Here's an obscure connection to this weeks talk - Its called "Cooking with Davinia"

Cooking with Davinia

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The music swelled and the studio lights gradually came up to reveal a fully functioning kitchen. Now that familiar tune, crudely borrowed and slightly disguised from the TV show The Avengers. Then, from stage right, i-i-i-i-i-i-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-s-s-s-s-s D-A-V-I-N-I-A. The studio audience gasp as she bounces across the set, he breasts straining at the diaphanous material of her blouse, her blond hair streaming behind her, eyes blazing with that, now-famous, look. She comes to a stop behind her massive wooden chopping board cum table and waits for the applause to die down. Gradually the thunderous adoration is reduced to a few isolated handclaps and the occasional wolf whistle. Davinia looks out into the lights and says "Thank you Frederick." This brings a cacophony of fresh laughter and then further applause from the crowd. "Welcome to episode five of Cooking with Davinia. Tonight we focus on salads and I know I have some delicious little morsels for you. And please,” (here she stage suppresses a giggle) “ do try this at home." The expected crowd response is immediate and prolonged.
Davinia starts to explain the various oils and vinegars that make up the basic ingredients in vinaigrettes and dressings while she absent mindedly massages up and down the neck of a particularly well constructed olive oil bottle with her thumb and forefinger. The males in the audience shift uncomfortably in their seats. She suddenly realises what she is doing and with girl-like-embarrassment she blushes, causing the Floor Director to yell "Cut, cut, cut." He loudly taunts Davinia to get her bloody act together and is she ready for a two shot of the start up again. There is murmuring heard in the audience, mostly directed at the Directors crude interruption of what, for many of them, has been an inspiring moment in the career of Davinia White, Mistress of Chefs. True, there had been the rumours of the failed marriages, the affairs, the scandal in the country manor, the drugs, but now Davinia is at the top of her profession. From airline hostess, to author, to top TV cooking presenter. In just four years.
"Right Mr Director Person", Davinia, taking her cue from the audiences anger, lets do that two shot and could I have some water over here." Davinia then adds a very ironic please which brings a further response from the audience. Had they known that the 'water' was in fact straight vodka they may have been less generous in their rapture.
"I will first show you how to make a basic dressing to go on any salad." Davinia crushed garlic and Maldon salt, mustard and peppercorns in her pestle then added balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Her vigorous manipulation of the pestle caused fascinating movements of her voluptuous breasts and now both men and women were lost in her story of why Lord Mountbatten had been a more competent maker of vinaigrettes than Queen Elizabeth. She finished by titling the resulting mixture to the camera for an overhead close-up. She was on a roll.
The Benzedrine was starting to kick in as she moved to her glass of water and downed 7ozs in one long gulp. But Davinia remained focussed. Apart from the Benzedrine and the vodka she was drug free. Or was that yesterday? "I'll now explain a little bit about the various leaves that make up a salad. Isn't that a fascinating word leaves? Like loaves and fishes, and, indeed salad leafs are our most basic food items." Davinia starts to show the curly endive, the rocket, the cos, and the Chinese cabbages but she seemed to be dropping leaves as she spoke and the floor of the kitchen was starting to resemble a battlefield. Fortunately the camera can lie and the TV audience would only see the glorious Davinia reciting another hilarious anecdote to win ratings and, hopefully, another series.
"Now, darlings. Lets put this all together in our first salad of the evening - a hot beef salad with an Asian flavour. First we will wash our salad. Personally I don't favour washing but most cooks do, so we will do it tonight. Opps taps only for decoration. Well we will use this drinking water." Davinia drowns her lettuce leafs with 60 proof vodka. "Now we will dry them off by whirling with this little whirly thing. Weeee! Oh that’s so much fun." The audience are still with Davinia but there is some murmuring in the front row. "Next we slice up some of this rare beef that through the miracle of television has suddenly appeared in front of me." Davinia, after loudly demanding more water, has started to cut into the meat when a tear forms in the corner of her eye and then she asks for the cameras to stop rolling. As she downs another glass of water she tells the audience how she was driving to the television studio this very morning when, out of the corner of her eye, she notices what she thinks if a piece of paper blowing toward her Mercedes SL Turbo with white leather seats and Blaupluket stereo just newly purchased for a mere $300,000US. Then there is a sickening thump, and Davinia looks in the rear vision mirror and a beautiful off white Burmese, or possibly, Pekinese, she always gets the two mixed up, cat is desperately trying to get back on its feet and Davinia watches in horror, ignoring the path of her own vehicle, and her own very personal safety, as the poor creature writhes and turns. But its little back or legs or paws are broken and suddenly it just goes all loose and twitches one last time. And this meat has reminded her of the cat and she is just filled with remorse and horror and she will have to waste at least one, possibly two, sessions with her very expensive therapist, trying to work out the inner meaning of all this.
A few members of the audience are getting to their feet and moving out of the studio and the Director, who knows Davinia, and who knows that Davinia works best when she is in this crazy, zany, drug and alcohol fuelled rage that she has now entered, calls for the cameras to start rolling and could Davinia please get her act together. Knowing that this is the trigger that will get Davinia through the rest of the show. And Davinia then adds the oven-scorched red peppers and the feta cheese and the toasted pine-nuts that have all been prepared beforehand. Davinia then tosses the dressing over the combined ingredients and then after wiping the mascara that has smeared the off camera side of her face immerses her hands in the mixture and gently massages it like the lover that massaged her this morning or was that last week?
Then Davinia dishes a small amount of the salad onto a small plate and the final test, the Tasting. The Director, who knows Davinia well, knows that he has to have split second timing here or the days filming will be a complete waste of time. Davinia spoons a portion into the red gash of her mouth and the camera stops as she suddenly exhales salad, vodka, last nights pizza, this mornings croissant and coffee over the studio kitchen. Another day, cooking with Davinia.

