Java was superb!

Despite having done introductory courses in Bahasa Indonesia (ahem) four times over the past 28 years, and having visited numerous other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, I'd never been to Indonesia. In many Australian minds, Indonesia means Bali … and Bali conjures notions of drunken Australians offending locals and being jailed. So Bali had never been on the wish list, and you hear far less about tourism to other parts of the vast archipelago.

So, when Andrew and I saw an ad for a rail and bus tour from one end of Java to the other, we jumped at the opportunity. The tour, run by Railway Adventures, was just over two weeks long and included both well known Javanese places and experiences (Borobudur Temple, volcanoes, Prambanan Temple, puppet workshops, coffee plantations, mosques) and less obvious activities (musical instrument workshops, railway museums, architecture, rural villages and markets). The transport spanned the gamut, from trains (fast, panoramic, standard and steam) to coaches, mini-buses, becaks (motorbike taxis), jeeps and golf carts, to a ferry.

It was a fabulous introduction to a country I'd long wanted to visit. We'd like to go back to explore some of its other islands one day.

Eeeeek. We caught COVID. Or maybe COVID caught us?

After four years of managing to evade COVID-19, through hermetic behaviour and good luck, Andrew and I finally caught it about two weeks ago. More specifically, he caught it (probably from a café near his workplace) and I succumbed four days later. It has been … boring. Don't get me wrong, we're super grateful for the six COVID vaccinations we've had over the years, as they've likely saved us from severe illness or even death. But I have a short attention span and have struggled to simply rest and recuperate, rather than living my usual action-packed existence. Really hoping I test negative in a day or two so I can re-join the world.

Anyway. While trapped at home I've read some excellent books, such as:

Day by Michael Cunningham
Over Her Dead Body by Susan Walter
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher Koch

and listened to plenty of fabulous podcasts, including:

Global Roaming
Legacy
Midsomer Murders Mayhem
The History Chicks
The Rest is Politics

If you, too, are languishing at home and looking for stimulation … enjoy!

Nurturing brain and body

Occasionally we hear sad stories about people who retire one day then die the next, or count down till retirement only to find it unsatisfying and boring. I'm trying to be strategic about my transition to retirement … gradually reducing the amount of paid work I do while increasing voluntary and leisure activities. 

In 2006 I dropped from five work days to four (taking a 20% pay cut; this was long before current ideas of four-day weeks) and took up two volunteer jobs. In 2012 I started doing some freelance work on the side of my day job, and in 2018 I left the day job to make freelancing my main activity. Self-employment can be a bit of a roller coaster, time-wise, and some weeks I'd work 30+ hours; other weeks it was fewer than ten. Early on, I felt compelled to accept most work I was offered in case the offers dried up. Over the past couple of years I haven't needed to do that; I have enough work (and enough income) to support myself so can afford to slow down and smell the roses.

Not my roses. One of our neighbours has a great collection though!

Anyway, it's been fun. Life, these days, features gardening, volunteering, socialising, exercise (boot camp, barre classes and cycling), a community orchestra, random lectures and webinars, and still some paid work. And while I exercise, cook and do housework, I listen to podcasts. They fill gaps in my brain! I didn't always pay attention in school, or take notice of momentous world events happening around me in the seventies and eighties, so am grateful to a whole flock of podcasters for letting me know what I missed. A few current favourites:

Global Roaming – current world affairs with Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald

Empire – how empires have shaped the world, with William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

Legacy – stories of influential people, with Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch

Cautionary Tales – mistakes and what we can learn from them, with Tim Harford

Radio Atlantic – stories and conversations with various hosts

Lady Killers – Lucy Worsley explores historical crimes by women

7am – stories in the news

Full Story – stories in the news

The Waves – news stories from a gender perspective

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy myself a coffee. And listen to a podcast on the way :-)

I don't. (With thanks to Clementine Ford.)

