Albion Lane Cafe in Mosman - Viva the byways!

Is it the sense of perchment, the cubby factor, the step away from the mainstreet and mainstream or that cosmopolitan Melbourne thing that makes a laneway cafe so appealing? Though I am a tardy visitor, Albion Lane Cafe perhaps opened six months ago in the eponymous Albion Lane [ or is that the other way round?], Saturday lunch here has a freewheeling sense of casual, the feeling of slipping into neutral gear, as I take in the detail, pondering the resonant ambiguities of the options old bus roller sign ( connects trains?) while dispatching a decent baguette with grilled chicken, bacon, rocket, avocado and aioli (food dipthongs are satisfying in a way no other dipthongs manage). Coffee comes in a stylish green teacup with a curlicue handle - but I am afraid I didn't pay much attention to it, too busy drawing taking in the detail of that Edwardian deja vu dresser- which means it must have been Ok.  Now all they need is for the shop opposite to open as a book shop or chic art gallery and we will have ignition.

Gecko-nomics - the push me pull you effect of camouflage - or hold on we're in for a bumpy night

On Wednesday the news was, interest rates would stay put. On Thursday, with the Australian dollar at a feisty $1.10 US and inflation figures higher than predicted, driven up by fruit - we may, after all, be a banana driven-economy -  the forecast is for interest rates to go up. One hopes, that up or down or just holding steady,  we (that anonymous, mysterious, entity)  can, gecko-like,  hold on.

Over Winter - Gloves in The Power House Museum

 
These tan leather gloves with rabbit fur trim have the seams detailed in white running stitch. They seem to have been empty for so long they have forgotten they ever held hands with anyone. Those with keen eyes will see that this is the other half of the double page which has the Corset of Circumstance on it. The poem below, is from my collection  Fishing in the Devonian (Puncher & Wattmann, 2008).

Over Winter 

 I once wore

fine kid gloves and still see

the way the leather holds

the emptiness the hand

has left, hear the glove’s

sigh, its endurance as it slowly

exhales the memory of the hand

it held.

The Piazza Effect = Fourth Village, Mosman

Things, visually, are busy inside Fourth Village's restaurant around 2pm on Saturday afternoon. Most people, and there are a lot of them, have reached the chatty meal well under way stage of lunch. Outside, looking across Mosman square and up over the carpark - best ignored - the palms trees set out the wind speed.  Beaumont might have created a classification system for palm trees if he lived in Mosman.  The casaurinas and winter bare branches below are all fine to contemplate while I set aside the sketch for the time it takes to polish off the grilled eggplant, beetroot and buffalo mozzarella salad.  The buffalo mozzarella's soft freshness is fine foil to the eggplant's concentrated auberginity. The beetroot seems to have shrunk by baking, but in a good concentrating way. Soon, even the amply supplied  baby spinach leaves have dissappeared.   Crowded,  congenial, a balance of fresh produce and an Italian flare, it is very easy  to lunch here.

Corona Street- - Writerly preoccupations

 A school desk, the under size chair, the coloured pencils,  parked in front of this Corona No.3 Standard Folding Typewriter, let alone the black lacquer and gold lettering, the ivory coloured finger pads on the chrome-rimmed keys, would have been enough for the words 'Sketch Me' to clatter out on the sheet of bond rolled into this Corona.

from the Power House Museum

The Corsetry of Circumstance - Silk thread and the Melusine @ The Power House Museum

How busy could one be in a boned corset? Perhaps this might have some revelance to the term 'bone idle?  The Power House Musuem in Harris Street, Sydney  has snippets of all kinds of intrigue, delving into  the Lace Study, fishes out the mythological creature the Melusine, or double-tailed mermaid, symbol - the notes say - of worldly enticement, done in bobbin lace by someone in the Adriatic region, in the early 1600's. Time threads strange tales.

It was a dark and stormy night......with a braised red cabbage, roast pork belly and kipfler potatoes

Last night, the dark and stormy kind, delivered a real surf to Balmoral Beach, the drama of white water, grey with sand and parts of dark and stormy night. The ferry lights wending like magic across the dark and stormy harbour, the dark headlands  prinked with a storm of small points of light.