A petulant rave

Its interesting to see and feel just how much a part of this online group I feel. I thought that I was really a ‘lurker’, just dipping my foot in occasionally and generally bitching about how everything is left to the individual to work out for themselves. I know, there are handy You Tube bits but on my computer its like having a really bad headache and you are wearing someone else’s eyeglasses. Surely the technology is such that a sharper image can be shown? If not, then do it some other way. And I must say that waiting 5 minutes for a You Tube item to download (even on a broadband connection) is beyond the pall. Anyways, back to my topic.
The facilitator published a list of all the blogs and lo and behold my Blog is omitted. Now I know that my Blog is a combination of personal stuff and stuff about the course but I thought we were encouraged to be individual and creative.
So why was I left off?
Whatever the reason (and I am sure there is a perfectly logical reason) it does show two things.
One is that my belonging to the group is much more than I had though and, two, how not to facilitate a group. If you are going to do something like this you have to do it right. Only make general postings when you have the information right. Get a list of all participants and maybe email first and ask ‘I am going to have a master list of Blogs. What would you like put on?”

Rave over.

an unwanted social presence

We had been at the Island for two weeks, snuggly anchored in Kidney Fern, an isolated islet in Pattersons Inlet. Out days had been reduced to finding fresh water, dry wood for the fire , and gathering shellfish and fish to substain us. We awoke when the sun came up and retired to bed when it went down. The pressures of city life and work had long evaporated.

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As we prepared a humble evening meal of oysters with oven baked fresh bread, followed by Queen scallops lightly poached in a garlic cream sauce, a flotilla of fishing and pleasure boats chugged through the narrow entrance and circled us. It is accepted etiquette to acknowledge new arrivals and make an offer of a 'raft up' (where boats all tie togther and lay to one anchor). We ducked below and they gradually drifted to the far side of the islet. About an hour later, just as the sun was going down and we were preparing for bed, the evening was distrupted by loud music. Personally, I would not have the gall to play 'Achey, Breaky, Heart' at 100dB but they appeared unconcerned. So unconcerned that thay then lowered their dinghy's into the water and attached outboards, then proceeded to issue instructions as to what tonights race course would be. Apparently this was a nightly ritual.Round the bouys racing with screaming two stroke engines. To our further dismay, as we lay huddled together in our bunk, we were to be the top bouy. The next two hours was punctuated by unbearable noise, constant rocking from the wake of four washes, and loud screaming.
An unwanted social presence.

a video

Online learning

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I was talking to a colleague about her experinece of taking a flexible online learning course and she described it as such.
"It was like being dropped from a helicopter into a deep, deep ocean on a dark, cold night and someone was away on a distant shore intermittently flicking a Zippo lighter (and we all know how unreliable they can be) and quietly moaning 'over here, over here'".
Needless to say she did not complete the course but it got me thinking about two themes.
Firstly, we were asked to conjure up an image that represented our group persona and secondly, what it is that has interested and stimulated me so far.
Years ago I bought a keelboat and my children were all quite young, 17, 12, 8 years and we jointly discovered the pleasures of offshore sailing. This involved being caught out on the Otago coast in more than a few storms and some heroic efforts were made to get back to safe anchorage. The kids presented me with a framed cartoon which has a yacht, perched on a breaking wave, sails shredded, crew hanging over the side, with a caption "Dad! are we having fun yet?" This is my group picture so far. Equal parts exhiliration and terror.

