Grandmother flies (1947)

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You do find the most unexpected things on the Internet. That, I suppose, is its fascination ...

Here is my grandmother, leaving Austria after the war, a 60 year-old widow, alone, heading via London, New York and San Francisco to her sister in Sydney and then ... to us in New Zealand.

I was one year old. My mother was in her early twenties. Rudi tried to be the matriarchal grandmother, but Mama revolted and Papa managed to find enough money to buy 'Nana' a cottage at a safe distance ...

Sigh. Such a long time ago ....

PS please note the surname. My name, in spite of the reference books, is my name!

PPS If Rudi was ever 5ft 6ins when she left Austria she shrunk a hell of a lot on her way to NZ. They say strong stuff comes in little bottles....

A day in the life of an elderly, retired gentleman

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I’m sitting under the palms, post-pool-dip, with a glass of excellent local ‘hand-crafted and brewed’ ginger beer (well, it’s only 3pm) in my hand, after another day of writing very little, but indulging again in my two main recent activities: shopping and cooking!

I can’t believe that I’ve only been Kurt von der Cove for six days. So much has happened in those six days. The daily trip to Scott’s ‘Kitchen and Table’ to fit up my wee kitchen as befits a home rather than a holiday flat. You know: $100 pans, saucy red crockery, the more recondite kitchen tools …

Up street and down. Encounters with Barry the accountant, Kylie the barber ($13 pensioner’s cut), Sean the very superior butcher, and with old friends Seve, Sunny and Rams from the town’s best restaurants ..

Of course, all this gallivanting has meant I’ve greatly increased my exercise rate, because all roads from the Cove either go (much more steeply than this picture indicates) steeply up or steeply down. I feel I am developing incipient calves.

Today was the most exercised of all. Wednesday, Yamba has its Farmers’ Market, in the car park by the seaside …

So off I stomped, up the hill to Fusion

Dowwwwwwn the steepest bit to the coast

And there was the market. A nice wee market, with something for everyone. Some fresh produce, some home manufactured goods, the obligatory-these-days (live) muzak … I was looking for veggies, especially that Australian hen’s tooth known as English spinach, and some herb plants for my wee terrasse garden.

I got farm-fresh taties and mushrooms and the last wee bit of adolescent spinach from one stall. Alas, the big stuff had gone at 7am …

I got avocado ‘seconds’ for $1 apiece, couldn’t resist a kilo of ‘ironbark honey’ for $10 and then visited a cheery chap with a huge display of seedlings – most of them were veg and salad plants, but I got oregano, garlic chives, a variant of basil et al to plant next my resident parsley plant ..

And then, as I was preparing to lump my purchases back up the hill, I spied that sign. Home-made ginger beer. 

Yesssss! Plus ditto lemonade and something called kombucha. Twenty bottles please. And Matt the brewer said he would deliver them after closing time.

So up, and along the cliff-top to the Cove, with my plunder

And it wasn’t even lunchtime. Lunch. Well … Sean’s wondrous corned-beef had been a little much for one, so I’d cut up the remainder, and some potatoes … yes, I was going to attempt that great Algonquin Hotel dish, the corned beef hash. Sometime. Why not now.

Well, it was nowhere near Algonquinhash standard. I suppose I shouldn’t have used olive oil instead of the recommended butter, and shouldn’t have tried to cook it all at once. But my onions were perfect, and my tricky egg-on-top worked a treat, and it was crisp and hot and tasty … but too oily. Next time, I suppose, I have to use butter

Well, it’s Fusion again tonight with my Aussie family … I’ll write some Victorian Vocalists tomorrow …

Chole palak and Badehose ...

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I hadn’t blogged for an eon and look at me! Thrice in three days ... but important things are happening to me. My Australian adventure is clearly going to be one big success!

To carry on where I left off. With a table full of fresh cooking ingredients. The huge prawns, the sweet cut of silverside and (nearly) all the ingredients with which to attempt my biggest culinary challenge in decades: could I approximate Asman’s wondrous chole palak?

The prawns didn’t require any skill. They’d be easiest. And the silverside I do know how to cook, but I’d forgotten peppercorns and treacle for my nascent larder. The chole palak. Perhaps too tricky for a novice?  Ummm. Take a large glass of Redlands Emily. And what the hell, go for broke.

 Not the rightest way, with all sorts of spices and herbs like you see on Indian cooking programmes. A simplified version (thank you, Paulie!). Olive oil, onion, garlic, tomato, curry paste … zizzle … in pot. Add spinach. Or such spinach as you can get in Australia. (National disaster! Real spinach doesn’t grow here!) Some veggie stock. Reduce the baby spinach. Hope it doesn’t stick. Perhaps more stock. Oooops. Most of the packet went in. (Note: buy a kitchen jug). Wait till the spinach semi-disappears then add one tin of drained chick-peas and half a packet of cumin. Wish I’d remembered the ginger. Oh well, next time. It smells good, but it looks more like soup than chole palak!

