March Newsletter in April.
- 3 days ago
- 29 min read
Welcome to the March Newsletter in April.
Someone stole part of March, I’m sure of it. I wrote this newsletter, thought ‘I’ll proofread it at the weekend’ and now it’s April. Maybe Terry Pratchett’s Time Monks might actually exist, taking blobs of time and adding them to places they think need a few hours, or days.
March definitely existed. I bought Easter eggs, except this year they were all rabbits or fish shaped; ordered the sour dough hot cross buns; wrote a large hunk of a novel and cooked at least 31 dinners. The stairs have been repaired, so we no longer need to worry about visitors hurtling down them and getting concussion. Troy is coming soon to look at replacing our bathroom tiles. Note to anyone who wants pristine bathroom tiles: do not use mechanical scrubbers as the blasted thing scrubbed out most of the grouting.
March here was also absolutely glorious, a green valley, winter’s citrus and avocados swelling, the creeks burbling away and Rosie wallaby so fat that she stopped eating all the dahlia buds (and we actually have flowers) but ate a whole bank of golden ginger lily blooms.
There was a valley meeting with the local council at the village hall. Every single person who came out the door afterwards took three steps, stopped, looked at green paddocks, blue green hills and pure blue sky, and said ‘Isn’t it glorious’, which became hilarious after the seventh person did it. It did it too.
Possibly March was just so full the newsletter was overlooked. But I’m still not convinced the Time Monks are innocent.
Truth in Fiction: Why Bother?
Hand up all history lovers: if one horse falls in a two-horse chariot, does the other horse fall too? And what about the charioteer? Roman chariot driver tied the reins around their waist. Would he inevitably be crushed?
I thought I knew ancient Rome pretty well. I wrote The Girl Who Would be King without having to look up ancient Roman female underwear – not so different from today though they didn’t have Spanks, just wore looser tunics and a longer pallas, the shawl/cloak/veil worn by respectable married women to cover up the bulges.
The second in the Heroes of the Ancient World series is set in ancient Rome too. No spoilers at this stage, as it won’t come out for a year. But it has a male protagonist, which means sword fights, gladiator details and chariot accidents. I don’t even know enough about modern footy to write about it, much less the macho sports of the first century AD.
Does it really matter if I get it wrong? Hopefully no reader is going to take up chariot racing based on the details in my book. Am I wasting hours working out exactly how you can drive a chariot with the reins tied around your waist? What was used to make were chariot wheels?
And then I thought of our ‘lost digger’.
The Lost Digger of Araluen: this time it’s personal.
Most members of our local history group have their own pet research areas.
Judy Agnelli has been researching the names on what we are now calling ‘The Soldier’s Memorial’ because it commemorates the soldiers from Araluen who died in wars for our country. She’s found them all – except C. Gordon, who died somewhere between late 1917 and early 1918, which Judy worked out because the names are in chronological order according to the date of their death.
So, the rest of us started looking.
There have been at least two Gordon families in the valley, but none had men of the right age. We’ve gone through War records, RSL records, Red Cross records, newspapers…
Judy narrowed it down to 27 possible C. Gordons, but none seem to have had any connection to Araluen, a small farming village except for a single remaining gold dredge in 1931, when the memorial was being built form local donated stone, in a donated corner of a paddock, and inscribed.
Everyone knows everyone in a small farming town, and family histories are kept, too. We expected someone to say, ‘Oh yes, grandma talked about the Gordons’.
I’ve posted about him on social media, and the ABC have done a piece on him, with Judy and I walking casually back and forth to the memorial about 26 times till the footage looked right. We are at the stage where we need someone to say, ‘Grandma married a Gordon and they lived in Araluen for a couple of years.’
There are several possibilities. Maybe his family only lived briefly in the valley about the time the memorial was erected. He might not have had a direct connection to the valley either. At least two valley families spent much of the year droving cattle up to Brisbane, where they could get fatter on the grass along the way. Often the mobs would be led by a professional ‘Boss’, hired because he knew the best watering and grazing spots.
Maybe C. Gordon was a drover, with no fixed address, and one of his mates wanted his remembered somewhere.
But there’s also a more complex possibility. Governments obsessively keep secrets these days, often simply to avoid bad PR. Back in 1919 it was far easier for them to erase history. Records were handwritten or typed, usually with no copy, or only one. It was easy to destroy them. And that’s what was done about at least two major stuff ups, and one tragedy.
One major area where records were destroyed was to hide the fact that women signallers were working on the front lines. Most men who knew morse were telegraphers – and they joined the Post Office Rifles. But by 1916 most had been killed. The army desperately needed signallers who knew morse code, so they recruited women.
