About two years ago, I bought my daughter Kathy a Betty Boop Rose for her birthday. As she adored roses and loves Betty Boop, it was the perfect present.
We planted it in the back garden of the house we lived in then, and waited hopefully for her to bloom. Alas, she did not. She didn’t like her situation. We moved her to a better spot, but she sulked, refusing to grow or bloom.
Then came a period of emotional and domestic turmoil. We quite forget about Betty, but we remembered to take her with us in a large pot when we moved into temporary accomodation. We needed to move to the cooler air of the mountains for the sake of Kathy’s youngest child,who suffered badly from the oppressive heat and humidity of the lowlands, but there were seemingly interminable delays. Betty was placed in the backyard near the tap so we would remember to water her. She continued to resist all blandishments to bloom, but she did flaunt new foliage. Clearly she just hadn’t liked the old house at all. We were inclined to sympathise with her.
Finally we managed our somewhat chaotic move to a house on the Granite Belt, on the Queensland side of the New South Wales/Queensland border. We remembered Betty, shoving her in the back of my car just before we left. Poor girl, she took it well, but looked a bit lost at the side of the house in her pot until we sortied around the new back yard and discovered good rich soil in which to plant her.
I must confess that by now I had given up all hope. But we placed her in her new situation with a tomato plant, some parsley and a strawberry plant for company. Well, the heavens just opened up as soon as we moved in and it has rained pretty well continuously since. The drought that had forced us all onto very strict water rationing is over - the local dam is overflowing, but with all this rain, water usage hasn’t really changed much.
But how Betty loves it! She has started to grow at last, puts out new leaves, and lo and behold! The other morning we found her very first bloom.
It is as gorgeous as all the photos predicted, a deep and lovely pinky red toning to yellow. Kathy was enchanted - Betty’s first baby is being lovingly cared for and will be pressed to find a home among Kathy’s most precious keepsakes.
You see, this is more than just a rose - Betty’s baby is a symbol of hope, of light coming back into lives that were darkened by sorrow, loss and worry. Betty has survived all this upheaval - we kept her because no matter how unhappy she was, she refused to give in, she kept fighting to survive.
And that’s the story of our beautiful rose.

The great thing about having a chef for a son in law is not just the food - it’s the presents. His latest gift to me is the new Nigella Express. Here’s someone who understands the craving for a good recipe book as bedtime reading. And Nigella always serves up a good book, as tasty as her dishes.
I love the succulence with which she writes about and describes food. Here’s a delicious sample from the introduction to her recipe for Chocolate Mint Cookies;

These don’t take long to make up and bake, and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to be able to open the door to people with the smell of their baking oozing welcomingly out in the evening air.

Nigella makes cooking a sensual experience, even in a book that purports to be about cooking in a hurry for people who don’t have time to cook.

Incidentally, here’s that cookie recipe.

Choclate Mint Cookies by Nigella Lawson

100g soft butter
150g light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
150g flour
35g cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
200g dark chocolate chips

For the glaze

75g icing sugar
1 15ml tablespoon cocoa, sieved
2 15 ml tablespoons boiling water
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (Nigella uses Boyajian Natural Peppermint Flavour)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (gas mark 4)
Cream butter and brown sugar, then beat in vanilla extract and egg.
Mix flour, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl and gradually beat in to the creamed mixture. Finally, fold in the chocolate chips.
Using a rounded 15 ml tablespoon measure, spoon out scoops of cookie dough and place on a lined baking sheet, leaving a little space between each one.
Bake in the oven for 12 minutes and let them sit on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes before moving them to a cooling rack, with some newspaper on the surface underneath to catch any escaping glaze later.
Put the glaze ingredients into a sauce pan and heat until combined.
Using a teaspoon, zig zag the glaze over each cooling cookie.
Makes 26.

And they don’t last long!

I have recently taken up sewing again and have been making these little bags for my granddaughters. This one I made out of a shiny scrap of material from my work basket. I call it the Jester Bag for want of a better name - but it really does remind me of jester colours and capers.
One of my granddaughters has taken up juggling, so I made her a set of juggling balls from the pattern at the Internet Juggling Base and a shoulder bag to carry them in. I embroidered the words Juggler’s Guild on the bag and she loved it as she is very into things Medieval.