I've read so many great books lately. Despite making a living as an editor (and having a sense of the constant stream of new ideas pouring into the world) I'm always pleasantly surprised to be exposed to points of view I hadn't previously encountered or considered. It's also fun, and intriguing, when multiple books coincidentally explore similar ideas, maybe across multiple genres. I want to recommend three books I've read over the past month:

I Don't: The Case Against Marriage by Clementine Ford (non-fiction, history/polemic)

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder (non-fiction, biography/musings)

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan (fiction with a touch of history)

A little background about why these books feel so influential. In the 1980s-channelling-1950s household I grew up in, marriage was the only 'career' option for a female. (Never mind that it required no qualifications and was unpaid.) Girls in my family were not educated, not prepared for a working life outside the home; we were supposed to be 'married off' as soon as possible, preferably (to quote my dad) to rich blokes who could support him in his old age. Ha. I was a smart kid but somehow let myself get sucked into the vortex of doom. I was engaged at 19, married at 20, separated at 22 and divorced at 24. Did I expect that my marriage would be till death did us part? Well, yes, I did. If Mr Wrong hadn't been so thoroughly, utterly wrong for me, I probably would have tried to stay married. So, in a way, I'm grateful it was such an unmitigated disaster! I've been with my current partner, Andrew, for over 32 years. We're not married and never will be. That's not to say we're not committed to each other. But there's no need for a legal contract to say so.

Clementine Ford's book was revelatory as it clearly spelled out the case against marriage. That the institution is not about protection, it's about control. Her meticulous research provided insights into many aspects of relationships and the law, past and present. Anna Funder's book looked at the same issue but by examining one woman's experience of marriage: George Orwell's wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy, brilliant in her own right but largely erased from history due to her subordinate role as wife. J. Courtney Sullivan's novel weaves together five compelling stories to explore the changing nature of marriage over six decades.

I'd never quite shaken that idea, instilled by my parents from a very early age, that one had to be married. That being married was the pinnacle of life achievement and that the unmarried were somehow lesser beings. Happily, Clementine Ford's book managed to snap me out of that outdated and frankly ludicrous idea. Hopefully forever!

Binge-reading Sri Lanka

The countdown is on. I'm going to Sri Lanka in less than a week. Woo hoo! The country has been at the top of my bucket list for decades and the trip, a small group tour, has been booked and rescheduled and rescheduled. Finally I think it's going to happen. Accordingly, I've been reading (and sometimes rereading) fiction and non-fiction about Sri Lanka and by Sri Lankan writers, to get in the mood and top up my knowledge. Recommended:

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan
Untethered by Ayesha Noon
Saree by Su Dharmapala
The Body in the Paddy Field and Murder at the Wedding by Nadishka Aloysius
Growing: Seven Years in Ceylon by Leonard Woolf

and the one that got away …  The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne. I bought this novel second-hand, in paperback, several years ago and enjoyed it. I donated it to our local bookfair, assuming I'd track it down again if I ever wanted to reread it, and have never found it. Maybe there'll be a copy somewhere in my travels. Fingers crossed.

Tales of time travel (thank you, Jess)

Two months ago I wrote about how I'd read and reread Shirley Conran's scandalous novel, Lace, many times over the past forty years. Someone called Jess commented under the post that she'd done the same thing with Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow. I'd never read that book (in fact, never read anything by Ruth Park, who like me was born in New Zealand but lived most of her life in Australia) so I tracked the book down. It was magnificent. The novel is set in The Rocks, Sydney, and is about a teenager who is transported back to Victorian times. I really liked it and, like Jess, think it'll become one of those books I read again. Thanks for the recommendation!

On a vaguely related note, another classic I'd failed to read until recently is On the Beach by Nevil Shute. It's a delightful if dystopian novel written in the late 1950s and set in the early 1960s, after a nuclear war has killed most of the world's population. People in the southern states of Australia await the inevitable radiation sickness that will eventually end their lives. I don't usually read sci-fi but this book was both an interesting (and timely) thought experiment and a fascinating glimpse into the middle-class mores of sixty years ago. I liked the book and plan to read it again soon to more fully appreciate its nuances.

On the Beach was also made into a film in 1959. I haven't managed to track down a copy yet. But Australians often wryly exclaim about the end of the world (i.e. the end of the book and film) occurring on a Melbourne beach. Turns out the more precise location, in the book at least, is Point Lonsdale, Victoria. Andrew and I happened to visit Point Lonsdale around the same time I was reading On the Beach. It was so cold and windswept on the day we visited – despite it being late November, in the southern hemisphere summer – that the end of the world was sort of plausible.

Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine by Sarah Lohman

A few weeks ago I posted about two spicy delights – crispy chilli oil and vegan kimchi – I'd recently discovered. There's another new (to me) product that deserves honourable mention: Huy Fong Sriracha sauce. Late last year I read Sarah Lohman's fascinating book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, and realised I used most of the flavourings (things like black pepper, vanilla, chilli, soy sauce, garlic, etc.) all the time but had barely any concept of Sriracha. What was it? Where did one find it? How to use it? I'd enjoyed the Sriracha Eggs Benedict at Muse but their use of it was subtle. What WAS Sriracha? Turns out it's a hot chilli sauce, and available at any nearby supermarket! I bought a bottle and, oh yes, it's amazing. Addictively good. Now that I have it in the house, I look for any excuse to use it.

