12 Monday May 2014
Posted in travel
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As I set off on my 70th birthday junket to Eastern Europe, I begin a new blog. morselsandscraps will go into hibernation until mid August.
If you want to travel with me though Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic and Poland you can join me for warsawandbeyond2014 at
http://morselsandscraps2.wordpress.com/
10 Saturday May 2014
Posted in travel theme
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This theme gives me an opportunity to bridge my last few days between the Tuross River in southern NSW and the Wisła in Warsaw. I can also anticipate my imminent adventure, which will take me away from the Tuross, to the Danube and the Vltava and back to the Wisła in spring.
For other rivers and truly splendid photos, have a look at http://wheresmybackpack.com/2014/05/09/rivers/
For more photos of the winter Wisła have a look at http://fivemonthsinwarsaw.wordpress.com/tag/wisla/ (This blog is now closed.)
08 Thursday May 2014
Posted in photos, Potato Point beach
Finally, after a few dysfunctional walkless days I ventured out for my beach walk this morning. It's a peerless autumn day and great waves curl in, breaking in a chaos of foam, spray blowing back with the force of their tumble. The ocean has been busy uncovering ridges of rock near the boat ramp and unloading sand to cover rocks that were exposed at the north end of the beach last time I walked.
Somehow, walking my home territory released excitement about leaving it for three months in Eastern Europe, excitement that has been sadly lacking in the frenzy of researching, planning and booking. At last I'm beginning to feel that pre-departure tug-of-war between love of here and desire for there. Up till now love of here has triumphed, leaving me in a state of abject fear of there and all its logistical challenges. At last I can think with glee “This time next week …”, even in the face of beach beauty.
07 Wednesday May 2014
Posted in about blogging
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I've only just begun to explore the community a blog creates, inspired by my geographical neighbour and blogging mentor at https://dadirridreaming.wordpress.com/. She replies to comments religiously and enters into conversations with members of her blogging community, something I have rarely done. She also led me to the world of blogging challenges.
It was through one of these challenges, a post on Warsaw statues I think, that I encountered Jo at http://restlessjo.wordpress.com/ Our link was Poland. She grew up in England with a Polish father who was totally displaced in WW2. A few years ago, surviving family contacted him, and she, like me, now has family in Poland and also struggles with that almost vowel-less morass that is the Polish language. Her Monday walks in Hartlepool are recorded in stunning images, sharp-edged like Jeffrey Smart paintings. Her locale seems to be inexhaustible to her, as mine is to me, and for the first time I feel an urge to visit England. I moved on to email contact, when conversation via blog comment seemed inadequate.
A statue link to restlessJo
I'm not very good at keeping track of comments on my blog. Now at least I've committed to checking and answering current ones, but older ones escape me. The other day, by sheer chance, I found a request from an orchid group in Paris to use photos of Dendrobium speciosum, posted in 2011, in a gazette about cultivating world orchids being assembled by her group. So now photos from Nerrigundah Ridge and Bundanon have migrated to the other side of the world.
It's complicated to keep track of comments emerging from the deep past, and it's complicated further by my habit of running a travel blog just for the duration of the trip. I forget that people might keep stumbling across posts, long after I'm back to morselsandscraps and Potato Point. This morning I found a comment from a woman from somewhere in the real world who is interested in my photos from the Canaletto Room in Warsaw's Royal Castle. She's writing a graduate paper about Canaletto and needs images for a class presentation.
Suddenly, the world is on my doorstep, and my photos take on a new life in other places.
06 Tuesday May 2014
As I was reminiscing with an old friend a few nights ago – and lubricating the mind with a pleasant Chardonnay – I realised how potent the street I lived in as a child has been in my personal mythology and my dream life, as well as in my verifiable memory.
Across the road was a family I now recognise as brutalised and dysfunctional. The kitchen always smelt of stale milk, the smell embedded I think in a thick plastic tablecloth. The father was a real estate agent who scared my mother by offering his protection when Dad was off doing country service in the fire brigade. He let my future mother-in-law's house to a very attractive woman, tagged by the neighbourhood as a prostitute. He disciplined his younger son by holding his head under a cold-water yard tap on frosty winter mornings. His older son, for a few years the reason for my eager watering of the front garden in the hope that he'd pass by and say hello, ended up the sad victim of a nervous breakdown.
