A Hippo's Château is his, well, Château

DON'T MESS WITH HORACE!

Modern Times, Religion and Parking Fines

Reserved for Bowler Hats and Walking Sticks

I've been resting

in the handkerchief pocket of the cream, the white, the off-white, the ivory or the beige, no less.

I faithfully promise that this is the closest this blog will ever come to talking about cricket.

Ancient Inventions and their Modern Applications, Part I: The Siphon

The siphon is a most wondrous device.The principle is simple: take a length of hose, stick one end in a full container, the other end in an empty container below it, prime thine hose, and thine liquid moves from one container to another as if by magic. It has helped me move home-brewed beer from a large glass container into suitably-sized bottles on several occasions in diverse corners of the world, and I shall toast the wise and creative Egyptians that invented it as soon as the next batch is ready to drink.

The bath is an equally wondrous device, and the ancients are also to be praised for inventing ablutions, part and parcel of last week's otherwise diligent trip to the country, by means of train, train, bus, and the most welcome and generous many-wheeled articulated conveyance of Monsieur Paul, Bathurst-based Monty Python fan and occasional transporter of hydrated lime.

Siphons come in many shapes and sizes: one excting encounter during the week was with the jiggler siphon, a commodious means for transferring fuel from jerrican to motor quadricycle with a minimum of said carburant transferred to soon-to-be-pastry-making hands. And for draining the soon-to-be-revealed-as diesel fuel from motor quadricycle back into jerrican, and ultimately for effecting final transfer of previously-revealed-to-be petrol (unleaded; 91 octane) into said eventually-to-be-restarted motor quadricycle. But I digress. The ancients, to my knowledge, preferred to place chariot wheels side-by-side rather than in tandem, and in lieu of the laborious and recreative functions of the modern motor quadricycle mainly employed slaves.

The combination of siphon and bathtub, on the other hand, is a great advancement for relaxing outdoor ablutions, obviating the need to carry water in buckets from the nearest convenient hot-water tap, cunningly designed not to take the thread of standard outdoor hose fittings. Procedure is as follows, assuming water tanks of sufficient repleteness and an audience composed solely of placid bovines and close friends:

1. Fit plug in laundry sink; fill sink to a suitable level at a temperature calculated to account for further heat losses in transmission.

2. Ensuring the level of the bath is below that of the sink, insert one end of any convenient hosepipe in each, while leaving the tap running. Any rise and fall between the two ends of the hose will be self-cancelling.

3. Prime hose, either by manual application of upper end of hose to tap outlet until suction begins in earnest, or by suction on lower end. Ensure upper end of hose is well submerged in sink.

4. Allow final water level in bath to be determined by Archimedes' principle, and enjoy requisite ablutions.

Zucchini flowers in west-nor'-west Redfern, la suite

Cucumber vines are being oppressed as I type, but will learn to strive valiantly upwards on the stakes I must get around to putting in!

For those who thought acceptance speeches were all style and no substance

meet Steve Obama Fletcher, newly arrived in the F-H household.
answers to Hussy!

Identity fraud strikes! Hugo the Hippo has a 1970s Hungarian doppelgänger!

I'm not sure what to make of the discovery that there's another Hugo the Hippo out there -- quite how he managed to assume my identity a decade before I came into existence I'll never know, but he seems harmless enough. The plot, as far as I can work out, gets resolved by the Sultan of Zanzibar ordering that Hugo be looked after for the rest of his days; I'm taking this as before-the-event social realist codespeak for my brilliant idea about finding a châtelaine to keep me!

The only sensible explanation I can find is offered by one of the more enlightened Encyclopaedists, wondering whether his best novel was really

copied from the life of Tristram Shandy, unless the dealings of Jacques the Fatalist and his master happened to precede this work, and that Parson Sterne is the plagiarist, which I don’t really believe as I have a particular esteem for Monsieur Sterne who I distinguish from most of the writers of his nation, who make a habit of stealing from and insulting us.

Producers of Hungarian anime, on the other hand, should perhaps best stick to voodoo dolls!

