High 5-ing the World

Resolution? Promise? Goal? I don't know what you'd call it, but a year ago we made one.

In a conversation about where we'd like to be as a family, we quickly realised that the future we were planning didn't include a car.

Three years ago we gave up shopping at supermarkets, a year ago we gave up air travel, two months ago we gave up eating out of season and we're slowly transitioning towards giving up our mobile phones. But giving up our car feels like the biggest decision we have made so far.

It took us a year of preparation. We started a log book so we could see all the reasons we were justifying using the car. We biked, walked, carpooled and used public transport as much as we could, and after surviving the winter, knew that we were ready.

The town we call home has limited public transport options—no trams and no trains—so we knew we'd have to be a bit more organised whenever we wanted to leave. But on the plus side, we live in town, so it's a five minute bike ride up to the post office or library.

A week ago, we drove our car to Melbourne and delivered it to its new owner. The second he drove away it started to pour, and it dawned on me for the first time, the reality of our decision.

The next day, PJ started converting our carport into a bike/tool/potting shed.

After researching and test riding several cargo bikes, we finally made our decision. Yesterday PJ and I bussed and trained to Melbourne where we picked up our Kona Utes. Our first ride was a two-hour stint from the nearest train station, home.

My legs feel strong today, though my arms are a little sunburnt. Not from waving down passing cars to give us a lift, but from feeling so overwhelmed with freedom, I couldn't help high 5-ing the world.

Sugru

Thank you Rachael for my care parcel!

I don't know which I was more excited by, the packaging or the contents.

The contents: Sugru.

Sugru feels like modelling clay, or Blu-Tack. It fixes in 30 minutes into whatever shape you mold it, and is ready to be used after 24 hours. It fixes soft because it's made from silicone. It sticks to metal, plastic, glass and ceramic. It's waterproof, dishwasher-safe, heat resistant, cold resistant, electrically and thermally insulating.

I don't write this to advertise, merely to explain.

Or if you're more image inclined:

After I fixed the ring and knife handle I was walking around the house like a woman possessed, trying to find broken things, considering what I could chip or bust or smash, just so I could mend it. I gave myself a high 5 I was so excited, when I remembered the missing bit at the bottom of the food processor.

I must admit I had hesitations at first, thinking of all the energy that goes into creating Sugru, but then I thought that anything that promotes the Repair Manifesto, over buying new gear, is definitely a good thing by me.

Mooncup

Last month when I blogged about our decision to give up international air travel, I asked if there is anything that you have given up in order to live a more sustainable life.

One reader emailed to say that she had bought herself a menstrual cup because she wanted to stop using disposable sanitary products. This is something I have also been wanting to do.

I hate that the Australian Government has placed the GST on sanitary items because they are considered non-essential, and even though I compost my tampons I still hate the waste of having to buy new ones every single month.

I have a friend who uses a Mooncup, so I bought myself one too. I have used it for one period now. It's recommended you empty it every four hours or so, but I found myself emptying it more often because I couldn't wait to see how full it was. The cup has measurements on the side so you can see how much you're harvesting. I was actually surprised how little blood there was as my tampons are usually soaked through, especially on the second day, my heaviest. I was also surprised by the colour of the blood - a rich, dark colour that tampons usually make look paler.

Each time I emptied the Mooncup I tipped the blood into a jar of water in the bathroom cupboard, then at the end of the five days I poured the bloody mix onto the soil around our budding fruit trees.

Why should I wait till I'm dead so my innards can be of use to the Earth?

A Pile of Shit

There's a horse riding ranch two minutes away, where I used to go riding as a kid, and where Z had his birthday party a few years back. PJ and I drove out there first thing this morning.

'Is it OK if we collect some of your poo?' I asked one of the owners when we arrived.

'You can't collect mine, but you can collect the horses',' he told me, straight-faced.

And so we got to shovellin'. It was cold out and the shit was hot and steaming, and filled with worms our chickens dined on each of the three times we returned home with a car-load.