I really liked Sarah Lohman's whole book. She explores the history behind each of the eight flavours … how they were brought to the USA and by whom. Intriguing tales. Well worth a read.

Rereading Shirley Conran's Lace

Recently, I heard a radio program in which well-known authors talked about their favourite books, the ones they've read and reread throughout their lives. It made me wonder … what was that book for me? For one of the authors it was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Of course. A classic. But I didn't discover Pride and Prejudice, or many other classics, until well into adulthood.

On reflection, I realised the book I have read and reread and reread again over the past forty years is Lace by Shirley Conran. It was the (southern hemisphere) summer of 1982/83 and I was fifteen years old, living in a provincial city in New Zealand. Between my penultimate and final years of high school I was working multiple casual jobs, as a raspberry picker and a dishwasher and a babysitter. Lace was published in 1982 and quickly became a bestseller. I splurged ($10) to buy the mass-market paperback version and practically inhaled it. Then I read it again to better understand the intricate, detailed plot. I kept rereading it until the paperback disintegrated and I bought the Kindle version! I recently read it yet again.

As the uneducated, untravelled child of uneducated, untravelled parents, I had great, gaping holes in my knowledge of the world. Minimal knowledge of history, geography, languages and cultures. Zero insight into the world of work or feminism or alternative lifestyles (alternative, that is, to working-class, patriarchal heteronormative mediocrity). The book suggested that there were other ways to live one's life than those I'd observed around me. It provided glimpses into other countries and cultures, historical events, industries and workplaces, and the complexities of relationships.

Nowhere near as wholesome as Jane Austen but a vital part of my education. Thank you Shirley Conran. The book still manages to surprise and delight me, even forty years later.

Things I wish I'd known earlier

This month I'm turning 55. Fifty-five! Fun fact about getting older … you don't really notice it. Not yet, anyway. I always thought I'd feel different, somehow, but seem to be the same person as before. Just with a few more strands of silver in my hair. The upcoming birthday has prompted me to reflect on what I know and when I knew it. Not so much what I would have done differently (what's the point of regrets?) but wisdom that took a while to crystallise.

Exercise. It's good for you and FUN. My family was inert. No one voluntarily exercised, no one participated in any sport, and being a pudgy, four-eyed, pigeon-toed little critter, I embraced the inertia. Why move when you could curl up with a good mystery novel? I was academically able but wildly out of touch with mainstream New Zealand, which (in the 1970s and '80s, at least) revered sportspeople and reviled education. My first tentative experiences with exercise, apart from the hideous PE classes at school, were as a teenager when I did a little competitive cycling (using a borrowed bike) and jogging. Forty years later, exercise is one of my great joys in life. It's good for the body, it's good for the mind, and it's also a handy way of getting from A to B and back again.

Asking for help. I've had some fabulous, if accidental, mentors over my life. In 1980 a teacher at my high school taught me the flute, free of charge, for a year when my parents were unwilling and unable to pay for lessons. In 1983 my high school psychology teacher helped me through a rough year. In 1993 a university academic hired me as a temporary research assistant then offered to supervise my master's degree research. In 2007, my boss asked me to edit his writing, leading to a whole new career path. I'm grateful to all these people (and have told them so). I wish, though, that I'd known earlier in life that it's okay to ask for help. I didn't ask for help when a gang of older girls tormented me in the school grounds. I didn't ask for help when a kid on the school bus assaulted me. I didn't ask for help as I assumed I'd be blamed or punished rather than helped. Even now, I'm pretty uncomfortable asking for any kind of assistance, but I'm working on it.

The world of work. When I was thrust into my first full-time office job, at the wildly immature age of 16, I'd never set foot in an office before. Nor had anyone else in my very working-class household. So I was ignorant of office etiquette and business communication and made all sorts of errors. Less than three years later I was promoted to my first supervisory role and, having barely mastered office etiquette as an underling, made all sorts of new bloopers! These days I'm addicted to Alison Green's wonderful blog, Ask a Manager, but back then there was no internet and no one to ask for advice on how to behave, whether as a worker or a boss. It doesn't matter anymore as I'm happily self-employed and rarely face office etiquette issues (yaaaay) but I still cringe when I recall those early stumbles.

