Cities of the heart.

Disclaimer: I unashamedly romanticise places. 

I’m in love with a few cities, the latest being Budapest. (Etymologically, two cities for the price of one.)   The  realisation that Budapest was my latest source of fernweh started me wondering about exactly how I get attached to these places anyway: I was there for all of twenty-four hours, and now I want to live there.  Not that I wonder at loving Budapest: the castle, the river, the churches, the crazy bars, the history sloppily stacked in corners, and the requisite amount of grunge - some places (Vienna) are a bit too clean to be lovable.

How hard could Hungarian be, really?

Jerusalem is the first city I loved; the first city I spent time in outside Australia. In Jerusalem I heard it said that everyone has two homes: where they were born and Jerusalem. The city of David is as old and complicated and beautiful and modern and mundane as you might expect, and even now I feel a pang remembering the early morning mist on the hills, the domes and parks and ugly apartment buildings. And more churches, of course, but it was the city itself, its totality, that took a piece of my heart.

I wonder if this happens to other people, metropoleis occupying emotional territory. I am a little uneasy at attachment to things inanimate, but then a city – especially a lovable city – is anything but inanimate, and is, after all, composed predominantly of people, piled up. Their history, their homes, their businesses, their weird and wonderful ways of getting around each other and the odd corners of the earth they have made home.

The internet, as ever, manages to reassure me that I am not alone, although love here ranges from tourist gush* through people growing to love where they have washed up, and all the way to stories of people who arrive in, say, Istanbul, and never leave.  My affection (urbanophilia? philopolisia? philocivit-something?**) is fairly specific: it’s given quickly and irrationally, and leaves me with a hankering to live there. I want to know these cities, learn their sounds (Melbourne’s is the flick of tyres across tram tracks),  and their ups and downs and ins and outs in a way you can only by living in them.

London was next; Paris and Rome are lovely in their ways, but the romantic idea of living in them did not stick.  Venice, beautiful and all, was high maintenance right from the start. London, though, felt like another home again – comes of reading too many English books, no doubt, but this was the city that taught me the rewards of wandering, and looking up, and that I could be quite happy, just me and a city. Cold and wet and grey and brown, but something about the stone and the vapour trails and the random greenery stuck.

Chronologically, Melbourne and I met next. Choosing a city makes one’s affection a little fiercer, particularly if, as with Melbourne, it lives up to expectations.  With cities, monogamy is enforced - you have to commit, uproot, transplant; otherwise you’re just visiting.  It's hard, but of course everything is easier after you’ve done it once, and for all its difficulty, moving teaches that you can survive it, and that it’s rewarding.

Oxford, then; another case of indoctrination, perhaps. Oxford surprised me by feeling more familiar than London, but over a week there I learnt how many of the authors I’d read as a child lived or worked or studied – or all three – in Oxford. Oxford and its country are a sort of watermark in any number of stories, and explicit in so many that there is a Wikipedia article on the subject.  This all makes me rather nervous in describing it, although I did try, once, in, let’s face it, some tourist gush.

Perth is still there, the hometown – I am no cosmopolite and don’t think I could be, since it would mean I’d have to love all cities or none. Every time I travel, and every time I return, having lived away a little longer, I see Perth differently. I finally bothered to look up, last time, and to be in its beautiful places the way I am in the beautiful places of other cities. It will always be a measure, in a way: no weather will be as good, no beaches will be as beautiful, and nowhere will ever be as isolated as the city I love because it was the shape for so much of my life.

* my words are, naturellement , much more than gush, and I much more than a tourist

** Latin fail: darn modern education

Future Australian Captains: let’s not have any.

1 Corinthians 13:9. For we know partially and we prophesy partially...

And we never bloody learn, apparently. For goodness’ sake, one Test ago we (meaning The Press and a few bloggers) were agonising over whether Clarke’s appointment as Future Australian Captain (FAC) made him unpopular and  whether or not he is now popular enough to have a bandwagon. If he does, 329 runs and beating India will get a lot of people on it.