I’ve written about this in Secret Sparrow, including how I finally found records of the women in Irish archives, thanks to US historian, the fabulous Barbara Walsh. The shame in admitting that women were not just needed, even if only for about a year! And admitting that women were cable of not just surviving but being indispensable in trench war fare. Over 3,600 reports mentioning the women were burnt. If anyone mentioned women’s service, they might be shot or imprisoned for 20 years for treason.
There was an even bigger stuff up that was hidden in 1917. The British army made such a vast and fast advance at the battle of Cambrai in late 1917 that they declared the war had been won. Church bells rang out across Britain. Newspapers announced ‘Victory’.
Everyone celebrated for three days – then the German army sprung the trap. The advancing Allies were surrounded by newly arrived German troops, brought swiftly by train. It was brilliant and well planned.
It was also major ‘oops’ moment for the British government. Google ‘Did the British Government claim victory in 1917?’ and you’ll find nothing. The records were destroyed, including the newspapers in the archives. But a few people had cut out articles. The ‘Great British Victory that Wasn’t’ can be found, but anyone who spoke of it might be taken out the back and shot during the war, and afterwards, might be imprisoned for treason.
The third ‘erase the records’ was more complex. The ‘Borstal Boys’, some as young as 12, were told that if they enlisted their records of juvenile delinquency would be destroyed. They were known as ‘Churchill’s Boys’, and their military record is superb. The promise was kept. Those who survived – we may never know how many – ended their military service with their arrest and imprisonment as children erased.
There are so many family stories about how ‘Pa never spoke of the War.’ We have assumed this was PTSD. But what if ‘Pa’ knew that if they spoke of things the War office kept secret, they might face prison? That is if their families spoke of it, they might be imprisoned? So, they kept quiet, in case they inadvertently spoke of secrets.
That brings me back to C. Gordon. His date of death fits the Battle of Cambrai. Was there something in his record that mentioned ‘The Battle of Cambrai’? Hundreds of women’s war records were burnt – they no longer exist. Was C. Gordon’s war record destroyed with other mentions of that PR, as well as military disaster?
C. Gordon volunteered his life for his country. He meant enough to someone to have his name on the memorial. We at least owe him remembrance. He deserves to have his life celebrated, not just his death.
But this time it’s personal, too. All wars are tragic. All have heroism and stupidity too. But World War One had more stupidity than most, partly because the rulers of England – including Winston Churchill – believed that there were too many ‘poor people’. It was the beginning of the eugenics era. The poor must be unsuccessful as human beings, otherwise they wouldn’t be poor. A nice little war would get rid of some of them.
It wasn’t supposed to be a big war, nor drag on as long as it did. That was the beginning of the stupidity. Over and over, in every campaign, there was so much ignorance, arrogance and lack of care for enlisted men.
Most of all, there was the ability to cover up ineptitude. At every senior level, men covered up for other men, partly from loyalty to ‘one of us’, or because they didn’t care. Or maybe I just think they didn’t care. Perhaps they wept in secret. I don’t know.
World War One was the war where shell shocked men were taken out the back and shot for cowardice, and men whose stupidity and arrogance, and refusal to accept intelligence reports, were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in a single day.
I’d like to add more words to the Araluen Memorial, though I’ll never ask the Progress Association to do so. They are the words said to be inscribed on the cliffs of Thermopylae after Leonidas and his few hundred Spartans held off the entire Persian army in a narrow pass till betrayed by traitor who led the Persians around a secret back route. Leonidas and his men kept fighting, then the Persian army marched over their remains.
Someone wrote a verse on the cliff above. We don’t know who, or when. It might not even ever have been there, but someone thought it should have been, and so said that they had seen it. But it’s a good memorial for the soldiers of any war:
‘Remember, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to your laws, we lie.'
Why History Matters deeply.
If we don’t remember, we keep making the same mistakes. Humans are very good at forgetting inconvenient things. I do too. I keep chooks, even though I know the latest avian influenzas may make backyard chook keeping impossible or even deadly, once it reaches Australia. We are the only continent to be spared, so far, but it’s already on nearby islands. Some time, possibly soon, migrating birds will bring it back – and our valley is a migration route.
I also manage to forget I have potatoes boiling or a cake baking, especially if I’m deep in writing. ‘I’ll just do 10 minutes…’ usually extends to two hours and a burnt saucepan.
As I write this – before I put dinner on, so another saucepan doesn’t bite the dust - war is engulfing not just the three countries directly involved, but much of the rest of the world, oil pollution contaminating countries thousands of kilometres away, Australian farmers and fisherman unable to work without diesel supplies, and hospital supplies threatened because of a hacker strike by a country who now regards us as an enemy, even though no war has been declared. All this after only a few weeks I am trying not to think of what it may be like by the time you read this. It’s difficult not to extrapolate, because I’m an historian as well as a writer, disciplines where you automatically add one bit of data to another and so can make a pretty good prediction about the future.
