. What I love about this version of the Simpsons' couch gag is that it reinforces my argument about the tapestry commemorating a war almost between families, rather than nations. And it's certainly nothing like the situation in the Song of Roland, where "Christians are right and pagans are wrong". The Normans and the Saxons don't really look all that different, except for the Normans' tonsured haircuts. William's and Harold's families were related by marriage; hence William's claim to the throne. They were about as different from each other as the Flanders and the Simpsons.

And of course, I also held up my Bayeux tapestry teatowel. And weirdly, actually used it this morning to mop up the mess I made when I spilt my waterbottle over my desk on the way to the second delivery of the lecture. How's that for appropriation!

And a postscript: as I write, it's 39 degrees, and the weather pixie has sensibly put on her bathers (this is, I think, a Melbourne usage: what do you call the garments you wear to go swimming where you are?), and I don't mind at all....

One minute it's summer...

Just hanging out the washing when I saw something pink up in the Manchurian pear tree. What could it be?



Oh. It was autumn.
And it was in the maple, too.




Oh. And it was already at my feet. That was quick.

Bats, Boats and Books

Another burning hot night and day, with the temperature already at 34 degrees at 10.00 in the morning. The hot northerly wind is howling around the house, sending the birds flying in all directions under a pale white sky. Clouds are drifting south, but really, waiting to be sent north-east by the cool winds that are anticipated this afternoon. The hydrangeas are struggling on, and the basil and parsley plants we bought two days ago are still in the kitchen; we won't plant them till it's cooler.

Here's a link to a wonderful photo of a bat, cooling off by swooping along the river. Well, technically it's called a flying fox, but we like to think of them as bats. We see them after dusk, if we are sitting outside in the garden.

(I'd love to post this picture, but I'm assuming there are all kinds of copyright reasons why I can't...)

It's the last day of my "holiday" today. Since we aren't going away anywhere, this is code for "not going in to the office till next week". I've sent off my essay on Wade's Boat, and have one grant application to read today before I sit down seriously amidst the horrendous files and piles of papers and try and sort them into my filing cabinets. I am "shepherd" for my school this summer. I'm an appalling filer at the best of times, but the problem is compounded by my working on lots of little projects last year, and then moving all my papers and books when my study was renovated. Still no bookshelves, but no reason not to sort out the files. The good news is, I've now cleared my list of "things to write" that aren't my books, and I am determined to get this Garter book finished this year. Just as soon as I sort out my files.