  Inside Bathers Cafe all was cosy, my braised pork belly had the perfect crackling curve on top, a baroque pinnacle with the texture of sweet honeycombe ( the confectionary kind), braised red cabbage balanced between melting and holding some texture, a glazed jeursalum artichoke - adding its strange texture and highly strung flavour.  It didn't matter that my adjunct bowl of kipfler potatoes was raided by my husband as there was plenty.  Add to this the grand extravagence of a bottle of Fermot Chardonnay and all those waves, and all is very well with this small part of the world.

Water Feature Number 2 - The Pouring Wall

On  Monday  the front courtyard showed off with its flashy 'falling water, crouching bucket' work, not to be outdone by that impromptu water feature, today the back garden came up with this brilliant spiggot issuing form, with aplomb, from the sandstone wall, after some minor fine tuning of a drainage hole with a chopstick  Though  it confines itself to times of deluge this elegant spout of crystal clear aqua  rates as a serious contender for Architectural Water of the Season.

Star Anise - a pointed flavour

 

As the weather is up for it, cold, blowy, it is bean baking weather, season for slow casseroles. Yesterday I did a large pot of  Boston Beans, and never one for the straight recipe I added a single star anise for the pot. Sometimes I put a whole chili in but this batch had about half a teaspoon of  Japanese chili powder, the sort you find in Noodle bars which I have for gyoza, this has another ingredient, maybe flakes of noro or shiso?  In any case it was a happy addition. 

PS   A reader told me they wanted the recipe for the braised red cabbage  I wrote about a while back - so, taking heed [not my usual style] you can find my recipe for Boston Beans on the Recipe page.

Freeze Frame Manga - Issue #1

This is the first episode of Freeze Frame Manga, a do-it-myself cartoon with some sticky labels and those annoying catalogues that fall out of the paper when you pick it up. Please double click the image  so you can read the text. Some might notice a mysterious guest appearance from Miss Eggwhistle.

A Dog's Life

We met this pooch, Hutch, last Saturday morning taking in the air outside of The Little French Cake Shop, formerly known as Confisuer.  Strangely the pooch's offsider was not called Starsky.  This dog is a perfect chic magnet, I don't know how it does it. Sitting out watching the world go by, witha decent coffee, a more than decent  almond croissants while idling sketching a dawg is just about right for an idle.

'These rough words and our dead bodies...." Robert Scott in Antarctica

  In early July I went sketching with the Sydney Sketch Group, a flock of sketchers alighting, in a quiet flurry of pens and pencils, brushes and paintboxes, at the National Maritime Museum. Much to see.  Inside the Antarctic exhibition, it was the words and clothes, the boots that told the story first hand.  Scott writes, knowing his party's appointment with death is at hand,"These rough words and our dead bodies will make our only tomb."

The clothes sketched here are Frank Debenham's balaclava and the hood of his windproof jacket - though I expect that term 'windproof' was not an absolute one, and the amber glass snow goggles of Chief Stoker William Lashley. That these awkward, string-bound, string-tied, which cannot have been in anyway comfortable, is what would keep Lashley from snow blindness is humbling.

Falling Water, Crouching Bucket

Having always wanted a waterfall of my own, this one, a simple chain downpipe and an open bucket coupled to copious rain channeled across  the broad expanse of tiled roof, is as dramatic and energetic, as glorious a rush of  water as one could wish for.

A Brisket, A Braising - Tender Tendoncies & Fondantions

 

 The bright spikiness and good form of the Paper Daisies - Helychrysum bracteatum, set out out with sunflowers and two types of jonquils, might be a motto for Billie Swings.  My entree, seared scallops on a thin slice of boudin sausage that gives a balance of sharp fresh sea flavour with the contrapuntal  texture and colour of the boudin, a platform you can load up with the pear puree and nutty sweetness of a walnut praline, means this dish dissappears on the double. Wisely I had kept aside some of the warm sourdough roll to mop up with! 

