Nadine Williams

Xmas Pudding and Trifle terrific treats

Is there anything as sweet and alluring to the eye than Christmas Day desserts?  Ours were a delicious trifle which was a treat for the eye as well as the taste buds and a home-made Christmas pudding with an aroma to capture the spirit of the season. Yet I cannot take credit for either and admit I have never made either.  I am not a dessert cook, although I have mastered scones.

However, the grand desserts of my daughter-in-law Vanessa and her  country-bred mother, Sandra Herbig have inspired me to buy a book by Michael McCamley entitled Gluten Free Baking.  Until that moment when I have mastered a dessert, Sandra and Vanessa have agreed to share their recipes with you.

 

 

New Year’s Friends, Fireworks & Memories

Hoorah for January,  the best month of the year. Only New Year heralds a respectable chance to wipe the slate clean and, armed with resolutions, to begin anew on this adventure called life.

The best attraction of the first month, though, is that it shuts the door so effectively on all the downsides and disappointments and (for me) the absolute tragedies of the old year, 2012.

And so it is that on New Year’s Eve I take that familiar road from Adelaide to Hindmarsh Island, where husband Olivier and I lived for 12 months while our new house was being built. It’s a jolly reunion of mates from our sea-change era, at the island home of long-time close friends. Many people at the gathering have helped me adjust to my new reality – becoming a widow.

Smiles are the passport for fun tonight and twinkling lights entwined in the shrubbery sets the scenario for merry-making.  Music is strictly 80s and 90s and the food – with everyone bringing a plate – comes in waves like the ocean not far away over the sandhills.  Home-made Indian-style Samoosas  and Aussie sausage rolls, Maxican guacomale dip and smoked ocean trout is handed around like “pass the parcel” which triggers the taste buds for the feast which follows.

Ham-on-the-bone may be  the focal point but it is surrounded by a United Nations of foods- Italian lasagne, Moroccan-style eggplant casserole, prawns, Greek meatballs and salads galore.  Wine flows like the great River Murray lapping very close to our hosts’ back yard.

Yet, at around the time our hosts begin pouring that last drink for midnight toasts, I take my leave and explain that this first New Year’s Eve without Olivier, I want to be alone. I understand why  Greta Garbo made that statement so famous.

Mercifully, there have been no tears and much enjoyment and lively conversation with friends and strangers alike, but I do not want to find myself at midnight within this milling throng of couples yet alone without my own loved one to kiss.

In this mood of remembrance, I am jolted back to the harsh facts of life when I am pulled over by the Breathaliser police just before the bridge.
There are no side roads here and we are sitting ducks. Fortunately, I did not drink that last full glass of wine and so I pass the test. “You don’t look as if you have been drinking, Madam,’’ says the fresh-faced policeman.  “No sir,’’ I say heaving a sigh of relief.  Losing my licence would have been a nasty start to 2013.

There is a favourite spot of ours in Victor Harbor just down from the landmark stone whale and here I park the car along with many other vehicles.  Revellers have spilled out onto the lawns and while they overlook Encounter Bay below us and wait for the fireworks on the causeway, I think upon how this Bay is so pivotal to my life with Olivier.  If the South Australian Government had not decided to celebrate the 200^thanniversary of the meeting right here (actually about five miles out to sea) between British navigator Matthew Flinders and French sea captain, Nicolas Baudin in 2002, then Olivier and I would never have met.  The other important development to clinch our meeting was that I was the cultural issues writer at The Advertiser and nothing was more cultural than writing about how different we would have been as a society if by a sheer flick of fate we would have been French.

I might never have met him, but for providence – that unlikely meeting at sea of two captains when their countries were at war. This thought fills me with pleasure at such an opportunity dropped into my world which helps ease the emotional pain of the now – living the first New Year without him.

However, there is a much more emotive reason for seeking my own company if only for this final 15 minutes of 2012.  On New Year’s Eve nine years ago 2003/4 Olivier and I became lovers for the first time and now I move back  mentally  into that delicious moment, which transformed my life.  I can easily visualise his handsome face and imagine his arms around me because I wrote about it in my memoir From France With Love.  Yes, it is recorded, but right now I want to keep it in my mind,  and in my heart I still feel his love which never wavered from that night. It is very comforting.