I made a Cottage Pie tonight - the filling was all right, but the real reason I make Cottage Pie, and the reason everyone eats it, is because of my mashed potatoes. Being Irish, I love potatoes in any form, but I spent years perfecting my mash.
I use big old baking potatoes that stay white when you cook them. I peel, cut and quarter them and drop them into boiling water in a big pan. Keep them boiling until they just starting to break up. Strain the potatoes but don’t pour out all of the water. Leave enough to cover the bottom of the pan, and start mashing the potatoes into this. It makes them beautifully light.
When they are mashed and lump free, add two tablespoons of cream (yes, I said cream! All right, you can use Lite Cream if you must) and mash this well in. Add a pinch of salt and serve. Or pile on top of a cottage pie.

I do enjoy historical fiction and my favourite authors are Jean Plaidy and Philippa Gregory. Gregory’s A Respectable Trade is one of the finest novels of the slave trade that I have ever read, highlighting a little known aspect of it. So perhaps it was the surfeit of Plaidy and Gregory I had been reading and re-reading that made me toss aside Karen Harper’s The First Princess of Wales barely a third of the way through. Or maybe it’s just because this is a very bad book.
It was the cover that drew me in. If I’d seen this on the shelves under its original 1984 title of Sweet Passion’s Pain with no doubt a bodice ripping cover to match, I would have passed it over instantly.
But obviously the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, caused a marketing rethink. A change of title, a classically inspired cover, and suddenly we have what looks like a serious and scholarly recreation of the life of one of history’s most fascinating women, Joan of Kent, the wife of Edward Plantagenet, the Black Prince.
Unfortunately what we have inside is still the same bodice ripping trash, with a near rape every ten pages or so. Even given the morality of the times, this is distasteful, especially when you realise that Ms Harper has done virtually no research on her subject - or if she did, has utterly ignored it.
When this book opens, the real Joan of Kent - the Fair Maid of Kent, as she was later known - was about 10 or 11. At the age of 12, she was married to a far older knight, a man in his 40s. Not unusual for the middle ages, but Ms Harper has decided Joan must be quite a bit older for this story, since clearly the reading public will not enjoy reading about a 11 year old girl being raped by one future husband, while being married off to another.
Basically, Ms Harper has taken what is possibly a tragic story of the treatment of very young girls in medieval; times and turned it into a breathless excuse for the usual `hot’ romance treatment.
On Joan’s behalf, I am offended. As the mother of daughters, I am offended - since when did sexual abuse become the light hearted stuff of trashy romance novels? Does it matter if it was 500 years ago? It was still wrong.
Dress it up all you like, Three Rivers Press, all the pretty cover does is serve the purpose of spices and herbs at a medieval banquet - it covers the smell.