Result: taste 8/10, technique 4/10, maybe 5. I will do better. Less stock, more spinach, more spices. But hey! I’ve started! First time I’ve done anything more complex than fry a black sausage in decades! And it was really tasty. Well, done Kurt!

To bed, after finishing the bottle, in a proud frame of mind, at 8pm. To awaken at 5am with the first intimations of dawn sneaking through my bedroom patio doors … may as well get up and see how the Monte Carlo tennis has gone while I’ve been asleep …

I didn’t really intend to pass another milestone before breakfast, but, well …  Last night, at the cocktail hour, as I strolled through the delightful shrubbery at my door, glass in hand, I passed the complex’s swimming pool. Now, I am not a pool lad. I am the man who scotched the plan to build a pool at my apartment building (of which I owned 3/9ths, so my votes made a difference) in France. But I paused to look at young Joe from Armidale enjoying himself in the water, and to chat to his dad …

And this morning I thought … I’ve got a pair of badehose. And my shower is not satisfying yet. Could I … Shall I …

Well, the badehose (hintful Xmas gift from Paulie!) haven't been in the water since my sauna and massage days at Holmes Place, Berlin. But see, they’re wet! And out drying. I did it!

It was a shock. I mean, absolutely nothing is cold round here. I expected the water, even in the pre-sun hours, to be luke-warm. No way. As I wobbled carefully down the step I gradually froze: from toes to testicles to tummy to tits … and then I held my breath and went under. Arrrgh! If I had any, my eyebrows would have glaciated.

I did a brief version of my Holmes Place water exercises, then scurried into the slightly warm spa-pool and set the waves going full-blast as small Joe arrived for an early morning dip. I warned him about the brass-monkey water, but in he went …

Well, the morning is passing gently – I can hear Mr Whippy’s ‘Greensleeves’ (why?) tinkling under my balcony, in the soft sunshine  -- and it’s time to face another challenge. A microwave machine. Wendy does the microwaving (and, of course, the cooking!) at Gerolstein. The second half of my chole palak is brimming the plate, does it overflow? Oh well, only one way to find out, I imagine … here goes!

Yambanese ... and growing!

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I’ve just had a little midday nap. Well, one does on an extra warm, seaside, autumn day. But I … do you know, I’ve had more exercise, in the outside air and the sun, in the last forty-eight hours than I usually get in a month…! And without a walking stick! It must be the air here, and of course the excitement of a new home.

Night number one, I couldn’t resist walking up the hill to my favourite Yamba restaurant, Fusion on the Hill, to see Sunny and Rams, whose place it is, and have just one teensy Gold Fashioned (simplified Aussie version) and a couple of plates of Rams’s perfect parmesan scallops and the best, softest infintesimally battered calamari (sorry, Sydney) ever … Then I tumbled DOWN the hill again (it’s all hills between home and .. anywhere!) to home and yayyy! a brilliantly comfy big bed …

I woke with the kookaburra and bounded from bed, penned yesterday’s little blog of delight, had my chamomile and marmite soldiers on the dawning terrasse, unpacked my last bits (where did I leave my hat!?) and then headed DOWN the hill (much steeper, this one) to the town centre (one and two bits streets). First stop, the lovely and powerful Amanda at Yamba Remedial Massage. By the time she was done, all my Kiwi aches and pains and things-a gentleman never-mentions were back in teenage (forgive the slight exaggeration!) order, and I rebooked, and headed next-door to the celebrated Beachwood café for lunch. It became a ritual last year: I and Professor Robert Lee met each Friday at Beachwood for lunch, drinks and gossip. Alas, he doesn’t arrive here for two weeks, so I lunched alone. Alone? No way. The wondrous Sevtap Yuce (buy her dazzling Turkish cookbooks) was there, to serve me up her peppered chicken-livers with sesame oil and Italian pasta …

By this time I was feeling on top of the clouds, so I went shopping. Normally, I hate shopping, but today it was such fun. The flat is set up – extremely well – as what it was, a swish holiday let. But for someone to actually live in, for months and months, a few things were missing. First stop, Kitchen and Table. Yesterday, ‘niece’ Renee and I had popped in there for a five-star sandwich, I was taken by the place, the people and the delicious kitchenware on show … so … My flat had no bowls. I mean proper bowls for Indian food and cashews. It had no teapot (it’s too hot here for coffee, and I yearn to graduate from bags). And … well, I like to eat off a wooden trencher rather than a china plate ..

Scott at Kitchen and Table answered my every need. Bowls and teapot …

Popped in to the Yamba Fisho for a dozen of the hugest prawns I have ever seen ($26) and then … end of shopping! Because home is UP the hill. And sure enough, when I got back to base I had ‘clopidogrel shoulder’ from the weight of the bag .. big bloody bruises where the bag had pinched.