Just now I don’t want to look.
The Man Who Doesn’t Like Books.
‘I’ve never liked books much,’ a politician told me as we sat next to each other at dinner a decade ago.
I managed to convince him that whether he liked books or not, the book industry employed more people than the mining industry, and that the export of Australian literature had more PR value than any official campaign. Australia is seen as literate, exciting, full of kangaroos and friendly neighbours, with crocodiles if you want an adventure, and a safe place to invest. The image may not be quite accurate, but it’s a useful one. Australian writers do all this without the kind of government subsidy given to the mining and forestry industries.
Books matter, and not just for economic reasons. Books teach you empathy. You become each protagonist in every book you read. As I write this the NDIS is fragmenting, Aged care across Australia is often simply unattainable as there are no providers, or those providers don’t provide the needed services, or charge $260 an hour plus $260 transport for housecleaning that I was quoted by one of them.
The homeless are no longer mostly young people escaping abuse, and those with mental or drug problems, but people with good jobs, who simply can’t afford to pay rent in the areas where they are working. We have women over 60 in our region living in their cars, simply because they can’t afford rent. A young person who couch surfs at your place for a while will probably be on their feet again fairly soon, but if you offer a women who is 60, or 70 your spare room, you know she will almost certainly never get a job, or be able to afford her own home, and may have increasing health problems. Her only other possible destination is a nursing home, but the waiting lists for the public ones are often so long that most on the list will die before they get a place.
Thirty percent of hospital beds are occupied by the elderly with nowhere to go when they are discharged.
‘It’s a complex problem,’ someone in Aged Care said to me a few days ago.
‘Actually, it’s easy’ I said. ‘Give the state enough money to bring back community nurses, physios, social workers and psychologists to public hospitals instead of giving them to providers’ - especially the providers who send their profits to owners overseas.’
She laughed. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Give us a dozen more staff and the beds will be free by next week. Most of our patients don’t need much care to stay in their own homes, an hour or so a day– but if there is no care, they have to stay here.’
We also seem to have become mixed up in a war that anyone who reads history would know will be disastrous.
Would it be different if we had more politicians who read books, not just reports? Having a well-developed imagination doesn’t necessarily mean your visions are useful ones. In 1942 the British Government formed a committee of writers to imagine unexpected ways to help win the war. Years after, Mr Churchill is said to have summed them up: ‘Without 5% of the writers’ ideas, we would have lost the war. If we’d followed the other 95% we’d have lost it by Christmas.’ (This comment may be apocryphal).
the books of 2025 and 2026.
Cleopatra The Girl Who Would Be King
10+
Forget about the glamorous queen with a fantastic hairstyle. The real Cleopatra had wispy red hair – she usually wore a wig – and a large, hooked nose. She wasn’t beautiful – but she was brilliant, charming, and an extraordinary ruler, keeping Egypt free of Rome for nearly 30 years, revolutionising the system of coinage, making fair laws for women and slaves and enlarging the famed Library of Alexandra, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
She began all this at 12 years old, when she and her Pharoah father escaped to Rome when Cleopatra’s sister led a revolt and seized the throne.
This is the story of what might have happened in that year, with pirates, crocodiles, the dashing Captain Fileas and Myra, the slave longing to be free. Because somehow, in that year, Cleopatra managed to get Roman support and Roman funding, when her father failed to get either.
The Diamonds of Tilly Devine
Adult
1931. The height of the Depression, Sydney, New South Wales.
They were diamonds: beautiful, sparkling and irresistible.
Nice girls do not accept employment from infamous Tilly Devine, the brothel owner with jewels on her fingers and a pistol in her handbag. All Sydney knows her as the queen of crime, ruling an empire of bootleg whisky and gambling clubs. She’s quick to pull the trigger on anyone who crosses her—including her husband.
Yet, destitute after her mother’s death, Constance McKie realises she has three choices: starve, jump over The Gap, or enter a life no respectable girl would dare consider. When Tilly Devine offers her a role as one of her ‘diamonds’, Connie finds that perhaps she’s not the girl she thought she was.
A diamond’s role is complex, demanding, usually glamorous and entirely secret, and kept far away from Tilly’s world of gang wars, bribery and blackmail. But when murder is suspected in the mansion that's become her home, Connie learns that it’s not only diamonds that are tougher than steel.
This is a book about the choices we make and the chances we never dreamed we’d be given.