I don’t know how many other writers have this problem (I suspect the majority) but I decided to go rummaging around in my old files this week, and what I discovered shocked me. Half finished projects piled in higgledy-piggledy, and somewhat reproachfully. So I made a vow to finish at least some of them, if not all, and junk those that were simply too terrible to bother with.
Unusually for me, I actually stuck to it and dragged out a chapbook I’d been writing about my own writer’s journey. I did finish it, and have stored it away again for further editing.
But just reading through it was a revelation to me. I saw, up to the point where I stopped writing, how my life as a writer came together in what Isabel Allende calls `the relationship between events’ (in The House of the Spirits, a most wonderful book). It seemed everything I had ever attempted, learned and actually achieved had a flow that I never noticed before.
I was inspired to finish it immediately - and amazingly, I can tick off one completed manuscript from my half finished files. But it was what I learned from reading it, and completing it, that has the most value for me right now.
I understand now that not a moment, not one experience, good or bad, has been wasted - and I understood, for the first time, where I was coming from as a writer, and what I really wanted to achieve all those years. This has liberated me and returned to me the sheer love of the written word that started me off all those decades ago, when I was still a child and in love with `word play.’
I feel I can write again with the fearlessness I knew then - that it really doesn’t matter to me whether it gets published or not, as long as I have the pleasure of creating something.
Maybe that will be hard to stick to - last night I found myself scouting for publishers for the novel I also dug out of the archives and tackled again. But I pulled myself up - for one thing, although I am fired with new energy for the project, it still isn’t finished yet - and I may relapse into my old ways and not look at it again for years.
But that won’t happen if I hang onto the revelation that it doesn’t matter anyway. I am writing this novel because it has meaning for me, because I like the characters I’ve created and want to go on their journey with them. It’s word play - I am playing in my own world, making up my stories like I used to.
Sometimes the desire to make money out of what you write just gets in the way. Oh, I’ve been there, I can see that from my little memoir. I worked as a newspaper journalist and I couldn’t play much because my pay check depended on my doing the job well. But there was still the pleasure of spinning words into a proper format for the newspaper, there was still the pleasure of finding stories I could tell.
But now, when it is not so urgent, I found it hard to shake the notion that every project must pay financially, or it was a waste of time. The joy of simple creativity was eluding me.
If you are similarly stuck (and what happens is we become so enmeshed in making sure we don’t `waste time’ by doing something that maybe won’t pay that we do get stuck) try the memoir exercise. Chronicle your journey as a writer, from the first fumbling attempts to where you are now. Rediscover the muse that set you off.
It’s a revelation to rediscover the writer you were meant to be.

Young people keep telling us that baby boomers are a selfish lot who always want their own way and think the world revolves around them. What rot! The world is not designed around baby boomers at all.

If it were, mobile phones would have 27 inch TV screens and typewriter keyboards so we could see what we’re dialing.

No one would have to put their glasses on to dial a number.

Computers would not ask you stupid questions that only computer geeks could understand. You would not be required to connect to the internet to find out why your internet isn’t working.

If it was all about baby boomers, nothing would have a remote control. All entertainment equipment would have big knobs and levers with their function clearly marked in courier 18 pt.

Rap music would not exist. Period.

The pubic area would not be seen in low riding jeans. Ever.

I love reading old household management books and my favourite is Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. I had to share this lovely recipe for restoring whiteness to scorched linen.

INGREDIENTS.–1/2 pint of vinegar, 2 oz. of fuller’s-earth, 1 oz.
of dried fowls’ dung, 1/2 oz. of soap, the juice of 2 large onions.

Boil all these ingredients together to the consistency of
paste; spread the composition thickly over the damaged part, and if the
threads be not actually consumed, after it has been allowed to dry on,
and the place has subsequently been washed once or twice, every trace of
scorching will disappear.

I am now searching Mrs Beeton’s book for instructions on getting out chicken poo stains.

