Salt and corrosion

Day two of the new year was spent planning and preparing. Last week, I helped my mother clean out her gardening cabinet. Does she really need nine pairs of gardening gloves? No. No, she does not.

Today we did half the kitchen cabinet. We've got a box for charity full of spare bowls and knick knacks and scented candles, mostly received as Christmas presents over the years. Tomorrow, the last day of my leave: the second half of the kitchen cabinet. I had a quick look, and there's a large wall clock and two ceramic money-boxes, so that's three things that can go.

If I get time tomorrow, I'll also go through my wardrobe. I'll be back in the office more or less full-time now, but it's been about two years since I had to wear office clothes. I think there'll be a few things that can go out, or at the very least, will need a wash after being untouched for two years.

I started doing that year-end meme that comes around every year, but I don't have interesting answers to any of the questions. So here's a sort of year-end review based on the unused comments in my notebook that I meant to turn into LJ entries but could never find a voice for.

ant

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Also, we've had a lot of ants.

Late-breaking news on Friday, as all of Victoria went into a snap Stage 4 lockdown for five days, Saturday to Wednesday. I had to go to the supermarket on Friday afternoon and there were already signs up about limited purchases of certain items: toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser. The usual suspects. But there wasn't panic buying. Everyone probably has enough toilet paper in storage from last time.

Before that it was an odd sort of week, as I'd had to go into the office a few times. I'd been thinking that everyone was getting slightly blasé about it all - there used to be bottles of hand sanitiser on every desk and spare surface, for example, which have all disappeared now. Perhaps this snap lockdown will kick everything back into action. I'm supposed to be back there on Tuesday for a two hour meeting about fringe benefits tax, but I don't think that will come under the definition of "essential work" to meet in person. I hope not, at any rate.

At home, there was (extremely) minor excitement on two fronts. First, I bought a label maker and made tiny labels for the top of all my spice jars, so now when I open the spice drawer I can read the top of the lid without having to lift them up. What a time saver. While at the stationery shop, I found mailing labels, just regular sheets of Avery labels, but on clear frosted paper instead of white. So I bought some of that too, and made slightly fancy labels for all the plain jars in the pantry.

Second excitement: the first of my Christmas subscription cheese boxes arrived. Camembert, chèvre rolled in ash, a semi-hard cow's milk cheese with wildflowers pressed into it, and manchego-style cheese aged in wine. I've tried the first two so far, and they've both been good.



Last year, for a New Year's resolution, I did two of the challenges from The Conqueror (it was a New Year two-for-the-price-of-one special), where you log your exercise as a distance and get virtual postcards of your trip and an actual medal at the end. Last year I did the New Zealand Alps to Ocean and the US Grand Canyon distances. I signed up again this year, same deal. I'm currently halfway up Mount Fuji. Not sure what the second one will be yet. Maybe the set your own distance one and make it long enough for the rest of the year. I suspect that will be the only way I travel anywhere for the foreseeable future.

No new bright flowers this week. Instead, a photo of the dangers that lurk when picking vegetables: someone playing Tiger in the Grass among the bean plants.

Sundry catch-ups

1. January books read

A light reading month. It was a long book and I was busy doing other stuff.

* Reynard the Fox - Anne Louise Avery (2020) ★ ★ ★ ★ 
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2. Friday Five: The year so far

1) How is your year going so far?
I can't believe we're one month in already. It's gone by in a blur.

( And so on )

3. Another of my sunset-coloured dahlias

A slightly different shade of pink than the last one.

I'm doing a weekly update, not a daily one, and I still have no news. All I did this week was work - my job and filling in for one colleague still on leave - then flake out on the sofa. Towards the end of the week I forced myself to actually do something, so I made a cake.

This time last year Australia was on fire. Parts of it are again, but not here. So cold we had the heater on this week.

I bought some more dahlia corms this year, a pack of them in sunset colours. The first one has just bloomed and I can see it from the kitchen window. It pleases me so much.



Next week: I will attempt to leave the house and/or actually do something worth writing about.

This week's Friday Five: Sew what!

1. Are you crafty?
No, in the sense of scheming and plotting. I suppose yes, in the sense of making things. Knitting and cross-stitch, occasionally embroidery.

( And so on )

My car has barely been driven since March, and that's only been a handful of trips to the supermarket or the office, so I ended 2020 with a road trip round the bay to Port Fairy. Lunch on the red volcanic rocks at Southcombe beach, watching surfers bob up and down in the turquoise swell; a swing around the Tower Hill nature reserve on the way home, lake full after heavy spring rains and dotted with black swans.

The year started yesterday with a storm and just after lunch today the sky blackened to twilight on a summer afternoon and stormed again. Read this imagining heavy rain and a constant low growl of thunder as a backdrop.

I thought I might try to do the Friday Five meme this year (not necessarily on a Friday). This week:

1. What was the best thing about 2020?
Given that we were in a global pandemic, I'd say the best thing was me and my family and community not getting it.

2. What lessons from 2020 will you carry into 2021?
How adaptable people and organisations can be.

Some people are brilliant in a crisis and others would be happy if we all died.

The advice "avoid it like the plague" is useless, because it turns out the plague is very hard to avoid.

3. How did you spend your New Year's Eve?
My mother and I had a roast dinner and watched an episode of Agatha Christie's Criminal Games. Non-stop party action.

4. Legend says what you did at midnight on New Year's Eve/Day is what you'll do all year. So what did you do?
I believe I was playing Merge Magic. So I'm doomed to play that for a year? That... sounds about right.