I've never been a red roses kinda gal and I've never been one for posed photos in a nice frame up on the mantle from holidays gone by. But I would never have described shovelling shit as a romantic pastime until today either.

But boy was it! The cool air, the steaming dung, no-one in the field except my beloved and I, working hard side-by-side to move the fecund waste so it can turn our clay earth into rich soil to grow good food for our family.

Dinner and movie? Chocolates in the shape of a heart? Give me a shovel, my man and a pile of shit any day.

One Whole Year

Exactly a year ago when I started this blog, the first words I wrote were: "A few weeks ago I was employed to write a series of short bios of a dozen mid-century furniture designers." 

The woman who contracted me to write the bios for her website was a furniture manufacturer who gave me this couch in lieu of payment. We had not long before moved into our new house, so we were rapt with the trade – content for comfort.

A few years before, the Australian Federal police paid PJ a visit to question him about an artwork he had made, which they considered to be seditious. When our new couch arrived, he laughed that when the feds came to question him again, they would see this plush couch and walk away because there's no way an anarchist would own such a bourgeois couch.

This couch has changed the way we live. Its size means that the three of us can lie comfortably on it together, which we often do of an evening reading books.

"Welcome along on my experiment," is how I ended my very first post last year. 12 months on and I still feel as though I am experimenting, just with a bit more practice.

Thanks so much for your company.

Here's to another year together.

Be Your Own Ian

Years ago PJ made a sign that read: Christ is the only Christian, be your own Ian. 

We have a dear friend Ian, whom PJ calls Ianian. Today I made a batch of my blog header cookies and made these for Ian, who came over for afternoon tea.

I am a big fan of these letter cookie cutters. With PJ and I being writers and Z just learning to write, they bring us hours of delicious joy.

Tins of Teas

These are the tins I have collected over the years to undertake the important job of safekeeping my tea. They are in order, from left to right, of the frequency I open them.

My daily tea is Pu-erh. When I first blogged about it eight months ago I was still a coffee drinker who occasionally flirted with loose leaves. Now I am a monogamous tea drinker who consumes between one and three cups a day made according to a loose version of George Orwell's tea manifesto.

Concealed within the Uncle Toby's oats tin is coincidentally Toby's Estate's Organic Refresh: peppermint, lemongrass and green tea. Because of the caffeine in the green tea I can't drink this too late in the afternoon so rather than risk a poor night's sleep I will steep a handful of peppermint from the garden.

The little Chinese tin is home to a black tea given to me by PJ's parents. In my haste to try the tea I ripped open the packet then threw it away. (The packet was orange as I recall.)

And finally on the right is a jasmine tea whose tin never ceases to make the corners of my eyes crinkle up with a smile because of the brand name: Phúc Long.

Your Favourite Cup

From The Telegraph:

Tea really does taste better from your favourite cup

Dr Tom Stafford, psychologist from Sheffield University, says a person's brain is trained to believe the daily ritual of making coffee or tea should be done in a certain way in order to derive maximum enjoyment.

He said: "Drinking tea and coffee is very ritualistic and people become very addictive to the way they want their brew made.

"Caffeine is very much a drug of reward and like any addict, people develop passions on how the drug is delivered.

"Where ever there is drug use then rituals will always develop.

"The long association with the delivery of a morning cup of coffee or tea people genuinely think it tastes better out of a particular cup.

"It might be irrational or arbitrary but it's absolutely true. Your daily brew tastes better from your favourite mug.

According to research, 65 percent of Brits have a favourite cup or mug they use for their morning cuppa.

The Mix

This is an old photo of Z. His grandmother made the little apron he's wearing. He looks so cute in it. See how careful he's being not to miss out on any of the chocolate cake mixture? Mmmmm. Yummo!

We are going away for a few days today to stay with PJ's parents at their holiday house and yesterday I made a cake to take with us. I had Justin Townes Earle's latest album up loud as I sifted and measured and stirred.