It was said that Madolyn and Anthony were the perfect couple; although, to be fair, it was Madolyn who said it most often.
She never tired of describing their first meeting. They had been students, she studying art, and he economics. He had pursued her with champagne, roses and midnight strolls along the riverbank. She had kept the wretched man waiting for weeks while she dithered about his proposal. She wanted to be an artist. Should she fulfill her ambition, or her womanhood?
She chose marriage, and Anthony was the happiest man in the world. So Madolyn said.
For, in spite of being the happiest man and the most lavishly adored husband in the world, Anthony was a dour man. He had charming eyes as soft and brown as a Spaniel pup, and a trace of sensuality about the contours of his mouth, but for the most part people in their circle regarded him as a dull stick.
If he had once been the passionate lover Madolyn described, their friends could see no sign of it now. After fifteen years of marriage not a whiff of scandal had disturbed Madolyn’s domestic pond. Anthony was seen standing doggedly at her side through the seasonal round of parties and picking up the tab on her shopping trips. They were not extravagantly rich, but he had made some prudent investments when young. They owned a charming house, and she bought only the very best, on the assertion that it never went out of style and was therefore good value for money. Many privately thought she had chosen Anthony for the same reasons.
So for fifteen years, the pond remained undisturbed. Then fate cast its first stone.
It began at a reception for Gabriella di Franco, the Italian-born artist, whose vibrant canvasses had shaken the art world like a cyclone. Her own beauty was almost as startling. She was a tall, red-haired Amazon with green eyes. Anthony was clearly mesmerized. Madolyn caught him staring at the artist as if she was one of her own paintings, and he was calculating whether he would have enough left over from the budget to buy her.
Soon the two were deep in conversation. Gabriella di Franco had a way of oozing over a man like honey over a warm muffin. Anthony’s eyes looked more Spaniel-like than ever and his mouth shaped itself into distinctly sensual lines.
“Darling,’’ Madolyn murmured, “why don’t you introduce me to Miss di Franco?”
Gabriella regarded her with scant interest.
“Your husband is very attractive,’’ she said in a voice redolent of late nights and men’s eyes. “I would like very much to paint him.’’
“You don’t do portraits,’’ Madolyn snapped.
“Every artist does portraits,’’ Gabriella said, with an artful toss of her flaming hair.
After the reception, Madolyn and Gabriella never had cause to meet socially again. But worrying little snippets of gossip would catch up with Madolyn. Anthony had been seen going into the building where Gabriella was renting a large studio apartment; Gabriella was delaying her return to Rome for unknown reasons; someone saw her walking with Anthony along the riverbank. He did not smell of Gabriella’s perfume, or come home late with lame excuses, and Madolyn never found an auburn hair on his clothing no matter how hard she looked, yet there was something about him that disturbed her. Only another wife, she reflected bitterly, would understand, but she wasn’t going to give those harpies any more fuel for their gossip.
A week before their sixteenth anniversary, Madolyn called Anthony at his office. To her annoyance, his assistant Miss Bloomfield was off sick, and a temp took the call.
“I’m afraid Mr Harvey is out,’’ the temp said. “Can I take a message?”
“Just tell him that his wife called, and will call again later.’’ Madolyn replied. “It isn’t urgent.”
“Certainly, Mrs Harvey. Oh, by the way, did you get the flowers?”
“Flowers?” Madolyn said blankly. “What flowers?”
“One dozen red roses – I’m afraid I got the inscription on the card wrong. Mr Harvey asked me to put `To Gabriella, to mark our first meeting’, and I asked them to put `for our anniversary’. But of course that might not be the same thing at all. I am so sorry.’’
“No, that’s perfectly all right,’’ Madolyn said, and quickly hung up.
She stared at the phone for a while, then, with slow and deliberate movements, she went upstairs and dressed carefully to go out.
She caught a taxi to Gabriella’s apartment, not wishing anyone to see her car parked nearby. Gabriella herself answered the door, wearing a paint-spattered denim shirt, a pair of baggy pants rolled up to the knees, and her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked sensational.
“Why, Mrs Harvey,’’ she purred. “How nice.’’
“This isn’t a social visit,’’ Madolyn said, wishing her voice would remain steady. “I want to speak to you about my husband.’’
Gabriella stood aside and motioned Madolyn to enter. She followed the artist up a flight of stairs to a huge, sunlit studio. Several half-completed canvasses in the familiar vibrant style were ranged around the walls. In the center of the room was an easel, covered in a white sheet.
“I am very busy, as you can see,’’ Gabriella said. “But I can spare you a few moments.’’
“Thank you.’’ Madolyn felt horribly ill at ease, but she couldn’t turn back now. Something in her very bones told her that Anthony had been here.