5. What are you most looking forward to in 2021?
In the wider scheme of things, I hope the vaccines work.

Personally, I always start the year thinking of several small projects to work on. I've got plans for some bread, a short course to do for work, a cross-stitch turtle to make. Oh, and I have a subscription to a monthly cheese box (a Christmas gift). I am very much looking forward to getting four cheeses sent to me every month.

Not aiming too high, obviously.

And finally:

December books read

A big reading month as I tried to get to fifty books for the year. Did it with a day to spare.

* How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea - Tristan Gooley (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★ 
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* Four Days' Wonder - AA Milne (1933) ★ ★ ★ ★ 
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* The Secret - Lorna Hill (1964) ★ ★ ★ 
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* The Night of Fear - Moray Dalton (1931) ★ ★ ★ 
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* The Belgrave Manor Crime - Moray Dalton  (1935) ★ ★ ★ ★ 
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* The Strange Case of Harriet Hall - Moray Dalton (1936) ★ ★ ★ ★ 
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* A Short History of the World According to Sheep - Sally Coulthard (2020) ★ ★ ★ 
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* The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper (1973) ★ ★ ★ 
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A Christmas story:

At my secondary school, it was an annual tradition for the Year 10 (I think) Home Economic class to make a heavy fruit cake and decorate it with almond icing and sugar work as a year-end project. All the finished cakes were put on display and younger students were encouraged to go and look. So we did, my friends and I, in Year 7. Given the time of year, a lot of the students had decorated their cakes for Christmas, but some obviously had a special occasion in mind and had decorated accordingly. Anniversary cakes, a wedding cake, a couple of birthday cakes with the person's name written in icing on top: Diane, Noel, Julie, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Noel sure was getting a lot of cakes. "Who's Noel?" I asked my friend, but before she could point out what an idiot I was, the older girls behind us laughed at me and, just like that, I had a sudden moment of clarity that Noel was meant to be Noël and his cakes were part of the Christmas section. Can I suggest this festive season, we should all stop and ask "Who's Noel?"

My mother and I had a quiet Christmas at home this year. The past few years we have spent the day on the ancestral family farm, where my mother's 99-year-old aunt lives, to have lunch with extended family among the koalas. Which is nice, but several of the cousins have very different political views to us and like to say so, loudly, which does tend to cast a pall. "You know they'll think covid is a hoax," said my mother, "and I couldn't stand hearing that over lunch. Let's stay home." When her cousin called to invite us, she apparently started, unprompted, on an anti-mask rant, which my mother said made saying "thanks but no" much easier.

This year, I made a bûche de Noël (another one for good old Noel!), using a recipe from my mother's 1989 copy of Australian Women's Weekly French Cookery Made Easy. It was a roaring success; we shouldn't have waited thirty-one years to make it. This is it after frosting, but before the dusting of icing sugar snow and assorted greenery to pretty the plate up.



And now I have a week off, with no plans except reading two books to make it to fifty for the year.

December crept up so suddenly I forgot about my Body Shop Advent calendar for the first two days. I've caught up now. Not that there's any rush. I still haven't finished all the hand lotion from last year's.

More restrictions easing here: masks are still compulsory in supermarkets/shopping centres and in taxis/trains/buses, but the rest of the time we only need to carry masks and wear them when we can't social distance.

There hasn't been a special senior hour at the supermarket for months now, but my mother has decided she likes going super-early and, as it's before work, I can go too. Friday, we went early as usual, and as usual there was only a handful of cars in the car park. One of them was packed with camping gear, obviously belonging to a family on the way for a holiday. I assume there was an adult in the supermarket doing the shopping; waiting outside, a man entertained three small children by blasting The Weeknd's Blinding Lights and making them dance around the car.

Finally, a couple of updates from things mentioned in my daily November posts:

1. ( The completed garlic braid )

2. ( The completed 2020 cross-stitch mini-sampler )

Heatwave and fires further north, but here in the City by the Sea we seem to be in our own little magic weather kingdom. Storms. Lashing rain and howling winds. All that jazz. My shutters blew open three times last night.

It stopped raining long enough this morning to go to the farmers' market to get bread. Later, a trip to the shopping centre - my mother's yoga class is re-starting next week, and she wanted a new blanket for the resting period (she had a blanket, but during lockdown Alistair has claimed it). I haven't been to the shopping centre in the middle of the day for months. So many people. So many noises. So many lights.

I'm watching The Holiday, the film in which Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swap homes for Christmas. It's mindless fun, but Kate has just boarded a plane and they're all packed in their seats and breathing on each other and I feel so anxious watching it. I can't really blame a fourteen-year-old film for not considering that people might watch it in a pandemic fourteen years later.

My mother has been making vague noises about getting a new car for a while now, and this week something clicked and she decided now was the time. So this week she talked to Mr McKeever, mechanic and old family friend, and he found two possibilities that met her requirements: small, not silver, four doors. This afternoon when I finished work we took them both for a test drive. One of them - the 2018 Kia Rio she's going to buy - had a reversing camera, which, as a passenger, I did not enjoy. I could feel myself tensing up every time the orange direction rectangle veered off-course.

I was thinking that it must be nearly a year ago that I was made redundant - it was the end of November - and when I looked at my entries from last year, it was exactly one year ago today. What a strange and ultimately lucky experience that was. The local paper often does stories about mental health initiatives, and the charity I worked for is no longer mentioned as being part of them. I think the Powers That Be in New South Wales are starving the local office before shutting it down completely. I'm glad to be out of it.