Then the sky bursts forth into colourful sprays of fireworks and the crowd outside the window erupts into cheers welcoming 2013 – as I do, too from inside my little leather and chrome cacoon, our car.

 

 

 

 

Weight weighs In Well for Longer Life

Oh what a gem  of news which proclaims that a few extra kilos are worth their weight in a bid for a longer life.

It applies to men and women who are slightly plump and not the obese, who face a raft of health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

US Government researchers have collated results from almost 100 studies to reveal the surprising finding that people of a normal weight  will actually die younger than weightier people.

Those dreaded scales which expose a few extra kilos carry a new message that mean plump people actually have more fat reserves to call upon when they lose weight when ill health hits.  They also believe fat reserves could also help older people survive falls without serious injury.

Researchers added that this does not apply to obese or grossly overweight people, who are about a third more likely to die during the research period than those who were slightly overweight.

The findings carry a lot of weight (!) because the US government researchers studied 91 previous research papers from around the world involving millions of men and women.

Researchers noted people’s body mass index at the beginning of the study and how likely they were to have died by the end of the time period.

Of course this is not new news because a renowned world gerontologist also gave the same message at an “Ageing Successfully” lecture at the University of Adelaide two years ago.

“If you remember one thing from this lecture,” he said at the beginning of the lecture. “It is that if you are over 60 and not obese, do not try to lose wieght – you just might need it.”

 

 

Of Cats, Frogs, Madmen and Shearers

One of the finer cultural moments of 2012 was a poetry event at my book club.

We had been asked each to bring a piece of poetry to be read and discussed in some length.

One of Australia’s outstanding poets is Dorothy Porter, who, unfortunately died in December four years ago.  A prolific poet, she wrote more than 1000 poems and many will be aware of her most well known work – The Monkey’s Mask. However I chose the verse novel What a Piece of Work, which captures institutional life seen through the eyes of the new superintendent at Callan Park Psychiatric Hospital.  Amongst her many titles, this booklet caught my eye because it is the reputed exclamation that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s made under-his-breath at Prime Minister Gillard’s renowned misogyny attack.

 

However, what was more striking at the Christmas poetry event was the diversity of ideas which our group displayed – from familiar nursery rhymes to poems about cats and frogs and daffodils and men daydreaming in shearing sheds.

From classic gems such as Wordsworth’s Daffodils, which our generation learnt by heart at school, (I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils)  we moved onto the challenge of ageing with Lewis Carol’s You are old Father William.

Gwen Harwood’s, The Secret Life of Frogs, carried a shock amongst its innocent beginning with words: “We knew about Poor George, who cried if any woman touched her hair. He’d been inside a brothel when the Jerries came and started shooting. (We thought a brothel was a French hotel that served hot broth to diggers.)

The girl that he’d been with was scalped. Every Frog in the house was killed.

Henry Lawson’s classic poem,The Shearer’s Dream had us all laughing at the imagery:

“Oh, I dreamt I shore in a shearin’-shed, and it was a dream of joy,

For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy—But after dreaming of three girls to each lad, our poet crushed his hopes with When I woke with me head in the blazin’ sun to find ‘twas a shearer’s dream.”

Then one of our number took us on a Medieval history lesson with the English Nursery Rhyme“Oranges and Lemons”  of the famous British bells, how their ringing tones were used to communicate when ships laden with citrus fruit sailed along the Thames to  London.

On a more sombre note, we listened in awe to W.H. Auden’s emotive poem Stop the Clocks.

Then, in case any of us weren’t gobsmacked by the amazing array of topic and talent, we heard John Clarke’s take on TS Elliot’s  Macavity, The Mystery  Cat  who wrote a clever parody entitled Liquidity, The Accounting Cat.

Naturally, we all agreed that a poetry event would celebrate Christmas each year from now on.

 

 

 

French court rules thumbs down for wealth tax

In a surprising update on France’s tax hike for the ultra-rich,  France’s highest court has thrown out the controversial plan to tax the wealthy at a rate of 75 per cent, saying it was unfair.