Job satisfaction. When I was young I had no idea that work could be enjoyable or satisfying. My parents appeared to hate their jobs, seeing them simply as a source of much-needed income rather than having potential for pleasure. I, too, assumed that I'd spend forty years doing work I detested. It wasn't till I was about 27 that I first had a job I enjoyed, and I fell into my dream job at 40 (and haven't looked back). Work is awesome. It's been a joy to finally find an occupation that's so much fun.

Gender. Gender was an absolute binary when I grew up … or so it seemed. The female gender (to which I was instantly assigned at birth) was clearly inferior in the society I grew up in, i.e. 1960s, '70s, '80s New Zealand. It's hard to disentangle how much of that feeling came from the wider culture and how much came from my family but, either way, my entire life has been affected by the label. The toys I played with, the clothes I was allowed to wear, the subjects I studied, the housework tasks I was trained to do, the career ambitions that were automatically ruled out. All for the misfortune of being labelled female. It's only been in the past five years or so that I've become aware of the non-binary gender option and I'm sure I would have readily embraced that, had it been available fifty years ago. No idea how my life might have panned out, in such a parallel universe, but I do wonder …

Little things that make a big difference. If you wash delicates and favourite clothes in wash bags they'll last much longer. A well-stocked freezer is handy for busy times and unexpected pandemics. How to cut an onion (weirdly, I first saw this method in the French movie Délicieux. It was a revelation!) Use an electric toothbrush and floss regularly. Be polite and respectful. Refuse, reduce, repair, repurpose, reuse, recycle. Don't accumulate clutter. Try not to overeat. Educate yourself. Gardening soothes the soul.

That's it. Wisdom that's taken a long time to distil!

NZ yams in Canberra. At last!

It's been an adventure. Ever since moving to Australia from New Zealand, more than thirty years ago, I've missed yams. While yam is often used as a generic word for sweet potatoes, here I mean oca or Oxalis tuberosa. It's a small, pinkish, finger-shaped sweet potato that melts in the mouth when added to a roast dinner. While it's possible to buy many NZ groceries in Australia (at the supermarket or via mail order) I craved, and couldn't find, NZ yams for a long time. 

In 2018, I discovered that an online garden store in Queensland was selling yam plants by mail order so I ordered three (very expensive) plants, which arrived safely but died soon after. Later in 2018 I ordered ten yam tubers from an online garden store in Victoria. They produced foliage but the plants didn't survive the Canberra summer. After a year off to ponder my failures, I bought yet more tubers (nine, this time) from Queensland in 2020. Once again, they sprouted foliage but produced no yams. 

What was I doing wrong?

When, in 2021, I found that Feijoa Addiction in Brisbane was selling 5 kg boxes of yams by mail order, I bought 5 kg. Then another 5 kg! They were delicious. Given all my failures in growing them, I intended to eat rather than plant the whole 10 kg. But a couple of green-thumbed friends suggested we should each plant a few at our respective houses and see if anyone could successfully grow yams in and around Canberra. So I shared little bags of yams with five friends and also put some tubers aside to plant at my place. Here's a rough timeline:

August 2021: purchased yams

October 2021: planted yams in pots

November 2021: foliage appeared

December 2021: planted the yam plants in four different locations

(with different exposure to the elements) around the house

(above and below) June 2022: success! We have yams

The yam plants in shady spots on the southern side of the house produced tubers (1.2 kg in total) whereas the plants in sunnier places on the western and northern sides of the house produced none. My guess is that the reason those plants failed (and previous years' plants failed) was that I planted them in full sun and they cooked in the ground. D'oh. It also seems important to plant them in mounds of soil so there's plenty of room for the wee tubers to develop.

Delighted to finally have some home grown yams. Last night I made a vego roast dinner with pumpkin, onions, yams and broccoli. Yum.

Mincecraft and Aunty Bri

Many, many years ago I studied at Massey University, in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Well, when I say I studied there, it was mostly as an 'extramural' or external student, so I didn't spend much time at the actual campus. My degree was spread over seven years of part-time study (and full-time work) and I attended the campus a couple of weeks per year to participate in lectures and schmooze with fellow extramural students.

Anyway! Massey's student newspaper was called Chaff. The Macquarie Dictionary defines chaff as:

the husks of grains and grasses separated from the seed

and I guess the name was derived from Massey's previous identity as an agricultural college. It wasn't unusual to see Massey students wearing gumboots to class. My favourite thing in Chaff was Aunty Bri's advice column. It was hilarious. When I spotted Aunty Bri's Cook Book and Guide to Flatting Life in the university bookshop circa 1990 I couldn't resist buying a copy. It remains a treasure to this day.

