come on sweetheart let’s adore one another before there is no more of you and me — from Fountain of Fire, Rumi It’s Monday evening as I write this, cool enough for the first time this year to be wearing socks and a jumper. The kids are asleep, their soft breathing barely audible from the next […]
Love, we’re going home now, Where the vines clamber over the trellis… – from ‘Love, We’re Going Home Now’, Pablo Neruda The week that we moved down to Melbourne was chaos. The afternoon we picked up the keys to our new house it was pouring with rain. The kids were going stir-crazy and the removalists […]
“The walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.” – from James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl We woke up this morning to grey skies awash with a light rain. The arrival of […]
“The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head; two steps further, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds – rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and […]
Whenever I go someplace new, I seek out the markets. Not the tourist trinket traps, or even the quirky weekend crafty markets (though I’ve a fond spot for those as well). I seek out the produce markets frequented by locals, where they sell the fruit and veg and, if you’re lucky, some damn fine street […]
By the time we arrived in our hotel in Hoi An we were exhausted. We’d taken a train, three planes, and a one hour car drive, in which our tired six-month-old bub fell asleep sitting up. Yet we were so excited about being in Vietnam we decided to brave an evening stroll anyway. Bad idea. […]
Green tea soup – ochazuke – is one of my favourite Japanese dishes. Traditionally, it is served with rice and salted fish (usually salmon) as well as nori or another type of sea vegetable. Ochazuke is a kind of un-cooking. You prepare the elements in advance but then it all comes together at the last […]
It’s Monday night. The weekend just past was a busy one. I spent all of Saturday out at Beaudesert for work, getting home in time for dinner, showers, storytime with the kids, then bed. Sunday flew past as Sundays are wont to do and suddenly it was the start of a new week. It was […]
Brisbane is in the humid sub-tropics. Word on the street is that there are over 300 days on sunshine a year up here. Feels about right. Of course, it being the sub-tropics, in the summertime those sunshine-y days are interspersed with raging thunderstorms and torrential rains. Since we moved here, there were the crazy floods […]
Waiting. I’m in a state of waiting. Each day as the heat builds and the grey clouds roll in on top of one another I wait for the summer afternoon rains to fall. Endless reading of the news and various social media streams waiting in the countdown for the state election. And as my belly […]