In a further blow for the embattled French president, Francois Holland, the constitutional council found that the way the tax was designed was “legally unconstitutional’’.

Although the tax would have applied to only a small number of taxpayers with incomes more than $1.32 million, the threat of the wealth tax had led to an exodus from France to Switzerland, Belgium and even Britain by many wealthy French families.

High profile actor Gerard Depardeau made a much-publicised move to Belgium renouncing his French citizenship and handing back his French passport in a rejection of the tax.

Keep Calm and Carry On Into 2013

As you read this, it’s your first reason to celebrate  the dawning of 2013 because despite all the doomy prophecies, the world did not end.  And despite the war in Afghanistan,  Middle Eastern strife,  the US “fiscal cliff’’ and worries about the debt-laden European economy, our corner of the world here in Australia enjoys peace and prosperity.

There are many other reasons to look forward to 2013 with optimism.

Most important, despite the tragic past two years of my own life, when  husband Olivier was a victim of advanced prostate cancer,  cancer survival rates are higher than ever.  Count how many of your friends have beaten cancer or are in remission?

Despite the fact that chronic disease is taking a greater toll with the ageing Baby Boomer population and the War Babies now into their 70s, we will live longer than our parents’ generation.

Consider that at the beginning of the 20^th century, Australians had a life expectancy at birth of about 55 years for men and 59 years for women. Compare that with my wiry father born in England in 1918, who will celebrate his 95^th birthday in 2013. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that his longevity will be no isolated case with men’s life expectancy at birth in 2008-10 to rise to an average of almost 80 years (79.5) while women’s will be 84.
Demographers are even predicting  that achieving 100 will be the new 80! This means we have one of the longest life spans in the world and the capacity to enjoy a very long bucket list.

It depends on your age group, but if you’ve got a mortgage and that’s 35 per cent of all Australian households, you can look forward to even lower interest rates over the course of 2013. Most economists are tipping another 0.5 per cent down from the official cash rate now at 3 per cent.  This will see the standard variable mortgage rate sitting at about 5.7 per cent saving homeowners with an average $300,000 mortgage about $35 a week.  This prediction will not be greeted with the same “Hoorah’’ by retirees dependant on interest on their savings for their quality of life. After years of stagnant superannuation returns following the GFC, they have become dependant on healthy interest rates to boost their retirement income.

The housing market is likely to remain flat, giving first home buyers a chance to snap up affordable properties from vendors desperate to sell.   Wise home-buyers will continue to stay in their homes unless forced by circumstances to move.  Renovations are expected to continue to be buoyant and home builders, whose industry has been stagnant, will have an anxious wait to see if lower interest rates encourage new home buyers to sign building contracts.  A slash in new first home buyer stamp duty of 30 per cent as in Victoria would stimulate the industry here in SA.

Whether we are Republicans or Monarchists, we will celebrate another royal baby early in the new year.  We will soak up all the baby news in gossip magazines in the lead-up to the world’s most famous bub. Will it be a boy or girl? Who will it look like?  If baby is a girl and looks like dad, then this will cause a frenzy of delight that bubs will resemble Princess Diana.  And what will he/she be named? A contemporary name such as Harvey or Brendon or a more Royal Henry or Charles?  What about Matilda for the Queen’s great grand-daughter? But my money is on Elizabeth Mary Anne. Whatever. It will bring a fun element for 2013.

On a more serious level, 2013 will bring both a State election in SA and a Federal election for us all. Then, after all the toxic rhetoric and fiery character attacks from both sides, it will be time for the People’s Choice after three years of a minority government with Australia’s first female Prime Minister at the helm.   Whatever the pundits predict, it will be two unpopular leaders facing the electorate for judgement day, hopefully over performance and policies.  It’s odds on the issues of the Carbon Tax (Gillard’s broken promise) and the flood of boat people arriving at our shores will be high on the Opposition’s pile of political ammunition. It will be intriguing to see if Julia Gillard can sustain her toxic personality attack on the character of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott through to a probable election in August.

Whatever surprises the New Year holds for us individually in our personal lives, keep in mind that famous British slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On Regardless’’.

Meanwhile, , I wish you a Happy New Year and that life treats you kindly.