Rain Stones 35th Anniversary Edition
10+
This was my first book of fiction, written in desperation on a typewriter where the letter ‘e’ didn’t work because Smudge the wombat kept leaving his droppings on the typewriter. I’d been told all my life that writing was a waste of time, but now my marriage had broken up, a drought stopped me earning money as a farmer, I had a baby to support and only $7.30 in the bank and needed $144 to register my car. (The darling mechanics had fixed its brakes when I left it parked outside their garage. ‘We’re not having you going down the mountain with brakes like that.’ They refused to give me the bill for two years, when I finally had enough money to pay it.
It’s a shock to read the stories again. I still love them, the Canberra hills that turn into dinosaurs at night, the girl longing for ‘rainstones’ that may break the drought. I had written books ever since I was six years old, but only because I loved creating them. For the first time I had to write for other people. In those few weeks I stopped being an amateur, who wrote for myself, and became a professional, who wrote for her readers.
They may be 40 years old (a series of events meant they weren’t published for five years after they were first accepted), but I hope you love them too.
Adult
Historical fiction for adults, as Lady Dee uncovers the (true) plot to instal the Duke of Windsor back on the throne.
It’s a love story: why does British intelligence warn her to stay away from a heroic Aussie pilot?
It’s a mystery: is the man who staggers up the smugglers tunnel really the lost duke? Why do the three evacuee children refuse to give Dee their names?
It’s an expose of secrets, where men die just to save the royal family from embarrassment. It’s glorious escapism, and just sometimes profound.
Ages 12+
1942
Japan has bombed Sydney Harbour. Sixteen-year-old orphan Ossie lies about his age to fight imminent invasion in New Guinea, but must leave his only family, one eyed dog, Lucky. Kind-hearted Mrs Plum is already caring for 46 dogs for far away soldiers. It is almost impossible to even feed them. There are no rations for dogs. Enter 13-year-old Kat Murphy, evacuated from harbourside Sydney to a new school and an aunt she hardly knows. Kat and Mrs Plum will forge a partnership, gathering support for all the animals. Ossie will see first-hand, the mushroom cloud rise above Nagasaki and its aftermath, and Kat will see it too, in a strange telepathic like connection between her, Ossie and the dog they both love.
This book is not just an adventure story: it is an important history of a time that had been hidden, when the Japanese Military Government planned to kill 10 million Japanese civilians, and even kidnapped the emperor for three days, to prevent the surrender.
As we remember the 80th anniversary of the first atomic bombing, this knowledge is vital to our understanding of what can happen in a war, and the first step to prevent it, too. But most readers will simply love the story of Kat, Ossie, and Mrs Plum. This is a book of unexpected kindness and generosity and many kinds of love.
Ages 12+
Published in 2024 but mentioned now because it was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Awards. It’s glorious fun and also lets kids relive and understand the gold rush era, particularly the treks by Chinese miners, so often neglected and almost always misunderstood in the history books.
Ages 3+
With the glorious Danny Snell, this is the true story of the young kangaroo who travelled possibly 100 kilometres to find water here, in the drought of 2019, and who is now ‘Big Boss’ of the kangaroos around our house.
Reissued by CSIRO. There are many myths about companion planting. This book is what works.
ideas for the autumn garden.
Useful, Cheap and Effective Pest Control: no poisons needed.
Glue spray.
Mix one cup of white flour with one cup of boiling water. Then mix in cold water, stirring till it's a thick glue-like spray. Strain out any lumps through a sieve. Place in a pump action sprayer – the 'misters' you buy in the supermarket work okay for small plants, but you can buy pump action sprayers that will reach about 20 metres for high pests like pear and cherry slug. Spray, on top as well as underneath the leaves if you can.
The bugs will suffocate under the glue – a nasty death but at least anything that eats them (a few predators eat the young ones) won't be poisoned too. Either wait for the glue to peel off or wash off in the rain or wait 24 hours then hose the mess away.
Guaranteed both messy and environmentally friendly but do soak the sprayer afterwards or it'll be glued up forever.
Toothbrushes
Good for little things that suck sap so your plant turns yellow or looks sand blasted or has a tracery of fine lines over the leaves or little beasties that cluster on leaves or new shoots (aphids, mites, thrips, bean fly, scale). Also squash them between your fingers.
Milk Spray
This is the most effective spray for downy mildew, and the oil content also helps stop some other mould, fungi and bacterial problems from spreading. Spray full cream milk, or in hot weather, 1 cup milk to 9 cups water in case young foliage or flower buds burn. Add 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda for Milk and Baking Powder spray, good to help control black spot.
Car-Park Dried Fruit
Place cut up fruit on wire on your dashboard whenever you park in summer. Three hours later your car will smell of cooked fruit (yum) and your fruit will be dry and withered.
Polypipe Waterers
Plant a length of Polypipe about 60 cm deep each time you plant a tree, on the uphill, uphill side – if there is a slope. Pour a bucket of water down when you want to water the tree. Result – water doesn’t run off, and it tempts the roots to go DOWN, not out – deep roots forage more moisture and the tree is less likely to blow over in high winds.
