Snifter...

...for Knots in the String...

Warning! This is a longish newsletter, so grab a cup of tea and some cake. See further down for recipe!!!

Since my last newsletter, it’s been summer. A foretaste. A snifter.

For the first time in months, I cleared my diary so that I didn’t have to go to the city and could just stay peacefully in the heart-home.

The garden is currently chartreuse green and last week, the air temperatures ranged from 23-28. The coastal waters warmed accordingly. Enticing…

I’m a sea creature and being in the sea is the greatest pleasure of my life. So last week was the new beginning. Pulling on the bathers, grabbing a towel, sitting on the beach to survey the empty blueness and then wandering down to the waterline to wade in. Gasping as the first cold wash hit the crutch, then the chest and under the arms and finally, because with each second I was getting older and this mightn’t happen again (who knows?), I dived in and under. Staying under and opening my eyes to gaze along the sandy bottom out into the forever watery blueness and wondering what sea creature might be swimming close by, and how lucky I was to listen to the tik tik tik conversations of the world beneath.

I swam with my four year old grandson who is now a little fish, swimming along unsupported on his back (like a little turtle needing to flip over). He’s yet to swim on his front but it’ll happen.

Swimming with my long-time beach buddy, Pan.

Swimming solitary too, which is when I’m able to be, not just mindful, but incredibly grateful for what my life is.

This week is somewhat different. See below.

My Time:

Last week, I watched Millingtons House (Mum’s and Dad’s and then my brother’s old coastal home) launch upon the world and am so grateful to its new owners, Sophie and Nick Weeding, for allowing me to be part of it.

Inside, the colours wrap around one like a soft sea-mist. There’s artwork on the walls that one wants to stand in front of and soak up. There are piles of books that I want to sink onto the window seats to read.

There’s taupe linen blinds and billowing oatmeal drapes, tongue and groove cabinetry and more taupes, ivories and soft blues. All my most loved colours and which I’ve consistently used in our own home and in the Matchbox, along with my embroidery, my clothes, my shoes – ironic in a way.

In an odd moment, I could see Mum and Dad working in the garden or pouring their evening drinks (gin for Mum, Bacardi for Dad – the fizz as Dad opened a dry ginger ale to add to Mum’s gin and the crisp crack as Dad broke out ice-cubes for his rum) or for Nat King Cole or Acker Bilk to spill softly from an old-time radiogram. They made it such a home for my brother and I, and later for their young grandchildren, and memories spill forth daily, the older we all get. It was my kind of house then, and certainly is in this soft-tinted iteration. I almost want to stay there for a night, just for the memories.

Pity I only live a few houses up the road…

If you want to have a look at it – go to https://www.instagram.com/millingtons.house

Ballet. I’ve tripped the light fantastic with the girls. I get to call us girls – it fends off the idea of ‘seniors’. More regally, we’re the Black Swans. As I may have mentioned in the past.

Gardening. The garden’s so lovely just now – it’s the place where one could recline on a sunlounge under the willows or beneath the Japanese maples and listen to the Grey Fantails make music (if it doesn’t rain!).

Or potter in amongst the plants and soil (if it’s not too gluggy). What a difference two weeks makes. Floods to fantastic in 14 days!

And then…

Back to floods last Friday with thunder and lightning, very very frightening, and rain like nails from a Gatling Gun. The garden flooded in an instant and we had 35 mls in less than two hours.

And so it continues…

It’s rained every day, sometimes horribly heavy rain, since last Friday. We’ve had a polar blast and there’s snow on Kunyani Mt. Wellington. And they tell us this wet season which is so unusual for us here in the southeastern wedge of Australia, may be with us now, until the end of summer and into early autumn of 2023. Really? Ye Gods!!!!!!