Aunty Bri's book is a guide to negotiating life with flatmates but also contains heaps of simple, cheap recipes. Some of the recipes are philosophical rather than edible and many of the (edible) recipes involve mince. When I think of Aunty Bri, I think of mince. I don't cook much meat these days, but if you do, and you're trying to think what to make for dinner tonight, here are some of my mince recipes (no, not stolen from Aunty Bri):

Chinese dumplings
deconstructed samosas
Greek-style meatballs with tomato sauce and olives

If you, like me, are getting less carnivorous in your old age, there's always the plant-based option …

Brekkie @ My Rainbow-Dreams Vegetarian Café

I've always been puzzled by the unnecessary hyphen. My Rainbow-Dreams has been in Dickson, Canberra, for many years and has some fabulous vego offerings. But why the weird hyphen? I guess we'll never know. 

Anyway … a couple of months ago I referred a large editing job I didn't have time for to another editor friend. Soon after that, she surprised me with a gift voucher for a meal at My Rainbow-Dreams! A lovely gesture. Today, Andrew and I popped on our fluffy hats, braved the winter chill, and headed to Dickson for brekkie.

I had the vegan Rainbow Brekkie, featuring spicy scrambled tofu, mushrooms, vege-based 'bacon', tomato, toast and baked beans:

while Andrew had the vegetarian version of the same, which substituted poached eggs for the tofu and butter for the olive oil.

Oh, and we had coffee too!

Lovely food in a lovely spot and thanks to my friend for nudging us to go there. The café also has some spectacular vego cakes, biscuits and bliss balls … it's a great place to go for a sweet treat.

Apple pie jaffles and some words about words

One of my favourite purchases during the Great Plague of 2020 till who knows when has been a jaffle maker. Jaffles are toasted sandwiches where the edges are squished together to keep the filling inside.

I bought mine from a camping store (Anaconda) and while I'm sure it'd work well over a campfire, I've always used it on my stove. Jaffles are usually made with bread (buttered on the outside) and fillings, but I've discovered you can also make quick and easy pies in a jaffle maker. Intra Café in Campbell has some delicious jaffles on its menu … maybe they're becoming fashionable? My parents had a jaffle maker, very similar to my newish one, more than fifty years ago, but my mum called jaffles 'toasty pies'. Maybe jaffle is an Australianism? Or a brand name?

Anyway, this got me thinking about my family's odd dialect. When I was growing up, my parents used various words that I didn't hear elsewhere. We were a fairly insular family so there wasn't much linguistic cross-pollination with outsiders, and sometimes I'd use a word (say, with school friends) and they'd look perplexed (or horrified). I have no idea where my parents' vocabulary sprang from. Maybe the words and phrases had been handed down from our various Welsh and Irish working-class ancestors. I moved from New Zealand to Australia more than thirty years ago so have tended to adopt local terms to fit in. Some examples …

What I say now (Australianism?)	Mum’s word or phrase	Dad’s word or phrase
(bath)robe	housecoat	dressing gown
face washer	face cloth	flannel
jaffle	toasty pie	?
laundry	wash house	?
lounge	sitting room	living room
sofa	settee	couch?
swimsuit (or swimmers)	bathing costume	togs

Anyway, to the recipe. An easy way to make stove-top apple pies:

1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry (defrosted)
1 apple, chopped
spice/s to taste (I'm a bit obsessed with cardamom, but you could use cinnamon or ginger or whatever)

Cut the pastry sheet into four squares. Arrange half a chopped apple on each of two squares, sprinkle with spice and/or sugar if desired, place the remaining squares on top of the apple-filled ones and pinch around the edges to seal. Place the pies into the jaffle maker and cook over a medium-heat stove element, rotating regularly, until the pies look crispy and brown. Enjoy!

Nine weeks of lockdown, but who's counting?

Well! Nine weeks ago today the Australian Capital Territory (i.e. Canberra) was plunged into COVID lockdown. It was initially supposed to last for two weeks but the cases kept happening and are still happening. We've barely left our suburb in the past nine weeks and are forever grateful that we decided to upgrade from a townhouse to a free-standing house in 2016, as the garden is a delight if we must be trapped at home. So, what have I been doing lately …?