A Few Winter Veg For Planting Now
Add more parsley, silver beet, winter lettuce, cabbage, bok choi and English spinach, and put in broad beans, spuds and snow peas too, but you might also consider these:
Mizuna and Mitsuba
These Chinese green veg grow so fast you can eat them six weeks after planting – or a month after the drought breaks and dormant seeds in the soil spring into life. Let them all go to seed naturally, then you’ll always have seedlings coming up. Eat small or large. Their flowers can be stir fried too.
Collards
This non-hearting cabbage type veg is both cold - and drought-hardy. Plant in summer, harvest leaf by leaf in winter when the leaves are sweetest. Collards can be a bit sulphurous tasting in hot weather.
Italian Red-ribbed Chicory
Hardier in cold heat and drought than lettuce, great in salads, steamed or stir-fried. Sow any warm time of year.
Miniature Silver Beet or Spinach
Fill a box with compost or potting mix. Scatter seed thickly. Pick the tiny leaves about three weeks after planting in warm weather.
Top L-R: Crab Apples, Pomegranate, Irish Peach Pears. Bottom L-R: Broad beans, Ear Chokos, Celery and Garlic Chives.
Living Fences
Most people think their garden is ‘full’. But it isn’t – not when they’ve got a bare fence. Plants on fences grow upwards, not outwards – in other words, you’ve got more ‘land’ to grow things on.
Replace fences with edible hedges: dwarf apples, avocadoes (can be neatly trimmed), thorny citronelles, or native limes to keep out animals and burglars, cumquats, calamondins, neatly pruned mandarins, kaffir limes, Kei apples (thorny dark green bushes - you need male and female for fruit), Brazilian cherry(Eugenia uniflora), Cherry of the Rio Grande (Eugenia aggregata), neatly pruned macadamia, or dwarf lillypillies or rosemary for a smaller fence. Clothe existing fences with grapes, kiwi fruit, passionfruit, banana passionfruit, hops, choko and perennial red flowered climbing beans. Don’t be afraid to trim fruit trees into hedge shapes: trim often and lightly. Don’t cut into branches past the leaves, or the whole branch will die.
Connoisseur’s veg
Try the beauties supermarkets rarely sell…
Beetroot - white, striped or golden or giant coarse mangelwurzels that laugh at drought.
Burdock - massive, long brown nutty roots, unkillable.
Carrot - purple, red, yellow and white.
Cavolo nero (Tuscan kale) - hardy very dark green slightly bitter but with a sweet after-taste.
Celeriac - big celery flavoured roots for winter roasts and purees.
Corn - white, cream and gold, coloured maize
Chilacayote melon - perennial zucchini or melons
Chicory - red ribbed. Frost, heat and drought-hardy.
Collards - a loose-leaf form of cabbage, you just keep picking the leaves.
Chokos - eat thumbnail size so they don’t need peeling or removing the seed.
Cardoons - like globe artichokes but bigger, hardier; eat the flower buds and blanched stems.
Corn Salad (Lamb's lettuce) - slightly bitter salad green
Fennel - eat bulb, stem, leaves and seeds. For aniseed lovers.
Globe Artichokes - so you never eat canned hearts again.
Jerusalem Artichoke - nutty, sweet tubers, stunning flowers, indestructible.
Kale - non-hearting cabbages leaves. Multicoloured ones are also good stir-fried.
Kohl rabi - eat the roots and leaves; frost hardy, plus the stale shop ones taste too strong.
Mustard - good chook food. Try having two chook runs; every two months swap them over and grow mustard on the disused one. Mustard tolerates high nitrogen – then let the chooks in to forage on the greens.
Oca - South American tuber, small and either red or orange. It's a form of oxalis and nearly as hardy.
Pak Choi - frilly Asian cabbage, quick growing and hardy.
Salsify and Scorzonera (Black salsify) - slender sweet roots, beautiful baked or stewed or as soup.
Warrigal or Malaba spinach - alternative greens; grow like weeds.
Tomatoes - striped, black, yellow, egg… hundreds to try, all gorgeous!
Great 'self-sufficiency' trees
These are all great if you want staples or food for chooks as well as humans.
Nut trees - Cold: walnuts, pecans chestnuts, hazelnuts. Dry: bunya nut, macadamias, almonds, pistachios. Tropical cashews - Use ground nuts to replace 1/3 flour in recipes. Available: all year.
Avocados - Use avocado as a healthy alternative to butter or margarine on bread. Kids love 'snot' sandwiches. Most avocadoes aren’t mulched enough – we pile most of our weeds, prunings etc under the avocadoes’ drooping skirts. Grow Sharwill, Fuerte, Hass and Secundo for year-round fruit.