“There’s been gossip,’’ she said. “I have been told that Anthony has been seen entering your apartment, not once, but many times.’’
“Ah – ‘’ Gabriella nodded wisely. “Gossip, such a bore. I prefer to avoid people when I can. So many of them have nothing better to do than talk about others. You imagine that your husband and I are having an affair?”
“Are you?”
“My dear, would you believe me if I said no? If course not,’’ Gabriella went on, not waiting for an answer. “Your husband is a very attractive man, so naturally you fear that another woman will steal him from you. I quite understand. I am a woman, too, as well as an artist.’’
“And I was an artist, long ago.’’ Madolyn glanced around the studio and inhaled the smell of oils and turpentine with a pang.
“I could never give it up for a mere man,’’ Gabriella said. “But I see you are troubled, and it seems I must tell you the truth, even though Anthony has begged me not to reveal his reason for coming here.’’
Madolyn gasped aloud. “So it is true!’’
“But of course. He comes here every day.’’
“But why, what are you doing together>’’
“Is it not obvious? I am painting his portrait. A special portrait. It is intended as an anniversary gift for you.’’
As light dawned, Madolyn gave a gasp of delight, and considerable relief.
“A portrait! How charming.’’ She looked at the easel. “Is that it? Can I look?”
“Certainly not,” Gabriella said. “You mustn’t see it yet.’’ A sharp ringing interrupted her and she clucked her tongue. “Now the phone - do people think I have nothing to do all day? I won’t be a moment.’’
She hurried out of the studio and Madolyn could hear her speaking into the phone.
She glanced longingly at the easel. Surely a quick peek wouldn’t hurt? Carefully she lifted a corner of the white sheet and raised it enough to see the portrait. She stared, her eyes bulging, and quickly dropped it again.
“I am sorry,’’ Gabriella said, sweeping back into the studio. `I have to go down to the gallery at once. I trust your curiosity has been satisfied?’’
Madolyn thought for a moment that Gabriella knew she had been peeking, but it seemed she was only referring to the reason for her visit.
“Yes, thank you,’’ she said. “Quite satisfied. I can’t wait to see the portrait.’’
“I’m sure you can’t,’’ Gabriella said cryptically, and ushered her down the stairs.
Once outside, Madolyn headed for the nearest café, and found a secluded table. She fanned her flaming cheeks with the menu, and reflected on what she had seen under the sheet in Gabriella’s studio.
How could he? Naked! Lying on a red couch without a stitch on, a bunch of grapes in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. Shameless! And that hussy, posing him like that.
Fanning herself even harder, Madolyn ordered coffee and then stared unseeingly at the café walls. My God, she thought, is that how Anthony looks to that woman?
Stripped of his somber suits and hangdog look, freed from his twenty-four hour obsession with expense accounts and tax havens, yes, he did look like that. Really, when she thought about it, it was a most romantic gesture, to give a wife of fifteen years a nude portrait of oneself. She could just see it hanging over their bed. Certainly none of her friends would ever have received such a gift. She could imagine how she would tease them with hints about it. Perhaps she would even allow one or two of them to see it, if they could be trusted to keep their hands off Anthony afterwards.
The days passed. She ignored the gossip. Gabriella finally departed for Rome, and Madolyn’s pond settled into tranquility again.
On the day of their anniversary, the Harveys held a small dinner party for their closest friends. It was a great success, and all the guests commented on the good looks of their host and hostess.
At the end of the meal, Anthony rose and called for attention.
“Darling,’’ he addressed Madolyn. “It’s time to present my gift to you. I have been keeping it in my study all day, so if you will excuse me, I’ll just slip out and fetch it. Gordon, would you give me a hand, old chap? It’s rather large.’’
Madolyn watched him leave the room with his burly friend in tow, and her cheeks burned. Surely he wasn’t going to give her the portrait in front of all their friends? Had he no shame? In exquisite discomfort she watched as he and Gordon came back into the room, carrying the portrait still shrouded in its white sheet. They lifted it up onto the buffet and rested it against the wall.
“I hope you like it, darling,’’ Anthony said. “If nothing else, it will be a good investment for the future. An original di Franco is sure to increase in value.’’ With a flourish, he pulled away the sheet.
The guests clapped their hands and exclaimed their surprise and delight. Madolyn grasped the edge of the table, straining her mouth into a smile, her face betraying nothing.
It was a magnificent portrait, painted in deeper colors than Gabriella normally used. Anthony had the look of a brooding, Goyaesque figure. But it wasn’t the one she had seen in the studio.
This Anthony was fully clothed.

End

Work on the motorway has been halted while a new archeological find is assessed (why does that not surprise me?)

The story is here

and there’s a pic of the new find here

Unfortunately this may only be a temporary reprieve and the fight to save Tara will go on.