For the last six? seven? or so* years, Clarke has had to work in the blinding intensity of the public focus that came with that early anointing. Despite all the afore-mentioned angst, it has taken mere days for David Warner to emerge as the next FAC, helped along by Mickey Arthur. Do they not have the Future Saffer Captain issue in SA, or is Arthur already peddling the official CA let’s-anoint-someone-who-does-well-in-the-focus-groups? The perception of favour didn’t help Clarke on the field or in the press, whatever it did for his bank account, and it may well have hindered him in both.  My favourite theory as to why Clarke was hard to connect to, coming across in press conferences as bland and party-line, is that he was well aware of the damage that could be done to chances at captaincy with a stray comment or controversy.

The perception is that Clarke has had a number of controversies, but once you eliminate the FAC status, speculation about form slumps, and stories that do or don’t match his allegedly-bogan background (they usually involve money and subtle snobbery, reverse or otherwise), you’re left with a relationship that went wrong (he who is without sin, etc) and a fight with Simon Katich which he didn’t start. Katich, let’s remember, left a burgeoning cricket career in WA to further his own chances, so he’s not exactly the shining cricket purist himself.**  Clarke hasn’t (that we know of) been in fights in nightclubs, talked to bookies, had dodgy drug test results or in fact done anything except perhaps be a bit too controlled in press conferences and too much / not enough of a bogan to fit stereotypes. I was actually rather relieved when he took a bit of personal leave because it showed that he was, in fact, human.

We don’t know, and never will, what harm Clarke’s status did to any other potential FACs in the team.  For all Steve (we are not worthy) Waugh’s team had a miraculous collection of talent, it also had a number of blokes he could turn to in the field for thoughts on the game and its state at any given time.  How many of the next generation never bothered to develop the mythical and terribly clichéd cricket brain because they never expected to be captain, with the golden boy constantly in front of them?  How much of Katich’s angst came from that frustration?

Look, I don’t love Clarke.   I was pretty cynical about his declaration at 329, thinking he must have known that would play as humility. He has since said that wasn’t the case, and he was focussed on winning, so we’ll go with that. To be fair, no good captain would put their own milestones ahead of the team’s, and, love him or no, I do think he is a good captain. I can’t quite decide whether the changes in opinion come from a greater freedom to be himself, an improved PR firm (no streaks in the hair, I note, and Channel 9 playing Western Sydney backyard cricket footage), some stunning cricket, or all of the above.

Passing the FAC mantle on to David Warner, though, is not good for Warner, the team, or the next generation of cricketers. Surely they should all aim for captaincy, at least at first, and think they have a chance? Why saddle a talent like Warner with all that expectation and extra focus? Does he not have enough to do, working out how to be a T20 star and a Test opener? Why make him also work out, all at once, how to: 

• comment on the current captain’s form in press conferences, 
• balance relationships in all of his dressing-rooms, 
• deal with people calling for his head at the slightest slump in form, 
• shut off the glare of the spotlight, and the positive and negative things that go with it, 
• enjoy the fruits of his success without being called a tosser, 
• respond gracefully when the person who called you a tosser calls you insecure for wanting respect,  
• and, somewhere in there, have a life? 

He'd learn those things eventually anyway, being an Australian cricketer, a Test opener and playing in the IPL. Shouldn’t we be rewarding his talent with room and respect and space to grow?  We have Warney to satisfy our national quota of cricket stories in the social pages, not to mention some fresh international imports thanks to the BBL - how about we just let Warner be Warner, and worry about who will be captain next when we actually need one?

* vagueness due to Wikipedia blackout, cricinfo not having FAC appointment as one of its stats

** YES I’m still bitter.  

Experiments with Sloe Gin, or, Things I Get Up To When Not Studying.

Speaking of things I like, possibly a bit too much, I was recently introduced to sloe gin. Straight sloe gin works in late-autumn London as an aperitif or digestif or omni-if, but if taken unadulterated in early-summer Melbourne is a bit too warm and sticky to be its lovely tart self, not unlike the rest of us. This is a shame, as it is better for you than regular gin, because 1. it has a lower alcohol content and 2. it has fruit in it, and therefore vitamins.