Olives - Not massive bearers in terms of bulk, but a good staple
Eureka lemons - Available all year.
An apple hedge - Irish Peach (late Nov), Gravenstein (Jan), Jonathon/Delicious (Feb), Cornish Aromatic (April), Lady Williams, Sturmer Pippin (May-August and store for six months).
Over Productive (i.e. you’ll never starve) Veg
Choko, chilacayote squash, melons, silver beet, perennial beans, zucchini, climbing cherry tomatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, perennial bell peppers and chilli.
autumn recipes.
Tomato Sauce
6 kilos tomatoes
1 litre white vinegar
1 kilo chopped onions, sautéed till soft in a little oil
150 grams sugar
10 cloves chopped garlic
teaspoon ground ginger
pepper and salt to taste
Boil for two hours, strain through a sieve. Bottle. A little melted clarified butter or lard (the traditional sealer) or olive oil on top before sealing will help it to keep longer and keep the colour brighter.
Tomato Jam
Tomatoes are a fruit too and make wonderful jam.
1 kilo tomatoes
1 kilo sugar
grated rind of three lemons
12 peach leaves
Boil all except the sugar till soft and mushy; add the sugar. Boil till thick and a little sets in cold water- about half an hour. Bottle and seal.
This is lovely - like a very dark honey, quite unlike tomato. It's good on bread or crumpets; also good with cold meat or hot roasts.
Zucchini
Substitute grated zucchini for carrot in carrot cake; for pumpkin in pumpkin scones; for onions in pickled onions (slice thinly); for cucumber in salad.
Try grated zucchini and horseradish on bread (enjoyed by people who dislike both raw zucchini and horseradish).
Add a quarter grated raw zucchini to bread and cake recipes to moisten and lighten them; thinly slice zucchini and deep fry them.
Zucchini Fruit Slice
185 gm butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 and three-quarter cups plain flour
1 and a half teaspoons baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
1 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped sultanas
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup coconut
2 cups grated raw zucchini
Cream butter and sugar; add eggs; mix in other ingredients. Spread into greased and floured tray; bake at 200c for 30-40 minutes. Test with a skewer. Cool a little before turning out of the tray. Cut into slices with a sharp knife while still warm, but out of the container, so help prevent crumbling.
Sweet and Sour Zucchini Pickles
2 kilo zucchini, sliced
6 cups white vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 small red chilli
2 tb yellow mustard seeds
2 tb black mustard seeds
1 tb black peppercorns
1 tsp turmeric
1 very large or two medium onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 whole cloves
Boil everything except zucchini for five minutes; add the zucchini; boil one minute; bottle at once.
Seal; keep in a cool place; eat after three days but better after a week or two; throw out of they look or smell odd or cloudy; keep the jar in the fridge when opened.
NB: make sure the zucchini are quite covered at all times in the jar by the sweet vinegar mixture.
Late Apple and Optional Quince Sauce
1 large quince, peeled, cored and chopped (can be omitted, but is very good)
3 tablespoons sugar
6 firm fleshed late apples (Granny Smith will do)
finely grated zest from an orange and a lemon
a bottle of cider
Simmer all ingredients till broken down and thick. Add water if necessary, but it probably won't be, and stir to stop it singeing on the bottom. Bottle and seal and keep in the fridge for up to a month, unless it grows interesting flora or fauna in which case throw it out pronto.
Late Apple and Optional Quince Sauce can be used either as a jam, with thick cream and pikelets, or as a sort of chutney. It's great slopped onto slices of roast pork or turkey. You can also ladle it over pancakes or ice-cream.
Chocolate Beetroot Muffins
Rich and chocolatey!
1¾ cups SR flour
2 large beetroot, cooked and peeled, and either puréed or grated (or carrots or pumpkin)
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 cup brown sugar, well pressed down
2 eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup olive oil or butter
Splodge it all into a bowl. Mix well. Spoon into a greased muffin pan or patty cases. Bake at 200ºC for about 25 minutes – they will be well risen and firm to touch.
Macadamia (or other fresh nut) Pesto
3 cloves of garlic
25 grams macadamias
a large bunch of basil (or parsley or coriander)
75 mls olive oil
25 grams Parmesan cheese
Pound all ingredients in a mortar or blender, gradually adding the olive oil. Serve on pasta or over boiled potatoes or on crackers or fresh hot bread.
Banana Bread
This can be frozen and is an excellent way of storing banana.
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 beaten eggs (can be omitted and more yoghurt substituted)
125 grams butter
2 cups self-raising flour
4 mashed, very ripe bananas
½ cup of sour cream or skim milk natural yoghurt
Cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs one at a time, fold in other ingredients. Bake at 180ºC for an hour, or until the top springs back when pressed. Allow to cool and lift out carefully – this cake has a tendency to break at the bottom.