Reading books

So many books! I've barely bought any paper books in the almost ten years since I first got a Kindle. Whenever I want to read a book, I first check whether our wonderful local library service has a copy (and order it online if it does), then consider whether to buy it on Kindle if it doesn't. I usually have a massive pile of library books on my bedside table, and read vigorously to finish them all before they're due back. Of course, that plan has gone pear-shaped since the lockdown was announced as the library is locked down too. So, I've been reading the backlog of books I'd accumulated on my Kindle. It's been great. Some recent reads include Ladyparts: A Memoir by Deborah Copaken, Redhanded: An Exploration of Criminals, Cannibals, Cults, and What Makes a Killer Tick by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire, Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all by Laura Bates, Weird English by Evelyn Nien-Ming Ch'ien, Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose, and All About Yves: Notes from a transition by Yves Rees. Oh. My. Goodness. That's a lot of books. All of them have been excellent. I may get a rude shock when the library reopens, too, as my reservation list is up to 20 books. Fingers crossed they don't all arrive at once.

Listening to podcasts

So many podcasts! So little time. Some current favourites include Bad Blood: The Final Chapter, Catfish, Cautionary Tales, Hunting Ghislaine, Killer Psyche, Ms Represented and The Trap. I really only listen to podcasts when I'm doing housework (washing dishes, gardening, walking to the shops) and the time available for podcasts tends to vary depending how much editing work I have.

Watching movies

When we're allowed to go out I usually try to watch at least one film, at the cinema, each week. While the cinema's been unavailable, Andrew and I have been watching old movies at home each Sunday afternoon. He even makes popcorn. Woo hoo.

Gathering and cooking and eating food 

When I'm feeling anxious (and, y'know, there's a pandemic on) I tend to hoard food. Not to the point that any gets wasted, but our cupboards and freezer are pretty full at the moment. Not to mention that I spend even more time than usual dreaming of food and planning meals. Aaaargh. I have tried a couple of new recipes lately: chana aloo (chickpea and potato curry) and warm French goat's cheese salad. Both were delicious. Oh, and I've discovered you can use a stovetop jaffle maker to cook mini pies, using defrosted pastry sheets. And that if you stud the top of a chocolate mud cake with chopped up Mars bars, it's even more fun. Yep. Terrible photo but yummy cake.

Gardening

Last but not least. The garden is, and will always be, a work in progress. Here are some of our spring flowers this year.

I don't grow many vegetables, as we have an amazing organic shop nearby, but I do have a lovely crop of garlic at the moment and recently planted some yams from the (ahem) 10 kg I bought via mail order. We've also built up a collection of young fruit trees over the past five years: feijoa, plum, apricot, pomegranate, lemon and lime. Oh, and the many berry bushes are flourishing.

Yams and other lockdown delights

Today is day seven of an (at least) 21-day lockdown here in Canberra. We had more than a year go by with no local cases of COVID-19, then it all kicked off again. My partner and I – being fifty-plus and the antithesis of anti-vaxxers – are fully vaccinated, but know we need to take the restrictions seriously. Only venturing outside of the house for approved reasons and wearing face masks when we do. Very grateful that we can still earn a living from home. So, anyway …! If we can't go out we look for things we can enjoy at home.

Yams! I've written before about my ongoing craving for NZ yams and my repeated unsuccessful attempts to grow them in Canberra. Sigh. I recently discovered that a Brisbane company sells big boxes of yams, in season, by mail order, so I bought (ahem) five kilograms. Bliss. We're gorging on them.

Gardening. Spring flowers are starting to appear :-)

Boot camp. My boot camp instructor has been providing video workouts we can do at home. Yaaaay! It's especially fun when his dog Daisy and cat Bella join in too.

Books. As always, I have numerous books on the go. Just finished the gorgeous novel China Room by Sunjeev Sahota, and currently reading the beautiful but harrowing memoir No Matter Our Wreckage by Gemma Carey. (Both borrowed from our wonderful local library.) I'm also wading through a whole bunch of books on my Kindle right now: Spoon-Fed (food science) by Tim Spector, Limbo (sociology) by Alfred Lubrano, River of the Dead (murder mystery) by Barbara Nadel, The Human Tide (demography) by Paul Morland … and more. I tend to read a chapter of one book, then switch to another book and read a chapter of that, and so on. Oh, and I'm receiving a steady stream of editing work (economics, environmental science, social work, law and history, this month alone) so if I'm not reading for pleasure I'm reading for profit. Nice.

Last but not least, podcasts. Current favourites include China, If You're Listening; The Trap; Big Mood, Little Mood; Dark Poutine; RedHanded; Democracy Sausage; Dr Death and Killer Psyche.