The cake turned out perfectly, I had a great sing-a-long and the kitchen was clean once I'd finished baking. Everything was good, albeit uneventful. It might be easier to bake on my own, but it's so much more fun when Z's around.

Growing up with three sisters, it was such a treat when I got to lick the bowl and I still relish in this quiet joy when I bake. But I would give up that simple happiness in half a heartbeat to see that pleasure on Z's face, (along with all the cake mix).

Z is away with his mum and we are heading off to meet them today, then we'll take Z with us to stay with PJ's folks.

Thanks for looking after our house and birds while we're away, Ping and Hal! 

See you all next week.

Happy Passover and happy Easter!

Self-Contained

One of the things I like about not having a TV is that we can self-program what we watch. We download and borrow films and are regularly given discs by friends (thanks Jiga!) full of random goodies we watch on one of our laptops.

I like buying second-hand things for the same reason. Op shops, markets and garage sales – I love them all. I love browsing through people's discarded things because you never know what you're going to find, or what's going to find you.

I found these coffee and sugar containers at two different op shops, several years apart. Although my style is by no means neat and tidy with everything catalogued and in its correct place, I just couldn't resist buying these oil and vinegar bottles at a trash and treasure market recently, because they match the jars exactly.

Pickled Tink

I recently read a personal essay by a woman who wrote that she felt the most feminine she ever felt when she was breast feeding her baby. This got me thinking about my own sense of femaleness and when I feel the most feminine I can feel.

My first thought was when I am with PJ and although I like this answer (and proximity), I am striking it from the record because I am looking for an answer that is just to do with myself and not in relation to another.

But maybe that's impossible, because a large part of my feelings about my femaleness feel constructed and composed; learnt and not innate.

I am Meg, and although I am obviously female, I don't live my every day cognisant of my gender. Or maybe I do but it's so ingrained in my self that I'm not conscious of it.

And so, I have started keeping a list of times when I feel conscious of my femaleness. On that list is when I was pickling our homegrown cucumbers two weeks ago. (And yes, I can see the irony of the phallic cucumbers.)

Readers of this blog will know I don't own a single cook book and that I like to roam google's hallways in search of a recipe to follow. But for my cucumbers it was different. My friend Jo lent me some cook books including Stephanie Alexander's book of her mum's recipes, which is where I found the one I based my pickling concoction on. 

I know men who pickle and preserve, but when I did it, I felt connected to a whole history of women, including my dad's mum, Nanna Jo-Jo, who was a fabulous pickler.

Also, because pickling was once, and still is in many parts of the world, an act of preserving produce for out-of-season months and long journeys, there is an element of vitality added to the recipe; the survival and preservation of a people, and along with them, their time-honoured ways.

My Valentine

From page 49 of The Language of Things:

Olivetti made the conceptual leap from manufacturers of business equipment to manufacturer of consumer products when Ettore Sottsass first put a handle on a mainframe computer, making it into an object rather than an accumulation of transistors and valves. In the same way, with design, he transformed the office typewriter for Olivetti by making a red-and-orange lightweight portable, the Valentine. As Sottsass memorably put it, the Valentine was designed to keep lonely poets company on weekends in the country. He had realized that technical equipment could be domesticated. A typewriter did not have to be treated as a piece of anonymous machinery, but could be understood as having a character of its own.

Private Domestications

PJ serves breakfast on the deck.

A chicken at the door.

Toenails too long.

Droplets like stars on a clear night.

Public Domestications

From here.

Environmental Parties

Today marks the end of National Recycling Week. 

From Farmdoc:

Thomas L Friedman, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, labels events such as National Recycling Week, Walk Against Warming, and Earth Hour, as environmental parties – whereas what is really needed, what is essential and critical and vital, he says, is an environmental revolution.

In our household we are big recyclers, though it's not something we are huge advocates for. We believe more so in reducing our waste output. Living in the country our options are limited for things such as bulk buying and public transport, but we do our best.

Our best is not the best, but we are on our way. As is energy economist Joan Pick who has been on her way – only on foot – since 1973.