I asked the Frenchman selling it to me at the fancy wine store if it could be served on ice and received a slightly disdainful look and a raised eyebrow. He deigned to suggest that I try it with bitter lemon or with tonic.  A barman recently asked if I'd like it on the rocks, so I may have been a bit too sensitive about the Frenchman's lack of interest in my drinking dilemmas.

Thanks to some duty free liquor and some spare time, I ended up trying it with a few different things (not all in the one night, I'd like to add):

Sloe Gin and Bitter Lemon
This was the first combination I tried, is still my favourite (after sloe gin in autumnal London, and the Millionaire Cocktail in Edinburgh, that is), and is highly recommended for a warm day. The lemon undercuts the sweetness of the sloe a little but is balanced by the bitterness, so at the right proportions (somewhere around your regular G&T mix, possibly a little stronger) there is a great balance of sweet / sour / bitter. It's terribly refreshing, and since lemon is another fruit, even more delusions of healthiness.

Sloe Gin on Ice
I might need to give the Frenchman some credit here: sloe gin on ice is great at first but when the ice began melting it got too weak and watery for me. Not sure if this is due to the lower alcohol content, or perhaps that it has a less intense flavour than the digestifs I am more accustomed to drinking on ice. I've also only just thought of keeping the bottle in the fridge, which I might try with the next one.

Sloe Gin and Tonic
Not a huge fan of this: I prefer the emphasis in my G&T's to be, unsurprisingly, on the G. At regular proportions the sloe gin was overwhelmed by the tonic, so it ended up a pink, slightly fruity quinine drink. Even at my proportions, (G&t) the tonic was still the stronger element and the sloe flavour was decidedly washed out. Having said that, I prefer my tonics on the stronger side to compensate for lots of gin, so a lighter tonic might produce a different result.

Sloe Gin and Lemonade
I ran out of bitter lemon, but had lemonade left - much too sweet for me, but I might experiment on some friends who prefer their cocktails sweet and fruity. It did, however, inspire me to further fruit experiments.

Sloe Gin, Lemon Cordial and Tonic
Somewhere along the line I realised that Bitter Lemon was basically tonic + lemon, so I attempted constructing my own. This, although better than the straight tonic, was not entirely succesful, as the lemon cordial / tonic combination was simultaneously sweeter and bitterer than Bitter Lemon.

Sloe Gin, Cointreau and various mixers
What with all the back and forth to my liquor cabinet, and thinking about the sloe and lemon combination, I  realised that Cointreau is orange, and since sloe and lemon was working out well, how about sloe and orange? Cointreau has its own sweetness, though, and so these combinations tended to be too sweet for me. Bitter lemon worked best as a mixer with these two, (citrus = vitamin C, yes?) although I also tried tonic, soda and lemonade at various points. This is a much stronger combination, as I made it with a shot of each.

Unsurprisingly, this is about where my bottle of sloe gin ran out. However, during the slow recovery from post-trip work-trauma disorder, I found this photo

I only remember the name because I found the
bill as well. It was that kind of night.

and remembered the ridiculously lovely Millionaire Cocktail I'd had at the Bon Vivant in Edinburgh, a cocktail bar that could've been anywhere in the world, except that they deep fried all of their tapas just so we'd remember we were in Scotland. I'd ordered it because of the sloe gin, and was surprised I'd forgotten it - well, until I remembered how many cocktails we'd had after it. The Millionaire is sloe gin, apricot brandy, Jamaican rum, and lime juice (vitamin C again). Given a faint edge by the rum, this sweet, tangy combination works - and how.


In researching the Millionaire, I've discovered at least ninety cocktails using sloe gin.  I'd dreamed up some particularly evil combinations after being inspired by sloe gin and Cointreau*,  but, as usual, the internet has shown me what an amateur I am.  It can (apparently) be combined with every fruit liqueur known to man, not to mention everything from bourbon to pastis to the ultimate hangover partner, tequila.  I suspect my liquor cabinet is about to get surprisingly fruity.


* I'm still thinking of trying the liquor fruit salad: Sloe Gin, Limoncello, Cointreau, Peach Schnapps and Midori.