Sending warm fuzzy thoughts to everyone in lockdown.

All roads lead to Istanbul

You know how sometimes you read or hear about something, and suddenly find yourself reading and hearing and noticing more and more about that topic? Well, I'm a little bit obsessed with Turkey at the moment. Particularly its history and food.

About seven years ago I stumbled across Barbara Nadel's fabulous Inspector Ikmen mystery series, set in Istanbul. One book led to another, then another, and I try to space them out so I don't read them all before the author has time to write more! So far, so good; I'm just about to start the eleventh book in the series (and 23 have been published, to date) so they won't run out any time soon. Phew. The cast of characters, locations, snippets of history and occasional forays to other parts of Turkey are all fascinating.

Then I read the lovely Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire by Alev Scott. Part travelogue, part history book, it explores twelve countries to find remaining traces of the Ottoman empire. Scott's descriptions are vivid and her interviews insightful. A glimpse into an exotic region.

Next, a gorgeous debut novel! Barbara Nadel (mentioned above) recommended Nektaria Anastasiadou's recent book A Recipe for Daphne on Twitter and I'm so glad I bought a copy. The story is set amongst Istanbul's Rum (Greek Orthodox) community and weaves together history, culture, food and romance. I thoroughly enjoyed this mouth-watering tale and hope we'll see many more from its brilliant young author.

Last but not least, I'm currently rereading Jen Lin-Liu's delightful On the Noodle Road. During an overland journey from Beijing to Rome, the author considers the various foods, flavours and cooking styles along the Silk Road, and shares experiences with people met along the way. It's been fun to think about the similarities and differences between the foods eaten in the various countries, and how early explorers may have circulated recipes and ingredients from place to place.

We can't travel overseas at the moment so I've been indulging in the next best thing, armchair travel through reading. Turkey is on my wish list if our borders ever reopen.

As the Year of the Introvert continues …

 … all the social distancing means I've continued to get plenty of editing work (busiest year ever!) but am also finding lots of time for reading, listening to podcasts, gardening and cooking. 2020 has been one big festival of comfort food and, while springtime has mostly arrived in Canberra:

we're still having the occasional cooler day. When the rain comes down and the fluffy hats go on, I've been cooking stuff like Annabel Crabb's Glass Potatoes. Yum yum YUM.

I've also discovered yet more fabulous podcasts. Beenham Valley Road, Michelle Obama, Wilosophy, America, if you're listening and Friday Night Comedy are all worth a listen.

The garden is (as always) a joy. My yams have developed foliage, flowers are bursting forth all over the place, our fruit trees and berry bushes are (literally and figuratively) blossoming and the garlic crop is almost ready for harvest.

Hang in there … 

Spring delights

Happy spring! Or happy autumn [fall] if you're reading this in the northern hemisphere. I had my three busiest months of editing ever in June, July and August, and am currently enjoying a more relaxed September. This has conveniently coincided with plenty of things to do in the garden, many great books to read, and heaps of fabulous podcasts to listen to. Self-employment is GREAT.

I recently finished reading The Erratics, a memoir by Vicki Laveau-Harvie. It was brilliant. While the reviews for the book make it sound quite grim (the author's parents were bizarre), it's so beautifully written, and even humorous, that it was a joy to read. While we're on the topic of dysfunctional families ... I collected Mary Trump's book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man from my local library today. I 'attended' a live-streamed interview with Dr Trump as part of the Canberra Writers Festival a couple of weeks ago and found it intriguing so am eager to learn more.

Another activity I have more time for, when between jobs, is listening to podcasts. There are just sooooo many great podcasts available now! Some stand-outs include Trace and Patient Zero on ABC Radio National, No Filter with Mia Freedman, Think Like an Economist, Dax Shepard's interview with Atul Gawande, Democracy Sausage, and Mamamia True Crime Conversations.

Anyway, while listening to all the wonderful podcasts I'm often pottering in the garden. It's looking fabulous. The arborist came to trim our large, old eucalypts so falling branches don't kill us in our sleep, and our fruit trees (plum, apricot, lemon ...) are blossoming. In what is, perhaps, the triumph of optimism over experience, I'm attempting to grow NZ yams. (Again.) Yams are a root vegetable I really enjoyed while growing up in New Zealand, but which I've never seen for sale here in Australia. I bought some yam plants via mail order in 2018; they appeared alive when they arrived in Canberra but soon keeled over. Perhaps because I inadvertently over-watered them. In 2019, I bought some yam tubers, also by mail order, and planted them in the garden, to no avail. The foliage developed but there were no new yams underneath. Determined to do better this time, I purchased nine yam tubers this year, and have planted them in pots so I can better protect them from cold weather while the foliage forms. Let's see how that goes ...

