Lost For Words

Today, our lesson is from the Book of Hugh Lunn, chapter 8 "Domestic Science", verse 2 "Making Do". I often swear I am going to economise. Here are some superb suggestions from an Australia gone by.

Because people had to be frugal there were many recipes for imitation meals. Such food was prefaced with the word mock. There was:

mock crab: cheese, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and tomato sauce mixed into a sandwich paste
mock chicken: minced tripe* with herbs in a white sauce, popped into vol-au-vents
mock duck: rump or bladebone steak rolled in a mixture of breadcrumbs and butter, then baked
mock goose: alternate layers of lamb's fry# and potato and onions, baked.

When you couldn't even afford the cheapest offal, there was:

mock brains: rissoles made from leftover porridge, beaten egg, and onion
mock tripe: onions and butter boiled in milk and thickened with flour

Bet you can't wait for your mock dessert:

mock cream: milk, cornflour, butter, sugar
mock ginger: vegetable marrow, sugar, ginger powder, lemons
mock pears: sweetened, boiled choko**

*from the stomach of an ox
#lamb's liver, fried up
**Hugh says "Everybody grew a choko vine over the dunny (outside toilet) or the back fence. It produced bountiful crops of pear-shaped chokoes. Chokoes were boiled, then split length wise, and the seeds removed. Your mother might say chokoes had a delicate flavour. They were almost tasteless, but not tasteless enough."

Hugh is right. I once made my mother cry when I refused to eat the chokoes she served up. We were broke & she had nothing else to give us. I still remember the disgusting slimey vegetables more than 40 years later. There used to be a rumour that Cherry Ripe bars were made with chokoes, not cherries. Bleaughhhh.

I made this

Yes, dear readers, not content with just reading books, I've made one.
I love that there are many parts of the book-binder's art that are invisible in the finished work. But they are essential.













I tore these pages.





















Oh how pretty.







These are my remarkable French Lace binding stitches. Hand done, you know.









And a gorgeous corner to finish it off.

The Lighthouse

Phyllis Dorothy is an old favourite of mine, a very reliable procedural writer. My crime fiction taste runs as much to this Restrained English style as to Hardboiled American or Tartan Noir (via Larrikan Aussie, naturally). But somehow I found The Lighthouse, though well plotted & apparently imaginative, did not grab me, grip me or even pluck at my sleeve. I don't want to put you off this book, or indeed any of P.D.James' wonderful canon, but for me this one was bland. We love a great crime novel, and The Lighthouse is, perhaps, simply predictably good.

Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late

Following the scintillating brilliance of Pigeon's first outing Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus, Mo Willems' story here exposes the machinations of our mini-Machiavelli Pigeon as he tries to wheedle, threaten, demand, charm and skive his way into staying up late. Line destined to become a classic: "You wouldn't say no to a bunny, would you?"

Bambi vs Godzilla

No, not Marv Newland's sublime 1969 film "Bambi Meets Godzilla". The astringent David Mamet holds forth on the nature of the film business, in particular how film narrative works (and how it doesn't). Its sub-title is "On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business", and he delivers on that with penetrating criticism and acerbic wit. Mr Mamet's appreciation of the craft of film making, as practiced by the craftspeople, is palpable. He digs the nuts and bolts of the work. He has great stories to tell, and is a consummate storyteller. In the process, he talks about how we are as human creatures, our purity, our venality, our common mix of both.

I like Mr Mamet's plays & films. I like very much his prose writing, its simplicity, pointedness, particularity, and boldness. For me, through his writings on theatre, film and writing itself, he constant delves beyond to refer to our humanity. And he is funn-nee.

The back cover quotes (inter alia*) Steve Martin thus: “David Mamet is supremely talented. He is a gifted writer and observer of society and its characters. I’m sure he will be able to find work somewhere, somehow, just no longer in the movie business.”

*inter alia appears by kind permission of Stan Orbit

The Steep Approach To Garbadale

Iain Banks, in his writerly guise or in his sci-fi Iain M Banks hat, is a marvelous writer. Here, writing marvelously, he has fastened onto a good story. He tells of the extended family Wopuld, bound by relationship and by the family business, seen through the eyes of one son who rejected family and business, but finds he needs to reconcile himself in order to live in a good manner. Banks is unsentimental, and the language and images are powerful and clear-eyed. A surprising narrative device satisfies and pays off on the last page. There is relish in the telling and in the reading of this tale, and there is authenticity. Banks considers questions we may also have - on our place in the family, their influence in our shaping, and the line between loyalty and suffocation. Oh, and a couple of good non-squirmy sex scenes.

The Two Minute Rule

I love Robert Crais' investigator Elvis Cole and the series of LA-set crime novels in which he appears. Here in The Two Minute Rule, Crais creates a new character, a reformed bank robber trying to go straight, investigating the murder of his policeman son in the face of official stonewalling. I read it. I enjoyed it mildly. The book is well crafted, the characters set up to be interesting. But somehow for me this one doesn't have the Divine Spark of Life. Yes, it is only a crime novel, but the best of the kind are marvelous literature. This is more a quick snack to fill the gap, then forget.