Farm. Shearing finished. Part of our business is growing the fine merino wool for which Australia is famous. I sent the smoko cakes to the shed on the first day and then iced another cake for the next and so on. The lambs bellowed the evening before it all began, as the ewes were drafted off, shedded and yarded ready for a 7AM start on Day One. The lambs are due to be weaned any day so a night away from their mums doesn’t hurt and the ease with which the ewes walk away shows that they’re almost done with this year’s mothering. The lambs are looking good. Not too poddy, just healthy and rounded and what with the wonderful pasture where the lucerne and clover are lush, they will grow into themselves – a proud picture a couple of weeks after weaning. But it was a rush job for our son to move the flock off-shears to sheltered paddocks on Monday.

Cooking. A banana and sour cream cake and a chocolate and ricotta cake, (big ones) all for the shearers. And then, the Cake that Tastes like Sunshine. I read Lindsay Cameron Wilson’s newsletter

The Cake that Tastes like Sunshine

and loved the way she described this cake. So I made it to the letter!

It’s every bit as divine as she says. Easy, orangey, and so moist.

I do draw the line at storing it in the wardrobe though.

After all, there’s a few pairs of shoes in there and God knows where they’ve been. But I will freeze half and around the family it’ll go quickly.

Writing: the first part of the latest manuscript is now in the UK with my editor, John. Ostensibly he’s seeing if I have a story and I always find this part nerve-wracking. If it comes back with ‘Well, no, Prue, you don’t,’ I might just go into the garden and eat worms! (Of which there are plenty, thanks to the rain!)

Things I like:

Seniors (two men and two women) striding up from the beach after a coastal hike. Plenty of energy there.

Picking fresh herbs. The fragrance…

Catching sight of bright new scarlet and orange nasturtiums in the garden. Bullseye bright!

Things I don’t like:

The B.O from the seniors as they walked past me after their coastal hike. Haven’t they heard of deodorant?

Snails in the herb garden. How dare they?

Slugs eating the leaves of the nasturtiums. Bastards!

Books:

This week, I’m listening to Hugh Bonneville’s memoir Playing Under the Piano. It’s deliciously funny, perfect for listening to with a cup of tea and a piece of Cake That Tastes like Sunshine.

There’s been a few memoirs this year – Miriam Margolyes, Graham Norton, lovely (Book of My Year) Richard E. Grant, and now Hugh Bonneville. There have been a couple of others too, but these are stand-outs for humour, self-deprecation, and completely bald honesty (and in the case of Richard, courage and inspiration).

I should be like most other authors and despise the publishing industry for the quick buck-making ease with which they contract celebrities to ‘write a book’. The fame means they sell like hot cakes which means little old unknown me and thousands like me are struggling to make a go of it. Simply, we haven’t the money for the publicity machine and haven’t the pre-fame either.

But I can’t despise the celebrities I’ve mentioned. They are some of my favourites, they’re gifted with astonishing talent as well as acute observation, kindness and a silver tongue. Who wouldn’t want to read/listen to them? And by the stars they make a refreshing change from a world dominated by politics, sabre rattling and posturing narcissists.

On Kindle, I’m nearing the end of The Shifu Cloth and making copious continuity notes.

Watching:

Series 5 of Spooks, so really it’s a rewatch from years ago. It’s so apposite – frighteningly so. In some dusty part of my brain, I remember every episode and yet I’m so locked in to the acting and fine production values that I’m on the edge of my seat.

Enola Holmes 2 Brilliant viewing. Watch it! And there’s something about the Fourth Wall contrivance I really love. Note to self: must study it for future use!

Via Substack:

As always – Tom Ryan and wonderful Samwise and Emily Binx Hawthorne.

Welcoming Our November Guest(s)

Some others you may enjoy.

  CJ writes as she feels. I liked her latest piece on the potential for roots and settling down.

  Brilliant piece on loving kindness and the world. Mike Sowden has given me an interest in science I didn’t know I had.

  I love Alice’s pieces. Not just because she writes from a narrow boat but because she’s scrupulously honest about her life…

I’m so sorry this is such a long newsletter and if you made it to the bottom, well done you!

As always, it’s free, do share if you enjoyed it and hopefully, I can give you a snifter of something else enjoyable next time.

Meanwhile, I’m off back to the latest manuscript.

Toodles!