What I have enjoyed is the stimulation of working in a relatively new medium. I happened to be reading Stephen Halls 'The Raw Shark Texts" and he makes novel use of primitive tag clouds in depicting a Great White about to eat its victim. The graphics of Blogs and the creative use of images has stimulated me more than some of the content. I believe that what a lot of blogs lack is any sense of continuity. They stand alone, and that can be a good thing, but what I am looking for is someone who has a BIG IDEA and takes some time, and creativity to develop it.

Replaced by a Doll

I know that most of us, at some time in our lives, have refused to believe something we don’t want to believe despite considerable evidence that it is true. Such denial is understandable, the truth can be painful.

But such denial can be dangerous.

I can place the day she changed, hell, I can place the hour. Twelve midday, Sunday the 7^th May. Two days after my birthday. She suddenly appeared from a visit home where her parents were clearing out their house preparatory to a move to a smaller residence. A box. Overflowing with bits of clothing and a weird strained noise whenever she bumped against something. She didn’t greet me, just briskly walked past me to the ‘spare room’. The spare room used to be the master bedroom but we had lately ended up using a number of bedrooms in the house, as our sleeping habits became erratic. Later on in the day I happened to walk past the room and saw all the contents of the box, now strewn across the floor. A small dollhouse, numerous articles of clothing for a large walky talky doll, a smaller doll, a rather ragged clown, a small cart, and incongruently, a keyhole saw.

I had lost my job, made redundant with little warning and I was struggling to find new employment. Little warning – hell – a late afternoon phone call to attend a meeting, no agenda. Then – ‘we are reassessing the needs of the organisation, positions need to be created for new management – we have decided to disestablish your position.’ No sorry, or thank you for your contribution. Now no-one seemed to want to hire a fifty-six year old. I had even gone to that space where any job would do but I was holding out for something that would give me some degree of pride in where I was going every morning. My wife was supporting me and although she had been very good about not harping on about this fact I could see the cracks appearing as week after week went by without me even getting an interview. Don’t get me wrong. We weren’t anywhere near the breadline but our former affluent lifestyle looked to be gone.

Nothing much happened for a couple of days and then came the first of a number of demands.

“I want to use the desk in the sunroom and set up my sewing machine. I want somewhere permanent so I can start sewing again. You use half the room for your stupid fly tying and I want to use the other half for my hobby.”

I must admit I had felt guilty about the flytying. I had been bitten by the trout-fishing bug the previous year and I had pretty much taken over the room. However, I needed a place that was mine.

“It’s really too cold out there. Why don’t you set up in the dining room? We usually eat in the kitchen these days and it’s warm there.”

She grunted and left the room but I noticed later in the day the dining room table awash in materials and the walky talky doll sitting imperially centre-table.

“ Thanks for that dear. I just want to make Jane a more contemporary wardrobe so when our grandchildren inherit her she will be up-to-date. Just like my grandmother did for me.”

Our first grandchild had been born a year ago and I had noticed my wife change subtly as she had when we had married and then had our first child. All these events had been followed by an increase in girls night, rummages, all-women trips to Australia for shopping, the making of clothing.

“You know she’s a Pedigree doll, don’t you. Quite rare. Not worth much yet, but!”

I recognised the same trick of logic I often used myself with my collection of flyrods and old motorcycles. Maybe one day when we were both near the grave the objects would be vaguely more valuable than a weeks salary.

I came into the room. The doll (now Jane) sat at the head of the bed, surrounded by her wardrobe. A striped, cotton-toweled dressing gown, with an intricately sewn yellow flower on the pocket lay to her right. To the left was a pile of summer outfits, in gay colors. Her winter wardrobe was arranged halfway down the bed. There seemed to be at least four outfits in shades of grey and black. Jane was dressed immaculately in a flowing negligee with frilly black lace. Her red hair glowed in the half-light and what appeared to me to be a sly smile adorned her face. As I approached her eyes tracked my movements and, as I leaned toward the bed she emitted a thin, desperate wail. I jumped back and nearly tripped over the dolls house. The room smelt faintly of lavender, and I felt like an alien, newly arrived on a planet governed and populated largely by females.

Over the next month the pile of clothing grew. And grew. By late July a new chest of drawers had appeared in the bedroom.

“For Jane’s wardrobe.”

“ I have to make the panties properly. What if the wind blew up her dress and ….”

“But it’s a fucking doll.”

It looked like a surreal teaparty. Three other new dolls surrounded Jane. They were dressed in the variety of summer outfits I had seen on the dining room table. A small, elaborate tea set was in the centre of the tableau and soft classical music played, as they looked, glassy eyed at each other. Jane, centre staged, looked at her three companions with a suspiciously erotic expression. My wife looked over the scene with a curiously satisfied look on her face. A look I had not seen for quite some time.

