Ornithologia, or the Birds in my life ....

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Birds. Don’t know much about them. John and I used to have a Bird Book when we were little. And a pack of cards with Birds of New Zealand on them. Of course, you could go out in the bush, around Lake Rotoiti, and spot the tuis and bellbirds and fantails … and oh, how Dad teased us that we would find a kakapo. Or even a kiwi.

I think my favourite bird memory dates from the 1970s, when, visiting my parents, and taking off my mountain boots on their cottage steps, I saw five different species of native bird perched on one and the same manuka shrub. Never forgotten that.

Of course, it’s all different now. There’s hardly a native around on our farm at Gerolstein. The plovers, starlings, blackbirds, sparrows, finches and horrid magpies scare away any there might be. Sometimes we just hear a bellbird…

Well, if you can’t beat ‘em … so we’ve given way to the immigrants in a big way. Gerolstein’s birds are now dominated by forty peafowl…

Of course, over here I guess it’s I who am the immigrant. Even though I don’t chase the locals away. Far from it! But Australia seems to have done better at preserving its own creatures …

Last time I was here, I met these fellers (are they locals?)

Loie Fuller the shag

And in Sydney we had fun feeding flying meatballs to the kookaburras …

But the reason I’m blogging this blog is to post, on something less ephemeral than facebook, some of the ornifotos I’ve snapped, mostly on my own terrasse, these last weeks, so that I don’t lose them  ...

The colourful lorakeet with his/her pal/baby

 And the grumpy, get-outa-my-way-fellers one that likes to eat out of my hand

While the little one just says ‘Please sir, I want some more’

Then there is the lovely blue-eyed Honeycatcher

And the stern looking Noisy Friarbird. "I sentence you to be burned at the stake...'

And all sorts of black-n-white fellers who seems to prefer cake

There’s a tiny black one, with a big tail, too. But he won’t sit still long enough for me to get an unfuzzy snap … his tail seems to be wagging his body rather than vice versa. I guess he has to be the wee wagtail

And another tiny one, with a Gonzo beak …whom I have only seen once ... up there ....

Who would have thought they would give me such pleasure, as they swoop across my terrasse, dangle from the palms, gobble up the crumbs and, yes, occasionally pay the kitchen or the lounge  a visit…

Is this ALL for little me … oh boy!

Yes, you cute wee feller, it’s all yours …

And here's a post-scriptum latecomer

Saving one of the bestest till last ...

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Well, I’ve lived in Yamba now for nearly two months. I think it may be proving to be one of the best decisions I’ve made in my ageing years. And I’m gradually getting my little home in order. A few essentials, don’t you know. Powerful shower, yeah!

Sun lounger … for very short sunbathes on my terrasse … it’s helluva hot here!

 Hand vacuum for the clean-ups. 

All sorts of delicious kitchenny things …

Yes, here, I’ve actually started cooking, after a 40 year gap.  Gently. I’ve got a lot of (re)learning to do. But omigosh, fresh produce from the Wednesday (early) morning market …  this week there was a chap selling cold, sliced, peppered brisket. I ventured 200g. Come back! I want a kilo …

 But you can’t cook at home, alone, every day and night, so I make frequent trips to the lunchtime Beachwood Café and the eventide Fusion on the Hill … yes, I’ve done pretty much all the eligible eateries in our town/village, and those are my frequently repeated favourites.

But sometimes an old boy needs a change. And when nephew Harry arrived in town with wheels … well, last time we ventured out to the very nice ‘Boardroom and Bar’, but somehow (in spite of many family plannings) we never got to the one reputed restaurant on the other side of town. Angourie.

So tonight, we did. It’s called Barbaresco. I’m not quite sure why. The sign said Bar Baresco. And I HAD been there before! On my very first visit to Yamba, I had sheltered under the awnings of the then nascent resto, from one of our local storms! Sheltered? Blimming heck, I wish I’d gone inside!

Well, thanks to Harry-with-the-wheels, I got there tonight.

I had a delightful meal, in charming surroundings. When I came in, I thought ‘oh!’. Two kiddies to the left of me, a baby at my back … whaaaat! Not my scene at all. But they were dollies, and everyone was enjoying their food. So ….

Finally, I get to the meal. Well, Harry has this idea that I’m an occasional dipso, so – since he was doing the driving -- I thought I had better have one of the cocktails he recommended, to set things rolling. Blood Orange Margarita.

Delicious! A little more ‘bite’, maybe? But hey, I ordered a second!

The food?  The menu is attractively small. But one dish popped out from the wee entrée list: beef carpaccio. Well, I thought I knew what I was going to get, but nooooo! No hashed up mince. This was an absolutely (for me) different dish. And hellishly tasty …

Harry (who can’t do gluten) had a quail dish which looked marvellous … next time (oh, and the next time there are wheels, here I come!) I’ll try that.

Main course. A lamb rag(o)ut.  No, not a plate of stewed meat (which I would, anyway, have loved) but a delicious combination … of… of … I was so IN to my dinner by then, I not only forgot to foto-my-food … maybe it was the second deceptively smooth blood orange margarita …  but … I simply remember, the day after, was that it was bloody special-super!

I went on line to try to find the menu, but all I found was a really boring menu from a homonym restaurant in New York.

