Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
21 Responses to “Lazy Sunday!”
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Recovering from last night’s Ashes and dabbling in John Shaw Nielson’s exquisite poetry. “Orange Tree”, a hymn to youth’s vision, and “Stony Town”, my anthem, since teenage, for facing those who want me to conform to their narrow parameters. I must have fordigraphed / roneoed etc zillions of each during my English teaching years before © people became interested. Kids, who never had any doubt what they meant, loved them, especially in the days when everyone also loved Simon & Garfunkle, & Cat Stevens (and yes, I did introduce with “Father & Son” when the record came out, tho I’d used it before then) Father & Son lyrics
BTW, SydU has a downloadable pdf of the 1934 print ed of JSN’s “Collected Poems” @ setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/v00042.pdf I found it on a freezing day not long ago when I wanted to read “Stony Town” & didn’t want to brave downstairs’ icy depths to get my print copy. My link came from a Google search for John Shaw Nielson Collected Poems
LOVE the cricket, but the 4 years since the 2005 Ashes has done terrible things to my staying awake power, & worse things to the next day – & that’s with nary a sniff of the stuff that does terrible things when mixed with pills – my variation of Prufrock’s measure.
Went to an open mike afternoon at the Dan O’Connell Hotel (well-known Irish pub in Carlton that was an Irish pub before franchising), to catch up with old friends and hear TimT from Will Type For Food read from his novel in progress.
Quite amusing.
In another giggles, bought a remaindered copy of The Costello Memoirs for $5.
Five bucks? Robert, you paid too much.
I was going to make beer today – 5 gallons of pilsner – only to find that I didn’t have enough bloody malt. It needs 2 1/2 kg, and I had just over 1, so I couldn’t even have fudged it with cane sugar (not to mention that it would have wrecked the balance of the beer). Of course no-one who sells malt, not even the Jovial Monk, is open on Sunday afternoon.
Washed 2000 km worth of grime from office car.
Helped around house.
Made 5 gallons of Coopers Lager, fortunately you don’t need to fiddle around with malt, well at least I don’t, I try to reduce the number of variables that I can get wrong
Spent four hours wandering around Toohey forest.
Then had to spend an hour mopping up the flood my washing machine created after it decided the floor was a good place to empty it’s water.
I gave my conference paper in the dining room at Chawton House in Hampshire and had to keep pinching myself, sitting in rooms Jane Austen and her family sat in. Posted about it on my blog, here. http://allordinary2.blogspot.com/2009/07/conference-is-over.html
Right now I’m in a laundrette in Winchester, about to go get some breakfast. Don’t eat the fried bread.
Ahhh Pilsener beer.
I was in Plzen in 1988 and decided I’d better check out their beer just to see what all the fuss was about.
Less than a $1 a bottle, big bottle that is, 750 ml size.
Liquid amber, beautiful stuff.
Having just come from the UK it was a delight to actually taste a beer, the UKians [is the term 'poms' a no-no nowadays?] being in the process of switching to lagers and were drinking liquids such as Budweiser and Fosters.
It was tempting to stay longer than we intended but other places beckoned.
Mmmmmm fried bread.
Spent the day doing housework nonstop. The place was a tip. Back to work tomorrow…
Being quite bemused by the scarcity of female vocals in the Triple J Hottest 100!
Hahahahaha sorry David!
got to Farmer’s Market and had a leisurely shop, incl 4Kg or so Granny Smiths for a batch of apple butter, a lovely lemon & Woodside goat curd tart, hmmm tangy lemon then rich smooth goat curd & cream, and a couple other things.
got home, put stuff away and brushed dog to within an inch of the bitch’s life then off to Smithfield Plains for a trial.
Hey hey, another trial, another bomb
Partly my fault, nerves stopped me concentrating on proper ringcraft, esp correct pace, very crisp so she was heeling but not close and occasionally in front of me. But did the heeling/automatic sit, the drops & stands and i was getting my hopes up then “fast pace” and before long Demi shot off and ran a nice rapid ring around me, bombing the trial but at least not running out the ring. Still bombed!
Hmmmm going to make a lead out of string and a bit of dowel, then take lead off, making a big fuss, while quietly putting on the string lead
then practise rapid pace healing.
I knew it was going to be difficult, no one gets a terrier (except for the larger, more placid Staffy, Ayredale and Bull terrier breeds. But hey, all good fun!
Will make some risotto soon with french Chanterelle mushrooms which will be followed by osso buco then a second slice of the tart. Life is good, now if the bitch would pass a trial every now and then grumble grizzle kwetch hmmphh.
Pilsner, hmmmm.
Mash in at 40C, leave 10 mins, pull a decoction to get to 50C, 10 min rest then decoction to get to 68C sacharification rest for 60 minutes, then decoct to mash out.