It might be a girl thing but I seldom order beef when I am out, the slab effect is too, well, slabby. It might have been the celeraic fondant which tipped me over to order the  three kinds of beef, though I am a secret tendon fan, those gluey delicious corners in pork knuckles, so the beef tendon, leaving aside the brisket and sirloin,  alone convinced me. The brisket is perfectly done, nearly too generous a serve I thought, but then I ate the lot, and demolished the right-sized slices of medium rare aged fillet. The celeraic fondant is a lovely foil to the meat.  The complimentary green salad that arrives is well dressed and bright with mint and shreds of red cabbage, reminding me how much I like salad. 

My fellow dinners manage to demolish a pineapple crumble with chantilly cream which they assure me is exactly right. Looking outside, over a picolo latte,  a spectacular mist has rolled in from the north, a large moon rises over Stanton Street apartments, setting all the headlights aglow and magnifying the moon. A perfectly mysterious and closely damp noir-ish mist  to walk home in.

Idle Moments in the Foyer - Cremorne Orpheum - Pre-Tree of Life

A note book or sketch book in hand, a pen, and you may never be waiting again. The photo line up of stars from the silver screen gave me something to do while waiting for The Tree of Life to start. Both are something of a pot pourri, though Terence Mallick's film is hypnotically beautiful while these are plainly not.  Mallick's work is lyric and compelling , though one feels a little like the character in the film who is asked to close the door carefully fifty times, 'Is so much repetition beneficial?'  There are moments early on when the momentum is not what it should be, there is nothing more telling than falling asleep from too much spluttering lava, beautiful but short on character,  but dont let this put you off, the scenes in space and the interior of blood vessels that follow are truly glorious, an unashamed celebration of life, the universe and everything.

Everything also includes the claustrophobic oppression of the disciplinarian '50's father, it is plausible, gruelling and elegant, that the father, played by Brad Pitt, still loves them all and expects affecton is all the more poignant.  The mother, a calmly  idealised godddes with a penchant for water play, never falters, ages or behaves badly. There may be people like this in real life but I've not met them. The boys are pretty near perfectly caste, vulnerable and game, so the tragedy you are moving deeper into, is balanced in part by the freedom of their Twain-esque growing up with the run of town and country side. What you end up making of it all is your business.

Considering mono no aware, paper whites and climbing roses.

 

Last week's casual collection of paper whites and small climbing roses have arrived at that interesting and indeterminate state of crumpled beauty, the rose colours are more intense, the brittle petals of the jonquils more transparent, the distortions of dehydration more intriguing in form. It only occurred to me after looking at the vertical date, suggesting  Japanese characters, that this evokes that quality mono no aware - the pleasingly melanchy of contemplating fading beauty,  or is mono no aware the heightened beauty of what soon will be gone?

Under yon Jonquills - A rare photo of Mavis Eggwhistle

There has been some interest from readers in what Mavis Eggwhistle actually looks like. In general it's tricky to get a photo of Mavis, some say she is camera-shy though her Granny, Hetty Egg, maintains it's because she can't stand still for a single second.  This photo of Mavis was taken when she lost her glasses and consequently could not see that her cousin Betty Lui-Eggwhistle, had climbed up on a ladder and was hiding behind the jonquils.  Betty-Lui has been trying to convince to get a photo of Mavis for months, and Mavis,who thought it was very odd for Betty-Lui to arrive with a step-ladder even though there was not one light bulb blown in the whole shop, was irate. If she had known Betty Lui was so sneaky she would have worn something fancier than her blue jeans and paper white jonquil cardigan.

Yam-agges - Yam Eyes & Yam Noses

If you turn the upper right hand side yam - depicted here -  one-eighty and hold it up, it looks a little like  a profile of Dr Elephant from Astro Boy.  Sounds crazy? You bet your yam it is.

Pull the Other Gate

In my house, nobody but me found this sign, and its addition, funny.  There is a crazy slapstick inference here that you might actually run over to the other gate but I won't say anymore than that.

The Double Headed Hydro - Courting Wonders of the Tennis World

Here the tennis court tap, a double-header, that drips  the mod-grass greener, works as a false cognate of the physical world.