Since then she has run or walked approximately 217,929 kilometers - the equivalent of nearly five and a half times round the world.

She said: "Some people criticise me by saying I ought to get out more but that's one thing you can't say about me - I'm out all the time!"

Guest Blogger: ETG

A fortnight ago I invited a reader of this blog, ETG, to be the inaugural Guest Blogger in the Land of Meg. Ladies and gentleman, without further ado I present to you her post:

We have been cleaning out my grandfather’s garage. He died five years ago and now we live in the house that he shared with my grandmother. The garage has to go, being a relic of the age when Asbestos was considered the wonder product.

There was so much stuff in there to sort through. Sure, some of it was ours and a lot of our stuff was pretty easy to quickly assess and discard (unused paper plates from our engagement party in 1998??) but grandfather’s stuff was another matter altogether. As well as holding the sentimental value of things belonging to the only grandfather I got to know, these were the props of his story, the backdrop to his territory.

Where would you find grandfather? He was either in his armchair reading the newspaper or in the garage. This multitude of jars, tins and boxes were his collection. He had plans for this stuff. Who knows how many jars full to bursting with different sized nails, different sized screws. A 1920s fire extinguisher. His RAAF duffle bag. A shoemaker’s last, a paper bag of rubber soles, a jar of shoemaker’s tacks. Then a smaller paper bag of smaller rubber soles—for Grandma’s shoes. Who knew he repaired shoes?

It is all now amassed in the driveway. Some of it will just have to go to the local recycling centre being either unrecognisable or unusable but a lot of it will be kept, refashioned or reused by my father and me. Or just placed somewhere in memory of a man with plans.

Stuck Up

In the fridge:

In my wardrobe:

O

I don't do drop ins. There I've said it.

I know they're a part of living in a small community in the country, but I really haven't got the hang of them yet. People coming over, dropping in, swinging by.

I grew up on a main road in the city so we never had friends just stopping in. And now I work from home and honour the distinction between my private and public self.

There are however people who I love dropping in. My sister who lives nearby and a handful of friends who won't be alarmed if I hang out the washing while we chat, if the house is untidy or if I am still in my walking gear from that morning.

Our delightful friend, O is one such person. When he drops round he makes our day all that much better, even when it's not going badly. He recently sent me some of his latest poems that make me feel like he's just come by when I read them.

More here.

Bring the Cow Out

When I first moved out of home I rented a room upstairs in a big house that had an adjoining room I used as an office. I bought a black and white cowhide to sit on the office floor in front of the fire place.

I got it cheap from a tannery because it hadn't been tanned properly. I couldn't see the problem, though when the afternoon sun came through my windows, boy oh boy could I smell it.

This is before 1998, so there was no Google to help me find out ways to get rid of the stench. So I researched it the old fashioned way – I asked my mum. Every morning before work I would take the cow over to my folks' place where Mum would embrace it, like a grandchild. And every afternoon, I would swing by to collect it. 

She tried powders and salts and fragrances and scrubs, but what she found was most effective was leaving it out in the sun. 

The cow became part of our family and the phrase, bring the cow in, bring the cow out, became part of our lexicon; to refer to the mundanity or repetitive nature of tasks.

Today the cow is still part of our family and lines the floor of our living room, when it isn't going camping or picnicking with us, or lunching with us out on the deck.

Still Life: Ingredients

There are six of us in my knitting group, and when it's your turn to be the hostess you have to provide tea, coffee and something to eat. Tonight everybody is coming here.

My kitchen bench, 4pm:

My sister K, who is a fantastic baker, laughs at me because I do not own a single cookbook. She thinks it's funny that each time I want to make or bake, I go online then consult my open laptop for measurements and methods, careful not to whisk or grate or sift anything onto it.

She thought it even funnier when her eldest daughter asked if they could make my banana cake for her dad for father's day. She said it was the best cake she's ever eaten. With that kind of credential, I thought I would make it for my knitting group this eve.

The recipe: www.bananacakerecipe.com.au