Triple decoction mash like that, where part of the grains (not liquid) are boiled & stirred back into main mash to raise that to next temp step. Melanoidins (flavor compounds, those put there by browning through heat, and some caramelisation makes the true pilsner a beautiful beer. Off set with a fair amount of lovely spicy Czech Saaz hops.
German Pils are a much lower form of beverage altogether.
JJJ has proudly put out its top 100 songs of all time as voted by some half a million …
An English female bandmember makes 81, with the men in the team. Other than that – there appear to be no women in the list before then.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/12/2623493.htm?section=justin
I love a brown ale in winter time – having one now – or stout. I used to make brown ale with a can of stout and a can of beer thrown together with lashings of dark malt and corn syrup.
I once managed to keep a long neck of this brew for two years before I drank it. MMMM, nectar of the Gods. You should have seen the head, bubbles so fine it looked like cream, and didn’t even collapse ’til the end of the glass.
While my wife was at work for 4 hrs, I finished off the minestrone (stock yesterday) and made some white choc (with some dark choc) macadamia nut cookies.
Brown ale, oh yeah, see if you can get say 250g roasted rye malt, 250g caramunich malt, steep overnight in 2.5L water overnight. Strain into simmering wort and add some English hops, bring to strong boil, boil 15 or 30 minutes.
Oh, and leave dried corn syrup to the packet soup manufacturers.
The roast rye malt gives a fantastic flavor!
Chinese cook off tonight. Char siu bao, custard buns, and the piece de resistance, Har Gao (prawn dumplings), which – much to our surprise – tasted 100% as good as any yum cha har gao I’ve hard, including the wrapping, which officially blew my socks off.
Evening L had a lazy Sunday reading and had a barbecue with a couple of friends from the city, then it was time to feed the dogs so I drove down the paddock with my friends and shot a kangaroo. I cut its legs off to feed the dogs my friends were absolutely amazed that I could harvest 3KG,s of quality dog meat for the cost of a 20 cent bullet when they would have to pay $40 or so for a tin of the same at the supermarket.Hey I would like to know how to brew 5 gallons of beer that would come in handy save a lot of money eh.Cheers
Helped an old friend out. Still wondering what, or who, it was that was “chucked out of the 23rd [adverb of copulation] floor.”
Saturday – went to the local monthly meeting of Socialist Alliance, now on Saturday mornings in a coffee shop instead of Wednesday nights in a pub. (Winter nights up/down here can be shocking.)Handed out some fliers against privatisation of NSW prisons in the Armidale Mall after meeting, then home. Spent some time on LP, read and commented on a chapter of a friend’s book, e-mailed off comments. Researching the battles of Lexington/Concord, taking notes on it for the next chapter of my book. (Lieut. Governor Francis Grose fought with 52nd Lt. Infantry in Lexington/Concord, Bunker Hill, the siege of Fort Montgomery and the battle of Monmouth Courthouse, in which latter battle he was severely wounded. Though Grose didn’t arrive in Sydney till 1792 on the Pitt, as the only Third Fleeter, thought I better include him in my book.)
Sunday, a little while on line, but most of the day note-taking as above. Mostly boring TV Sunday night.
(Does any body else find these latest Miss Marple plots extrardinarily tangled? I;ve only read some of the Hercule Poirot books by Agatha Christie, and that was a long time ago.)
btw, the BBc has done a TV series of Austen’s Emma, coming out iEngland this season. Can’t get to see previews as tey block video clips on line here.Can hardly wait.
Well I watched a doco about Toussaint L’Overture and the Haitian revolution, picked up some plastic storage tubs for my 7″45s, went for a nice long walk and a coffee with my partner and child, cooked dinner, watched half or ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ and read a chapter of Jeff Sparrow’s book ‘Killing: misadventures in violence’. Not a bad day…
AdamTuckerNo @81: There are some other women in the Hottest 100, barely. There are the vocalists on the two Massive Attack tracks. And The White Stripes, The Dandy Warhols, New Order, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Pixies all have a female band member each. I think that’s about it, though. No songs primarily by women.
Which is still terrible, of course. The list has a pretty strong 90s skew, and it’s not as if there were no women making excellent, lasting music in the 90s… I’m sure some of them got regular airplay on JJJ even (e.g. Zombie by The Cranberries was #1 in a Hottest 100). It’s puzzling and depressing.
Life’s too short to do full mash beers, JM (or at least until I retire), but I generally get a satisfactory result with spray-dried malt. The beer I intended to make would have used up the last of some plugs of Tettnang I got off you a couple of years ago. (They keep OK in the freezer.)
I make lagers in the winter to drink in the summer, and ales in the summer to drink in the winter. It means I can use the rhythm of the seasons to keep things at around the right temperature. (Occasionally I run out of ale, of course, and have to do an emergency brew-up with the heater, but mostly it works out.)