“I’m going to do up that dolls house next. I’ll need more room,” she said, as she ambled out of the room, looking over her shoulder at the little family, scattered around the little green plates, cups and saucers.

A parcel arrived. Another one of her TradeMe buys, I thought. Generally pottery, jewelry or books. She charged into the room.

“Oh! A parcel for me.”

She tore the outer wrapping away and three small plastic bags spilled out. I caught a glimpse of little shoes and some clothing.

“What is that,” I asked, knowing what the answer was going to be.

“Dolls shoes. I just hope the damn things fit.”

We were having some time together sprawled in front of our favourite TV show. The ads came and suddenly she was up and out of the room.

“Where are you off to,” I asked “ I suppose you might have time to whip another outfit between the breaks,” I added sarcastically.

“I won’t, but I have been thinking about a spring outfit in yellow with white lace edgings.

I felt a tiny tug at my heart.

I didn’t want to go to the restaurant but then what else was there back at the hotel room. Lie on the bed and watch the boring New Zealand television with sport, news, sport news, and ads. We wouldn't talk until we finally would, by some mutually agreed alarm clock, decide that it was time to retire to our separate beds. The restaurant seemed like a mutually agreed neutral zone to avoid this desperate nothingness that seemed to date from the appearance of Jane in our lives. The waitress took the orders. A light meal, chinese teas, some house wine. Then she left and we were alone again. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair that faced the wall. I thought of dead diners, couples sitting with each other but emotionally apart. Our food arrived. I was thinking of one other night when we had dined in another place in Atlanta. Pre-redundancy. In the good times. Oyster Galore I thought. No! - something like Passionfish. Yes - that was it the Savannah Fish Market. Why had I been thinking of passionfish? We had sat around a fountain or a wall of water and eaten seafood. Dish after dish. Clam chowder, served in the pot with a sauce to dip in once you had wrestled the clams from their steaming shells. Seafood cocktails. Garlic catfish served on rice. We had eaten in silence but a different silence from that we now suffered together. Later, we made flamboyant love in the hotel bed, as if we had become infected by the creatures we consumed and much to our embarrassment when the maid arrived in the morning. Now we sat and stared at our vegetable samosas and lamb hotpot while the clock ticked above us and we avoided each other’s eyes. My wife gently peppered my salad and I barely noticed or complained. She could have cut my food for me and feed it to my slackened mouth and I would have barely blinked an eye. We were used to each other; we had become ingrained in each other like dirt on a window, like a stained garment.

My wife smiled and surveyed the room. A young couple sat in the window seat. They looked as though they were still in love. I distantly, warmly, remembered what that could be like. They were filled with the joy of a warm, balmy night, some fine food, some wine, and then somewhere exciting to go on to. Downstairs I could hear what sounded like a wild party but when people came up from there, they looked far from wild. My wife turned to me and smiled. We were like an old married couple. Hell! We were! Married for twenty-nine years.

“ I wonder what Jane is doing?”

The spell was well and truly broken.

I wandered through the daytime desertion of my own home. The outer rooms were deathly cold in the middle of winter. My fly-tying room was perhaps the warmest of the outer rooms, warmed by the mid-afternoon sun. My gear had been rudely pushed aside and the dolls house lay gutted in the centre of my workbench. Piled to the side were the various furniture items that made up the interior. A new doll lay on her side, eyes glazed over, hands outstretched toward the upper bedroom where she would probably reside. I felt my hands clench, my jaw tighten.

It must have looked suspicious. A cold night with a watery moon just providing enough light to see twenty metres before events were lost in a murky gloom. A man, digging a shallow hole in the ground. Hot steamy breath, furious grunting. A small bundle hastily pushed into the hole. A stifled whine. The sound of dirt. A brief sound of triumph, furtive glances, a spade leveling off the surface, then scattering leaves over the upturned earth.

She was in tears.

“Jane’s gone!”

I tried to remain poker faced.

“They broke in and not only took jewelry and electronic gear but stole my doll. How could they? I doubt she is worth that much. What sort of monsters would do that? What kind of person would take a beautiful, innocent doll?"

I had to be careful how I handled this. Just the right blend of sympathy and scientific aloofness. Just hope that the police would note that a crime had been committed for insurance purposes but not investigate such a petty crime.

The days had drifted by. I noticed that the dolls clothes now lay untidily in a corner of the spare room. The sewing machine was still there but I hadn’t heard its high-pitched whine for the best part of a week. Then she appeared at the door to my fly tying room, wring her hands and sea-sawing from foot to foot.

“I’m sure I heard Jane’s cry. I was in the garden, just by the pear tree and I heard this noise. It sounded like it came from under the tree. How could that be? “