The weekend that was so long ago

I’ve never been a fan of the abbreviation TGI Friday – but jeez I’m literally hollering it out today! Two public holidays has meant I’ve had to play catch up at work this week.

Whilst I’m still eating Easter eggs*, it feels like an age since Easter. I’ve been dreamily reminiscing about my trip away to the beach house. Including the fine wine, cheese, afternoon tea, girly chats over cider, beach walks, antique hunting, mint tea and Sunday markets.

A seaside cider

Fresh Mint tea

All the delicious beverages last weekend actually reminded me of some horrendously horrible drinks I had whilst on the road. In particular some truly nasty European wines. Now that may sound like an oxymoron. After all European wines have so many highfalutin connotations of decadence and moorish qualities; in fact the phrase la-di-da springs to mind. I can confidently say that we sampled few with any genteel standards. Then again we weren't so much doing Europe on a shoestring as doing it on a scrap of twine and a tent peg!

If there was a cheaper option we leap wholeheartedly at it. The wine we drank was out of plastic bottles. Which is sold in great quantities - why buy one liter when you can buy 2.5 liters for only a euro more? I am ninety percent positive what we were drinking was wine. The labels had green squiggles that resembled grapes, though the wine generally tasted less like fermented fruit and more like lighter fluid. It had to be diluted with a generous dash of soft drink otherwise it'll burn your taste buds and give you the most vivid nightmares. Still it was an absolute bargain basement price.

Whilst I’m poorer than I was in Europe, I’m pleased to be back in the land of cheap but highly drinkable vino. In fact I think after the hectic week I had a glass of wine would go down swimmingly!

Juice that packed a punch (carrot, apple, ginger, orange)

* This has nothing to do with portion control or slow eating – it’s more like an abundance of delicious egg shaped chocolate

A Fraction of the Whole

If you're scrounging around for an Easter long weekend read I highly recommend 'A Fraction of the Whole' which I first reviewed on Penpaperplay (my blog of old). In this review I also highly recommend the mind bending pleasures of 'Catch 22', 'Life A users Manual' and 'A Confederacy of Dunces'.

I'm on the home straight with a handful of novels and intend to use this weekend to sit and soak in a sea of words, so there'll be a spattering of reviews coming your way in the coming weeks. Happy reading y'all!

A Fraction of the whole:

Novels are generally deemed “classic” when it’s a weighty (albeit outdated) tome. There’s fine line to thread between what is defined as cheesy and classic. Cheesy novels are drenched in unfashionable references not yet far enough removed to be yearned for.

Won’t it just be safer and wiser to avoid contemporary events all together? Just zip lock your novel with timeless references to avoid becoming an irrelevant pile of paper. For debut author, Steve Totlz, there is no safe option. Toltz grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck, pulls them into a hotted up car and drives full pelt into modern Australia.

However it was 2008 when the novel hit the shelves

with great aplomb, would it still be “devastatingly funny” when read today?

The short answer is – hells yeah it’s funny.

Essentially a story about a Father raising his son. While the Father takes his role as an educator very seriously, his advice and childrearing techniques aren’t quite run of the mill. With the family motto “there’s safety in looking crazy”. These bizarre thoughts flow forth from the “My Father the philosopher – he couldn’t even give a simple haircut without reflecting on it”.

The father and son relationship is more reminiscent of “Dad and Dave” than the Mr. Brady and Greg. Full of inappropriate jokes and naff notions “Most of my life I never worked out whether to pity, ignore, adore, judge or murder my Father.” The characters are so well fleshed out they have everything but a pulse.

Between all the bombastic, batty thoughts and tangents, there are some real gems of insight “there seems to be no passion for life, only for lifestyle.” Yet for all the navel gazing and bar stool philosophizing, the story has an unrelenting pace.

The novel is brimming with ideas, pulsating with energy, without feeling like we’re furrowing through the dregs of every last creative writing task Toltz has ever attempted.

In fact Toltz is a tidy writer - reining the plot with more skill than a cowboy born and breed in Wyomy, when it could have easily veered off the cliff into a sea of crashing absurdity (much like this metaphor of Toltz being a cowboy cum pirate).

Totlz captures contemporary Australia without resorting to cheap sucker-punch of stereotypes of a homogenous Home and Away society of surfer bums lounging at the local corner store.

Other books which will wrinkle your brain with wonderfully bizarre characters include:

And of course Catch 22, which has hidden itself somewhere in my bookcase...

Egg-xactly!

It’s almost Easter! It’s always a time of year that I associate with beautiful bovines and hardy agriculture, toasty scones and immaculate needlework. Easter in Sydney is when the gates of the Royal Easter Show are swung open – a bonanza of animals, art, craft and food, glorious food!

I don’t always attend (the entry fee is eyewateringly steep and the crowds are headache inducing) this year I’ll be missing out, as I’ll be down the coast next weekend with a bunch of friends.

So in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the Easter show, I started flicking through pictures of when I was in Ireland three years ago. I spent time visiting my family on their various farms around the South of Ireland.

It was a bitterly cold winter, you may remember countless airports across Europe shutting up stop for days on end. We actually got snowed for a week at our Grandparents farm in County Cork.

Just after the mammoth grocery shop for Christmas

We wake up to fields of snow and icy roads

We were expecting the entire extended family to arrive for christmas dinner, but given that we were snowed in, there was only about eight at Christmas dinner (we had cooked, chopped and baked for thirty odd people) so we feasted on suckling ham, mounds of mash, piles of peas and plump turkeys. So these pictures hold memories of peat fires, stuffed bellies, frozen toes and retro radio tunes.

At one point it got so cold we considered taking the hatching light from the chicken coop to heat up the back bedrooms of the house.

Ladies who lunch

In County Kerry