Pumpkin Curry
Pumpkin is both sweet and meaty in a curry – and good.
1 teaspoonful: cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, chilli to taste (I use two chopped red chillies for a medium hot curry).
2 cups peeled chopped tomatoes or 1 can tomatoes
2 cups chopped pumpkin - choose a firm, finely-grained one
2 onions, chopped
12 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
Cook the onions and garlic slowly in the oil till soft, add the spices and stir well for a few minutes. Don't let them burn. Add the other ingredients and simmer till the pumpkin is cooked.
For the best flavour leave the curry in the fridge overnight and reheat the next day.
Corn Cakes with Balsamic Vinegar Salsa
Salsa Ingredients
1 large red onion, chopped
3 large sweet fragrant tomatoes also chopped and the juice and seeds poured off (if you can't find a fragrant tomato substitute mango)
a very small dash of balsamic vinegar - don't overdo it. It should just be a hint; the whole affair should be solidish, not liquid.
Corn Cake Ingredients
4 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour
2 cans corn kernels if you must; otherwise scrape the kernels of twelve ears of freshly boiled corn
1 tb finely chopped capsicum (sort of optional)
1 tb finely chopped parsley (ditto)
1 tb chopped chives (ditto too ... but do try to add them)
milk
Mix everything except the milk; then add milk slowly till it's still thick but will drip rather than glop from a spoon.
Heat a frying pan, add a dab of butter, slide in spoonfuls and fry till brown on one side then flip over and brown on the other.
Serve hot with the salsa on the side.
You can make these all-in advance and keep them warm under a tea towel so they don't dry out in a very low oven...or just fry them up as people eat, reserving the slightly charred ones for yourself to nibble on as you cook. These are also very good with sweet chili sauce.
A Letter from laine
Do you like words? I love them.
Always have, always will. I can still remember when, where and how I learned certain words: “Accurately” when I was seven years’ old, “Ruthless” two years later, “obstreperous” and “ruthless” shortly thereafter and a whole flood of them during one long summer holiday spent glorying in the pages of “Jane Eyre.”
Not forgetting the day Dad called me Miscellaneous followed by the first time I encountered “chatelaine” and was captivated by the idea that a new word could contain my name in its entirety. A good fireside game during a power cut or a long car trip. No cheating by hunting online.
The wonderful thing about words is that you can continue to collect them indefinitely with neither complaints from your bank manager nor charges for excess baggage, and never being accused of hoarding. I’m still collecting today.
However, mere accumulation is not enough. You need to love words in a practical way: learn what they mean, how to use them and even how to play with them or, to put it plainly, respect them in all their magic and diversity.
This is not another rant about split infinitives, as much as I loathe them. Let good old Captain Kirk keep boldly going across the universe in order for us to forget his international faux pas, setting a bad example for generations to come. Just for the record, my current pet hate is “to not.”
I repeat, this is not about split infinitives. Neither is it about mangling and reversing the meanings of words so that notorious is weakened to mean famous in any context and an oversight is no longer a mistake. “Showing her age”, I hear you mutter, and perhaps you’re right, but if pedantry symbolises maintaining values of words and retaining clarity, then as Scrooge’s nephew said of Christmas, “I say God bless it.”
So where am I going with this? If not bleating over bad grammar and modern definitions, or whining about the plague of tautology, what is keeping me awake at night and disturbing my reading?
Bland language, or as I have named it – just to upset my spellchecker – the pandemic of “Blanguage” engulfing today’s world of communications.
During the late 1990s, there was a joke email doing the rounds called “Word Bingo.” The idea was to watch the evening news where politicians, officials and celebrities are quoted, and listen to what they have say. Each time someone uttered one of the current catchphrases, maybe “At the end of the day”, “Two choices” or “At this moment in time”, you checked your sheet of cliches, crossed off the relevant words, then called “Bingo!” once they had all been used.
Fast forward thirty years. Now, which words or phrases do you think would be included if we played that game today? Any ideas?
Think now. Perhaps you have heard or spoken the principal culprits several times already today…
Give up?
Try these:
“Creeped me out” – scared me to bits.
“Reach out to” – contact.
“Share” – tell or inform.
Above all though, standing out among the rest, two words used to refer to practically everything but meaning nothing at all.
“Issues” and “Procedures”, but most especially issues. I detest them both with a passion, shuddering each time we meet.
“Blanguage” is not new, it has simply become more widespread. Perhaps if it is only used occasionally it is harmless, doesn’t really matter. Unfortunately, if left unsupervised, it breeds like fungus in a cellar, eventually taking over.