Bruce and Helen, who manage this place and its 26 holiday lets (plus me) are going to be my parents while I’m here (I could be theirs!). Bruce came round and we had a grand chat about how the place works, and what I can have or not ($$) in the way of extras ... I opted for the linen service once a fortnight at $20, yayy no sheet-washing!  I don’t use the phone, but I can reach them in emergency with one touch. And, well, we’ll do something about the TV. I watch different station(s) to your average holidaymaker! Get rid of the films and frightful news programmes, get rid of the game-shows and all fiction: bring on the racing and all sport except the various Aussie variations of kick-the-ball-and-crunch-him.

A nice bottle of chardonnay, half of those huge prawns (when they are so huge they become a bit tough for plastic teeth), a little lovely-music session with youtube … my computer says I went to bed at 8.26pm. So I guess I did.

And I slepppppppt. Doors wide open (forgot about the mosqitoi, but they left me alone). There were folks with a wee baby in the adjacent flat … didn’t hear a thing! But at 6am there was that birdie, squawking outside my window (no sycamore tree!) ‘get up, get up’. At six I usually groan and turn over, but you can’t here, somehow … I got up and abluted lengthily, and went to the kitchen for my chamomile and marmite (this could become a habit) and then thought .. now! Time for a walk to the beach before it gets hot.

Well, I now know that the beach ’20 paces away’ has three approaches. The first, not far from my flat, is for the young. I went without my stick, which is sometimes more hindrance than help. Yikes! Climbing over rocky mountains! Slippery rocks … I felt like Chelsea Friedlander in The Pirates of Penzance…  But I made it without a fall ... and on to the sand … when did I last loiter on a sandy beach? And, while I loitered, a beautiful, big blue and gold halcyon came to see me, and fluttered round my head! But he didn’t want to be photographed.

There was another steep exit, but I opted for the far end of the beach and a concrete path. Wait a moment! I have been here before! This is where Paul and I met the sleepy serpent last year…  Anyway, it’s the elderly-gentlemanly best way to the beach, and within sight of home!

 Home for a second breakfast, and then the shopping list. Difficult for me, who cannot handwrite. Bank, accountant, meat ordered from the butcher … and DOWN the hill. Saturday, what do you mean it’s Saturday? What difference does that make? People don’t WORK on Saturdays in Australia. Or in Yamba, anyway. Probably why there are too many empty shops with sad signs of fallen businesses over them. Including my favourite computer shop. Guys, I was coming to you with a $2000 order …

But the butcher was waiting for me with a very superior bit of silverside ($9!), the Family Store was open, and they had a delightful Indian shopman who shepherded me to all the ingredients of a chole palak (I’m supposed to try to make one for the first time tonight), and … well, I didn’t have a proper pot in which to cook tomorrow’s silverside so I just HAD to go back to Kitchen and Table …

Result. Two shoulder bags. Two bloodied shoulders …

And now I’ve sworn to try to cook. Helllllp!  It’s 3.10pm. Not yet. Can I do this?  And why are my calves aching …? Pass the Banrock Station …

I don’t HAVE to cook. But I said I would …

More Banrock …

And on to the future!

Is it silly to feel so stupidly excited at a new adventure at seventy years of age?

Yambanese!!

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Yambanese

That’s me. As from 14 April 2016, I belong to Yamba. For the whole autumn and winter. Yesterday, I (and my kitty) arrived in town, took possession of my new wee flat, and started to settle in. I can’t quite believe it has actually happened. That this adorable little dwelling in this delightful town is mine, all mine …

Those folk who say ‘buy a home sight unseen? Never!’ are wrong. Until yesterday, when Rod and Veronica drove me up from Grafton to the smart modern building yclept The Cove, in Queen Street, Yamba, I had never seen inside the place. Just photographs. Sunnytime ones, not dusk ones, like these. I suppose it could have all gone horribly wrong: but it didn’t. It hasn’t.

The situation is glorious. Sheltered from the strong sea breezes by palms and a few homes. And the flat itself was everywhere significantly BETTER than the photos, which had made it look rather skinny and tight. It is, of course, what most people would call ‘small’ – about 70 sq m –with a 30 sq m terrasse – but that’s precisely what I wanted. It has all nearly new mod cons, minimal upkeep (no carpets, no vaccum cleaner!), it’s a place where I can live with minimal stress and maximum comfort and have all the help I need. Twenty steps from the beach, a few hundred metres from some delicious restaurants and the shops … and quiet, sunny, breezy, peaceful …

The only thing I shall have to fix inside is the shower. No handrail and no hand-held thingy. And, of course, I have to work out how to use the TVs, the oven, the dishwasher, the microwave, the washing machine and dryer … but, no hurry. It’s 9am and I’m just relaxing with a cup of chamomile and some Marmite soldiers on the terrasse, before heading off to get revivified by Amanda the masseuse and then have lunch at the wonderful Beachwood Café … perhaps a little visit to the kitchen shop … then back home to, maybe, rearrange the furniture again, and sit in the sun and maybe, just very maybe, finish my article on Ilma di Murska … or even (so soon) a wee walk on the beach?

Sigh. It won’t be difficult getting used to this …