All fingers and toes crossed that I manage to grow some yams. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bake a loaf of pumpkin bread.

2020 ... a weirdly wordy year

Well, it's been a strange year so far. January and February featured bush fires in south-eastern Australia and almost as soon as the air cleared there was a new threat: a global pandemic. Andrew and I are fortunate to be in good health and still employed (or in my case, self-employed), but the various crises have altered our day to day life. We're really glad to have bought a house with a garden four years ago as (at least when the air is breathable ...) pottering in the garden is always an option.

In the absence of some other regular activities (e.g. cinemas in Canberra were closed for about four months, and cafes for almost as long) I've been reading lots of books. Even more than usual. Here are some of my favourites lately:

The Inspector Ikmen mysteries by Barbara Nadel. Set in Turkey, these stories are gritty, intricate and fascinating. So far there are twenty books in the series and I'm about half way through ... I space them out to make the series (and my enjoyment) last longer.

All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black. An intriguing glimpse into Professor Black's career as a forensic anthropologist. As well as finding the subject matter engrossing, I liked the author's Scottish 'accent', which led me to ...

... the fictional murder mysteries of Val McDermid. I've only read one so far (The Distant Echo) but it was excellent. Skilfully crafted and very hard to put down. Book two in the series awaits.

Kevin Kwan! I've raved about his fabulous Crazy Rich Asians trilogy before and was delighted to buy his latest novel Sex and Vanity the moment it came out. Another absolute triumph. It's hilariously entertaining. The characters, the fashion, the food, the locations, the laugh out loud footnotes. I really, really hope he keeps writing novels as I want to keep reading them!

On a more serious (yet sometimes funny) note The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols has also been a worthwhile read. Professor Nichols explores how technology, narcissism and populism have 'created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement'. A book we all need to read and digest in these Trump-ridden times.

Angela Savage spoke at an editing conference I attended last year and I made a note, at the time, to track down her novel Mother of Pearl. It was well written, interesting and thought provoking. The story is set in Australia, Thailand and Cambodia and explores commercial surrogacy. (Turns out Angela Savage has also written a series of mystery novels set in Southeast Asia ... I'm planning to start reading one of them shortly!)

Last but not least, I really liked Lori Gottlieb's memoir Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. I was familiar with Gottlieb's advice column 'Dear Therapist' in The Atlantic, and her book weaves together cases from her counselling practice and stories from her life and career. Another compelling read.

Happily, as well as reading for fun I also get to edit for a living, and 2020 has been super busy. I'm wondering if it's because people in lockdown and/or working from home have more time to write, thus more need for editing? To date, I've copyedited eighteen theses this year. One of the great joys of being an academic editor is getting to learn about many different topics, and topics lately have included:

• the history of a Sydney psychiatric hospital
• agriculture and rural development in Viet Nam
• building teacher capacity through coaching
• migration and 'brain drain'
• French architecture and cinema
• disease transmission in Australian native parrots
• tourism in Botswana
• atrocity crimes and the International Criminal Court
• playgrounds in regional Australia
• autocratisation in Turkey
• hepatitis screening in prisons ... and more!

Sending warm fuzzy thoughts to all the lovely people who've entrusted their writing to me for polishing.

Our (annual) truffling adventure

Back in 2008 we turned our house over to a mycologist for eight weeks. A ... what? Mycology is the branch of biology that deals with fungi and, on that occasion, Andrew and I went overseas and an eminent mycology professor from Oregon kindly offered to house-sit and feed our goldfish while we gallivanted. He had been visiting Canberra regularly for many years, researching native truffles (which, incidentally, are delicious to marsupials but inedible for humans).

Anyway ... we've been intrigued by truffles ever since, and try to participate in at least one activity each year as part of the Canberra Truffle Festival. Yesterday we attended a truffle hunt and brunch at The Truffle Farm in Canberra. It was fun, educational and delicious! Here are some scenes from the morning:

We've also attended truffle hunts and brunches at Turalla Truffles (near Bungendore) in 2018 and 2019, and and a trufflicious dinner in 2013. Nom nom. I bought 20 grams of truffle to take home yesterday, so our meals over the coming weeks will also be infused with truffles. We're so lucky to live in this fabulous city.