Further down the hill was a sombre brick house where Jeannette lived. She was a girl with red curls that I envied, and a cheerful disposition, but she wore a clanking metal calliper because she had caught polio, the disease that terrorised families in the late 1940s.
Next door to her was an old house, hidden by a thick hedge and covered with vines. There lived the Miss Julianas, who taught piano. You rarely saw them, but you did see earnest young musicians entering through the squeaky gate, and you could hear music pouring (or stuttering) from the front room. I longed to learn piano, but it was beyond the means and the expectations of my parents.
The McMurdos had no father, and a fat mother. There were a lot of them, and occasionally the police would visit. Meals were a shambles, and we never played in the house. We sat in the grassy gutter for our games. Opposite them lived Ruth, whose family had arrived from South Africa and had a way of speaking English that was fascinating to me in my narrow Anglo world. Games we played there were more daring: games like spin the bottle.
The stretch of North Road down to Fiveways has been a frequent site in my dreams, usually involving darkness and pursuit. But it also carries the ghosts of myself when younger. An eager 7 year old on a celadon green pushbike with a semi circular cane basket, I pedal down to collect a dozen eggs from my grandfather's hen sheds and wrap them snugly in newspaper to carry them back up the hill to the ordinariness of home. As a teenager, I walk head down with a suitcase in one hand and a book in the other, heading off to catch the train to school and, later, university: that's how I learnt the whole of “The rime of the ancient mariner” by heart, and struggled through the four volumes of “Clarissa”. As a young mother, I run frantically down the hill to get the doctor when my tiny daughter convulses. And finally there's the ghost of my mother, walking down the hill to buy the Saturday Herald just before she succumbs to the limitations of Parkinson's. She sorts through the pile of pages, discarding cars, homes, sport, travel and classifieds into a rubbish bin before she walks home. She is within a block of her three homes: her childhood home, her marriage home, and the home of her old age.
05 Monday May 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
I love this blog: beautiful writing, stunning photos and simple recipes, always with a sophisticated twist.
Australian coffee shops are having a moment in New York City. The laid-back approach to serious coffee, the casual yet efficient service and the fresh and light menu options have piqued the interest of New Yorkers, who are opting to try a flat white over a gallon of Starbucks.
Toby’s Estate, a Sydney-based coffee roasting company, opened a cafe in Williamsburg in 2012. I could see it from my apartment, and it would beckon to me, drawing me out the door and up the street to order a breakfast roll. I would sit at the sun-drenched communal table to enjoy softly scrambled eggs sitting on a small sourdough roll, with sharp, melted cheddar holding roasted tomatoes in place. The crowning glory was two strips of crispy bacon, glazed in an inspired blend of coffee, cardamom and maple syrup which resulted in a salty, sweet and bitter communion of flavours that I was unable to resist. So when…
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04 Sunday May 2014
Posted in autobiography, seasonal celebration
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The year the twins were born, I celebrated All Saints in Warsaw on a grey, chilly November afternoon in Powązki cemetery, amongst the crowds of people visiting the family graves and leaving flowers and glass lanterns (http://fivemonthsinwarsaw.wordpress.com/?s=All+saints)
Last week, I celebrated All Saints, Samhain or Halloween with a group of friends at the end of April on the south coast of NSW. This year's celebration gave me an opportunity to mark seasonal change and to share stories of ancestors.
We approached the Bingie house along an avenue of candles which were reluctant at first to maintain light in the fading day and under challenge from a brisk wind.The celebration was one of darkness, brief ritual and a feast, accompanied by the stories of our ancestors. These stories were a rich way to acknowledge people who have influenced us, to tell their stories and to learn more about each other. The stories told by seven women encompassed pioneers, orphans, a year in a TB sanatorium, mental illness, loss, self-sacrifice, clairvoyance, resilience, gifts, the vastness and closeness of family, the separation of mothers and children, and the effects of these stories down the generations. We drank wine from family land and ate dark food prepared by us all to share.
For me it was strange to celebrate going into the winter dark as I prepare to head off into the long days of the northern summer: part of the dislocation that comes from duplicating some seasons and missing others as I pursue twin lives in Warsaw and Potato Point.
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