Wording a logo: a confession.

Also Bath, source of such
excellent merchandise.

I was recently tempted to use heart as a verb. In writing. It was in an email, which we all know only counts in a court of law or a newspaper, but I resisted. Fortunately, before I used up my slender reserves of lexical discipline, I was distracted by wondering how many other people had verbed this tender noun, whether I was verbing* a noun or wording a logo, and whether any other logos have been worded.

Looking for some stats on its history, I went to the usually reliable google ngram search but, alas, the cold, heartless, digitisation of the server farm was drawn, moth-like, to the tepidity of Sir Walter Scott and the warmth of that terrible flirt, Master Shakespeare. Such simple things as i'heart, Act I: Heart, "with broken-heart, I" and Sir Heart: "I, madam...", not to mention the excitement when !heart or heart! comes along, lead those poor machines terribly astray.

The OED, its mills grinding slightly faster - but possibly just as fine - than God's, is more circumspect. The entry for heart, v. (DRAFT ADDITIONS JANUARY 2011, lest you get too carried away) - speculates as I, much less humbly, did, that it all relates back to the I ♥ NY shirts. The text version: "Originally with reference to logos using the symbol of a heart to denote the verb ‘love’".

The thing is, this blog is, very, very slowly, turning out to be me talking about things I love or like or somewhere in between, and now and then getting diverted into what love or like is, anyway. The original object of my hearting has been lost in my subsequent internet meanderings, but the temptation arose because my attachment lay on the (entirely subjective) spectrum of feelings between like and love.  I still have trouble using love in any serious sense for things that aren't people (apart from cricket, which is still in the balance) but there are any number of things for which I feel more than like, and so heart, daggy and verbalised as it is, is rather useful.  It's the schoolgirl scrawl of affection: I ♥ Dr Who.  Trams. Chardonnay. Melbourne. Budapest. London. Champagne. Travelling. Hmm: I might love travelling. 

Since the OED (which I definitely heart) allows you to search etymologies, I searched unsuccessfully for other verbs arising from logos or symbols. There are names for these things, of course (smiley) but so far it would appear that this transition of a word (love) to a symbol (♥) back out again to the verbing of a different word is unique, and a small, weird part of me is fascinated to see this tiny offshoot of the language growing in front of me.

In the interests of completeness, I must point out that the OED lists five other senses of heart as a verb, the oldest from 897 - senses like 'give heart to' (people), 'to form a heart' (cabbages and so on) - and the most recent from 1892. None of them relate to a sense of love or like; the first citation in this sense is from 1983: "Associated Press; (Nexis) 16 Nov. From Berlin to the Urals, teen-agers wear T-shirts reading, ‘Elvis’, ‘Always Stoned’, and ‘I (heart) New York’."

*which, for the prescriptivists**, has been in use since 1766. Along with its much quieter twin, Nouning. 

** at which point I'd like to re-emphasise that I was educated during a time when teaching formal grammar was Frowned Upon and so the most complex grammatical concept I have grasped is that nouns are Naming Words, verbs are Doing Words and adjectives are Describing Words - after that you've lost me. Fortunately my parents inflicted a lot of books on me, so I have managed to compensate for this disability. 

A love letter to Melbourne on our first anniversary.

An unexpected glimpse of beauty in architectural detail, a tiny new art piece buried in a laneway corner, the giddiness of standing in a pub falling for yet another quirky, talented band; it’s the little things that catch at my heart.  Things that make me stop, look up, smile - ornamented buildings, blossoms outlined against the sky, clouds rushing to cover the sun.  Heck, the fact that stopping and looking and having internal monologues doesn't stop crowds here. People move around me peacefully, and I know that even though I’m boringly corporately besuited, I could be a pirate or a spaceman or in terribly deliberately clashing colours and be as free as I am now.

Then there are all the tiny villages, every high street a hub - people know their laneway, their walking distance, their nearest good coffee, their tramline, but not the next suburb over. There is adventure in cross-pollinating, jumping tramlines, savouring the transition north to east, back in to the centre, sometimes – bravely – west or south.