I first became aware of bland words during a class nature walk in primary school. We were being taught to recognise leaves by their shapes, textures and patterns. How to tell an oak from an ash, a beech from an elm – this was during an English summer – and so on.
One hapless girl, handling a leaf, made the comment, “That’s nice” and was reprimanded for her pains.
“Don’t say nice. It doesn’t mean anything.” Well, yes it does, but in a bland, nondescript way; it says nothing about what she was looking at or had noticed. Nice in fact has various meanings and applications but only its blandest form remains in common parlance today. Even so, the alternatives are many and varied, always worth the effort to make prose and conversation more interesting. It all depends on what is being described.
Many years ago, a close correspondent and dear friend went through a phase, of describing every meal eaten out as “Very nice.” Not delicious, tasty, spicy, fresh, crisp, creamy, scrumptious, colourful, well-cooked or even beautifully presented. “Very nice” had taken root and become a habit, a speech mannerism. So much so we renamed the poor lady, “Nice Jane.” Not her real name. The habit has long since disappeared and a new nickname taken its place; one she knows of, approves and uses to describe herself.
I tell you this, however, in order to show you how easily words can be overused, debased and reduced to having only the one meaning, and how our language is eroded and dwindles away if we cease to pay attention. Platitudes become habitual, bad habits make us lazy.
So how and where are “issues” and “Procedures” overused?
Absolutely everywhere and in every way possible, again especially “Issues.” Sometimes as euphemisms, particularly when talking about health problems without being specific, but that is only the beginning.
When Jackie French and I first talked about this, we wondered if making toast was a breakfast procedure or if brewing tea could involve issues with boiling water if you were clumsy about it. Funny, yes, but actually an indication of just how these two words have taken over the language.
Are they new? Not exactly. I first heard someone referring to health issues about twenty years ago. I didn’t like it then and nothing has changed, but the pandemic had not yet begun in earnest. I knew matters had deteriorated perhaps beyond recall when a doctor described the problems experienced by one of his family as “health issues.” No, not even to protect anyone since a page or so later he went on to list those self-same issues.
But don’t we need euphemisms and obfuscations sometimes? Perhaps, but there is no law dictating you must employ only those two terms. I spent a week in hospital last year when neither my doctors, my husband nor I used either word. A swift illness, led to admission, tests diagnosis and treatment. Not a white lie told but privacy and dignity remained intact.
During discussion on historical fiction, a friend declared that regardless of the period in which a book is set, you could usually tell from the writing roughly when it was written. I was unsure at first so paid more attention; now in the main I have to agree, perhaps with a couple of exceptions which shall not be named here.
The “in” phrases can pop up where they don’t belong if insufficient care is taken. “Writing without due care and attention” you might say.
Linguistic anachronisms are everywhere, most particularly when constructing dialogue. Perhaps as writers we need a red light flashing on the screen any time we commit such follies or a gnome emoji, complete with wicked grin, mouthing “Constant vigilance” if ever we’re about to stray.
Bearing this in mind, I turned my attention to the masters, starting with Dickens.
Would the querulous, ever-loyal Emma ever tell “Mr. Copperfield” about “Mr. Micawber’s issues”? No, of course she wouldn’t, and didn’t. He had unspecified “difficulties” which we all knew were financial. If that was good enough for “Your friend C D” as he styles himself at the beginning of “A Christmas Carol” then it is good enough for me.
I then moved on to Shakespeare but soon became too depressed. I decided that not only would he never resort to pale meaningless phraseology, but in the unlikely event of being unable to find useful words to fit his purpose, he would do what he always did and invent a few new ones.
So back to issues, the blandest, most overused of all words. I decided to put my theory or prejudice to the test by consulting my old friend and constant companion the Thesaurus. Go on, I dare you. Issues has no fewer than 11, eleven, different senses.
Ask any lawyer, genealogist, magazine editor or press officer for their interpretations of the word. They should all answer differently, and quite right too.
Does that not tell us something about the overuse of this one word? Eleven senses but in the main just the one frivolous use applying to innumerable if not infinite possibilities.
I will confess it here. I have reached the point when reading that I can hear, see, smell approaching issues, like a shepherd sensing a thunderstorm. They stamp and snort smugly in the distance, akin to one of Tolkien’s dragons or a mythical beast from the Gruffalo’s forest. I tense, sigh and mutter but nothing can make them go away.
So what can I do? Grind my teeth and accept the inevitable?
Better by far to listen to the aforementioned gnome emoji: pay attention, read back what has been written or what you plan to say during your next speech, lecture or broadcast, anything to bring back the plethora of words that could be used instead.
Worth a try? Well, I have been doing just that for as long as I can remember, so if I can …
Good luck.
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