Barbaresco. I see it is genuinely Italian-connected. Chef: Davide Adorno. But his food didn’t have the glaring faults of so much hometown Italian cooking. Oh my heaven, will I ever forget that tomato paste swimming in oil that was forced on me in Verona and San Remo! No, this is just delicious, imaginative, whiff-of-the-Italian, food. And the key word there is ‘Delicious’. With a big D … my, oh yes …

Hey, you all, I’m coming thoroughly back!

Parrot chatter ...

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OK, team. This is it. Yeh, I checked it out the other day, and it's Fresh Baked Bread from Yamba Bakery. Served by hand, do you mind.

Whaddya mean, it’s not classy bread? Course it is. I sent our super-spy into the heart of action, yesterday, to test that it was still the real thing.

 Now just take it casually, don’t play your cards too quickly.

Right … about … turn, and look pretty!

 George, don’t do that! You''ll frighten the horses.

 Here he comes. See, bread! Don’t be scaredyfowl, he’s harmless. Watch me. Hel-lo Kurt!

 See, that’s how its done.

 Awwww. Chickens!  OK eat off the floor then ..

 I’ll have the whole waiting staff to myself. Best service and best restaurant in town.

Meryl Foster Streepkins or, How to sing out of tune without really trying

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Well, this is becoming a dangerously frequent event. It’s only a year since I was last taken to the cinema and, today, yes, I’ve just been again. That’s five films in five years. Way above my lifetime average.

My last times in a movie theatre were in Berlin. In that huge, glamorous, popcorn-filled, 3D-specced cinema complex at the Potsdamer Platz. 

Today was a little different. Yamba, NSW doesn’t run to multi-salle complexes. We have one deliciously old-fashioned little cinema, which my friend Robert says he’s been attending since the 50s … and it just happens to be right opposite his house!  So we rendez-voused at 4pm for a wee drappie and, then, crossed the road for a 4.30 movie.

Now, you mustn’t think I’m an easy touch. I wouldn’t have crossed the road for just any movie. I mean car-chases, any sort of guns, love stories, ‘action’, anything noisy, anything sloppy, most things American … forget it. I can’t believe Paul subjected me to Jurassic Park! But this was a film from my world. Sort of.

Florence Foster Jenkins. I don’t understand why the world has suddenly ‘discovered’ her after all these years. I heard her peculiar recordings in about 1960 and dismissed them as a curiosity. Which is what they are. All claims in the film’s after-notes to the contrary.

But, in the 21st century, several folk have decided to use Mrs Jenkins’s recordings as the bases for what I assume are semi- or largely fictional dramatic works. This one, which boasts the name of Meryl Streep above the title (oh, and Hugh Grant too) is the most publicised and, well, it was across the road so, at precisely 4.30 today, we went in (‘hurry up, you’re missing the trailers’) and sat comfortably down …

It’s a darling wee cinema, and it was a nice wee film. I’ve no idea if it has any relation to fact (I suspect not), but it made up into an enjoyable, if rather slow-paced, story. Rich, society lady desperate for ‘art’ presents herself at Carnegie Hall in a coloratura concert with the help of a fond, but opportunist, young ‘husband’ and a striving young pianist … and dies, as we are made to believe, from a bad review.

Well, you’ld throw that plotline out right away if you were Darryl Zannuck. Red Shoes, Schmed shoes. But the present writer(s?) and director have kind of made it work. With the help of a very starry line up. Meryl Streep is Mrs Jenkins. I have only seen Ms Streep once before, as a rather iffy witch in Into the Woods. Here, she is much, much better. Warm, trusting, striving, touching  … you are on her side, even when she gets up and blissfully sings horribly off pitch. She doesn’t make the woman into a fool and a vanity … in the very best moments of the film you hear her singing as SHE thinks she sounds … and it is grand.

Hugh Grant has no part to play. Just a two-dimensional sweet and smiley man, which he can do with his hands off the handlebars. But the wowee of the cast is Simon Helberg (who, I was almost sorry to discover afterwards, is a well known telly actor) as her pianist. The film almost became his story. Which actually might have been more fun.

But, in the end, it all came out as a nice, little film. Conveniently acted and … well, sung? It is very difficult to sing off pitch intentionally. Surely the singing was dubbed. But I see no one credited for any of the vocals  … Marni Nixon maybe? But, whatever… 

So, I hardly looked at my watch at all. A rare thing in a cinema. And I really didn’t groan internally too much, except at the lack of continuity in the Carnegie Hall audience scenes and Agnes Stark’s far-too-common outburst. Well, maybe the very one-dimensional representation of Toscanini and the singing coach from wherever, were a bit thin. And there were some other minor actor failures. But the film isn’t about the bit players. It’s about Ms Streep, and MM Helberg and Grant. And someone’s take on a 76 year-old lady (yes, that was her age at death) named Mrs Jenkins, whom we thankfully heard singing, in propria persona, in the tactful epilogue. You know, she wasn’t quite as awful as I’d remembered.

But I am rather left with the feeling: why make a film, fictional or partly true, about the lady? Who was never, in spite of what the publicity says ‘an opera singer’. Or around her name, anyhow.

Never mind. It was an OK hour and a big bit, followed by an excellent dinner with my pal at my favourite resto … and I’m home now, with Roland Garros and a little pink wine feeling quite content …

I wonder what my film for 2017 will be ..

Post (a few hours) scriptum: I have just been told that Ms Streep's singing voice was her own! My admiration is simply boundless ... that is a helluva feat. I wonder if they used one of the pitch-hitching machines to un-pitch-hitch her!