There are all the obvious things; coffee, food, plays, wine, sport, cocktails, and, of course, music, and people who also love these things. There are conversations overheard: a musician setting up for a gig and explaining to someone that in Melbourne you can love music and sport, and it’s ok. A six year old lecturing his father on the prospects of the team whose scarf I am wearing.  Old ladies, born thousands and thousands of miles away, who see my phone and ask me when the tram is coming, because they know there’s an app for that.

There are crazy things too: the flagrant crazy of weather and traffic that provide a never-ending conversation supply, the fun crazy of too much drink and not enough sleep, the tiring crazy of too too much work.  But then there’s acceptance, new homes, friendship revived, the broadest brush of remarkable new friends I could ever hope for, and the space and time to be as crazy as I want to be. 

When I first arrived I would glimpse the strange skyline out of the corner of my eye and startle. Once, drowsing on a tram, I wondered where I was, mentally flicking through cities, before remembering, breathlessly relieved, that I was here.

Happy anniversary, Melbourne.  It’s been a good year.

MoVida!

Nothing makes a Wednesday like an invite to MoVida.  Especially when it’s an invite to attend with Frank Camarro’s tour co-ordinator and two long-term MoVida fans, who started back in the day when you could wander in on a Saturday night and actually get a seat: imagine! After the menu kept side-tracking my companions into reminiscing about various Spanish bars, restaurants and wineries, not to mention previous MoVida nights, we gave up and decided on a happy abandonment of our evening into the hands of the staff.  This openness to experience seems to be a common factor in my best-ever foodie nights – somehow, when I control the menu, I’m just not as adventurous.  

Being omnivorous, curious, and possibly a bit gluttonous, I love tapas because you get to try everything! Anchovies and tomato sorbet on croutons.  Spicy smoked chicken escabache on brioche. Chorizo and octopus.  Smoked mackerel and pine nut gazpacho sorbet. Battered anchovies and pimientos de padrón (russian roulette peppers - mild yet tasty, except for every approximately-fifth one, which is incredibly hot).  Quail eggs wrapped in black pudding. Oven-roasted portobello mushrooms finished with PX.

This is also why I love groups: more people = more things to try. The above were all brilliant; you’d think with so many dishes (and that’s not all of them – somewhere in there were scallops as well) there’d be one that I didn’t love, or didn’t quite work, or didn’t have its plate licked clean. Nope. All amazing combinations of flavour and texture which I would happily eat again, and could probably write up in excruciating detail, but I’ve saved that for the two dishes that will drag me back, come what may: the MoVida signature air-dried Wagyu with poached egg and truffle foam, and pan-seared quail breasts with fried bread and grapes.

The Wagyu dish looks, smells and tastes much, much better than something so potentially pretentious should – it’s basically fancy sliced beef and eggs, but when you think about how good steak and eggs are, a fancy version that works is the ideal, is it not? It was one of those dishes that leaves you with an intense sense memory: warm slippery egg, tiny bubbles of foam, smoky dirty truffle haunting the back of the palate, and the strength and unctuousness of the Wagyu holding it together and filling it out at the same time.

The quail appeared quite simple: miniature marylands, cool grapes and crunchy fried bread, a combination of simple flavours well-cooked or wisely left alone. The surprise came underneath: shreds of some dark, moist meat with a rich, slightly sweet flavour.  After various guesses (all wrong!) and vain attempts to remember the menu, we were informed that it was the rest of the quail meat, cooked in Pedro Ximenez. Things should absolutely be cooked in PX more often: its complexity made the meat almost gamey, especially up against the cleaner flavour of the pan-seared quail breasts with delicious crispy skin, and the grapes bursting against the oily, crunchy fried bread. Being way more of an eating (*cough* and occasionally drinking, and even more occasionally writing) foodie than a cooking foodie, it’s reasonably rare that I think ‘I really need to try this at home’, but cooking meat in PX is one of those rarities. It's a sign of how good it was that I'm prepared to cook with PX rather than drink it. 

Speaking of drinking, we had some red wine, too, which is apparently much cheaper in Spain and which, in a really big sign of how good the food was, I can't tell you much about except that it was good, and we had a couple of bottles of it.