Night and Day....Wallace-Crabbe and the AM .. A Domestic Sublime

 Kristin Headlam's seemingly glancing portrait of Chris Wallace-Crabbe - seen here on the cover of his CD The Domestic Sublime -  catches a sterner focus for her subject by hiding what might, or might not, be a smile behind a coffee cup.  Chris Wallace-Crabbe was awarded an AM, [Member of the Order of Australia] last month.  You can read a review of The Domestic Sublime - audio poems published by Andrew Carruthers  at Mascara, listen in to a poem or two from this collection at The Poetry Archive , or best of all buy your very own copy of it at River Road Press.

Moments of Transformation: The Bicycle as DIY Art.

Parked in the bicycle racks outside the ACMI - the Australian Museum of the Moving Image in Melbourne's Federation Square -  it seemed that this bike might be part of a tricky installation, a transformer that would refold into a glitter ball, strobe lights and a small carousel - before it took off with that extra jet pack nitrogen booster.  What are all those wires for? All I can say is fabulous, a mystery and a bicycle in the one package.

The Eiffel Tower, A Tall Tale from Frank Winkler

Though Bart Brassica does not believe in travelling, or really even holidays, it has been his dream to travel to Paris. That is Paris, Texas, not Paris, France. Paris, France would involve a foreign country, foreign money and a passport - all of  which Bart has an antipathy to. There is also some difficulty about Bart's birth certificate and let's say he's reluctant to even take it to local Post Office in Ringoes to get a certified true copy made.  A while back Frank Winkler told Bart that the Eiffel Tower was the world's tallest barn, which is what set off Bart's interest in Eiffel Towers and towns called Paris. On and off  since then  Bart has been working on a model of what he calls his Eiffel Barn and collecting Eiffel paraphenalia.
Bart was nowhere to be seen over the June long weekend. He had told Mavis Eggwhistle he could  not meet her at Rose's Cafe for cofffee as he was going to Paris (Texas). Yesterday he came up with this holiday snap of himself  to prove it, Mavis being a bit, you might say eggy, about the cold shoulder at Rose's Cafe is unimpressed and said that building in front of the Eiffel Tower doesn't look like Texas anything to her.

Tour de France - Soup De Tour

This drawing is based on a photo of  Robert Jacquinot - supping on soup in Hostens in the 1922 Tour de  France. There is a suggestion that the bicycle has availed itself of a little wine while Jacquinot, a double stage winner, spoons in.  The original photo is in the excellent 'Le Tour' edited by Jeremy Whittle & published by Collins Press 2003. The photos, this one included, are largely unattributed with a credits going to Offside Sports Photography. It would have been good to have identified the photographer - who catches a  great moment here with the muddy Jacquinot oblivious to his audience of one.

Piscean Signage - Penny Wise Impoundments @ NGV

The National Gallery of Victoria may have cleverly commissioned this piece in the pool at the front of the Gallery on St Kilda Road.  One might wonder if it is an underwater art tableau, a joke about the silliness of astronomy [So, you're a Water Sign, the caption reads], a satire on the subliminal authority of  curatorial notes and street signs and a comment on global warming and rising tides overtaking our car based culture. Or is it just be a mindless piece of vandalism, though that word vandalism may be unfair on Vandals. In any case, having some text to read, even something as prosaic as "Authorised Vehicles Only" through  the distortions and compartmentalisatons of water and light, seems to amplify that mesmeric effect of both, aided by the glitter of copper and silver coins.

Tan-popo , Ramenifications

 

Though it sounds like a Chinese proverb, those who go out with a sketch book will find sketchers. T & I are at 81 Military Road, Neutral Bay   - as you can see by the door number - at Tan- popo, for ramen. In the illustrations you can see an edge of the grilled scallop dish to the left, and T - the concentrating sketcher  straight ahead.  This night the soup broth was just right, rich but not cloying, Tan-popo make the fixture hard boiled egg a ramen 'extra' and there is no pink and white swirl of fish cake. Still this is fine for me, who has been an egg donor in the past and what was the appeal of that pink swirl anyway? 

The trouble with ramen is that I am prone to Proustian moments, a hankering after the at home feeling of Dan Dan, with the glass of their slightly acidic cheap white wine and the ritual visit to Woolies after for random shopping.