Coming soon eventually: Cutler and Co, Longrain, breakfast at Cumulus Inc and lots - and lots - of cocktails. I should have time to write about them, since I've used all my cash going to them!

1 Corinthians 13:7* (Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Gruelling stuff.

Love bears all things: three days outside in Melbourne weather.  Every morning I arrived at the MCG wearing boots, jeans and a jumper with a fur-trimmed hood.  The last week of December, technically midsummer, but I longed for my beanie. I kept my hat on, even when I had my hood up, as it said ‘Australia’ and I didn’t want there to be any confusion about who I was supporting.   The first day stayed that cold, the second day oscillated between the bone-slicing wind and the skin-scorching sun, and on the third the sun finally won.  It wasn’t the heat – I'm West Australian, I can take a bit of warmth – but the searing bite of the UV in every sunbeam that drove us back into the shade. Despite multiple coatings of suncream, I was pink for a few days, thanks to reflections off the grass and the extra thin ozone layer in these parts.

Love believes all things: one of the disarming things about cricket is that belief is always possible – until everyone is out, you just never know. Even now, I believe that we could’ve bowled England out if we’d had a go at a damp pitch under a cloudy sky. I believe that our batsmen have the skill and the talent to have kept on batting, if they’d had the form, the will and the discipline to go with it. I believe that on the mornings of days two and three it was still possible for us to win.  (Probable? Not so much.) I believe that if Mitchell Johnson had got out of bed on the right side he could’ve taken a hat-trick. During the match, I believed that this might be the partnership that won the game. That this next one might draw the game. That these guys – no, wait, these guys – could at least put it into five days. That these next guys could put it into four days… oh, thank goodness.

Love hopes all things: I hoped for form, will and discipline for our batsmen. I hoped for Hilfy to take a hat-trick, because his economy and work rate deserved it. I hoped Punter would have a Waugh-at-the-SCG cap’n’s knock, and save our collective and individual dignities and the match all at once.  I hoped Hughes and Smith would give us hope for the future. (They gave me a little. I had wanted it in centuries, but will take the small Pandoran glimmer that was their second inningses.)  I hoped Watson would not give everyone else more evidence for disliking him - and then I hoped it would rain. Now, I hope the selectors take a good, hard look at themselves. I hope Cricket Australia find someone who can decode the mysteries of swing, or at the very least, nick the English dossier on it. I hope we get pitches like this one, and the one at the WACA, more often, regardless of our form. I hope the cricket boards of other countries (including ours!) can somehow manage to do what the ECB have done - although I'm not sure if even they know exactly how they've done it. Mind you, I also hope the ECB do something about county cricket.

Love endures all things: love endures all out for 98, stays til the last ball, and makes sure it’s in time for the first ball the next day, and the day after that. It is heart-sick that it has to go to work and miss the last hour, despite the expected cataclysmic result and subsequent grave-dancing. Love endures England batting for days, and since this is love of cricket, and not merely love of Australian cricket, it somehow, around the heartache, enjoys Trott’s batting, (no, really – but then I like Watson, so, you know, odd) KP’s defiance, the ebb and flow of the bowling, the mysterious impact of the weather**, Bresnan’s incredulous joy.  Love endures the Barmy Army and the annoying way their tunes get stuck in your head, the equally annoying way we’ve never really come up with anything to counter them,*** and the really, really annoying way they make you laugh. Love endures the captain losing it in an undignified, unprofessional and unwarranted fashion, and although it definitely doesn’t approve, it admires the grit with which he carries on, and the defiant response of the home crowd the next morning when the Barmy Army boos him.

I love cricket. Even when it hurts.

* I am intending to come back to the other six verses, this just needed to be written now.

** God was clearly on England’s side: the sun came out when they started batting, and the only time – I swear, the only time – it went away again while they were batting was during drinks breaks.

*** Now’s our chance: the Barmies were formed in England’s doldrums, after all, and it takes heartbreak to fuel creativity. At the very least, we must be able to come up with something better than ‘Your next queen is Camilla Parker-Bowles.’