Does deer cause depression?

or is preparation by cookery the basis of English humour?

All venison is melancholy, and begets bad blood; a pleasant meat: in great esteem with us (for we have more parks in England than in all Europe besides) in our solemn feasts. 'Tis somewhat better hunted than otherwise, and well prepared by cookery, and yet all will not serve.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

Zucchini flowers in West-Nor'-West Redfern!

We're moving up in the world, we are!

Any recipe suggestions?

The uses of public transport

Shamelessly ripped off another blog -- which includes links for donations!

It's hard to be loved by idiots

or
Don't hold your breath for the 2009 Sydney French Film Festival!

This is an ex-Parrot...

Shades of Steinbeck

If anyone's asking, I'm happy to be played by Henry Fonda

Riding a dinosaur

Take that, Darwin!

Fidel in historic visit to America!

Reports of his demise seem to have been greatly exaggerated...

Moment of politico-culinary outrage

Why oh why in Thailand of all places, home to exquisite food and appalling restaurant puns, does a Prime Minister get sacked for hosting a cooking show? Never mind the corruption scandals, the man's an example to us all -- I can think of nothing more democratic than parliamentary debates hosted by the likes of Chairman Kaga!

The Rake's Progress, or Rosemary is for Remembrance

That's my entree, and I'm sticking to it!

To err is human: Panoramic facial hair

I believe it was Mahatma Gandhi who suggested that Western civilisation would be a very good idea.

In vino veritas, or GCG

16.2% alc/vol
9.6 standard drinks
Preservative 220 added
Backstory:

Stuffed chicken makeover

Rodney before:Rodney after:
Q.E.D.

Arte in cucina, or move over Wallace Stevens

Sunday morning by Claire.

Me and my tarts

(my tarts and I?)
Shortcrust pastry:
One part butter, two parts flour, a dash of water.
Roll and cut out bases with a schooner glass, press into the bottom of a muffin tin, bake blind for ten minutes before adding filling.
Fillings:
Spanish onion and artichoke hearts: chop and soften in frying pan.
Beetroot and kumera: slice finely and microwave for five minutes.
Top base with filling, then a teaspoon of beaten egg.
Bake c.10 minutes at 180C, or until nicely browned.
Consume while looking wistfully into the bottom of a plastic champagne glass, and if the beetroot gets messy call a laundress.

Just resting

Roast meat should always be allowed to rest before consumption. Humans, on the other hand, need to learn to be patient!

Eppur si muove - carn the lions!

or 500 000 selon les organisateurs, 20 selon la police

I've been doing my best to avoid the Ratzinger-Jugend, but the dark forces of bureaucracy are being as unhelpful as ever. Today's missive from the university administration, which usually delights in taking three weeks to open an envelope:

We have today been advised that the NSW Police felt it was too dangerous for a large number of pilgrims to travel from Victoria Park to St John’s along Parramatta Road or City Road. We are, therefore, allowing this event to cross through the University.

We are very sorry for the necessarily short notice but we anticipate that all disruption to normal movement across Campus will over by 5.00pm today and appreciate your patience and co-operation during this time.

Universities, in the opinion of this humble hippopotamus, should be places for learning and the development of critical thought - and questions of free expression aside, not for imposing fines for stating that the Earth is round or handing out contraceptives to randy young acolytes. Back in January, protests by staff and students at La Sapienza in Rome led the man who thought Galileo's treatment was "fair and just" to abandon his attempt to spread the Word to the Science faculty.

We must do things differently at the cloaca orbis terrarum, or perhaps the "necessarily short notice" had something to do with it.

Things humans do on the driest continent on Earth while pretending to write a thesis (I)

In support of the foregoing, or tautologous list of the indexed

Some notable writers with works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (from the usual authoritative source, though the human claims they've simply ripped off his bibliography):
Joseph Addison
Dante Alighieri
Francis Bacon
Honoré de Balzac
Simone de Beauvoir
Cesare Beccaria
Jeremy Bentham
Henri Bergson
George Berkeley
Thomas Browne
Giordano Bruno
John Calvin
Giacomo Casanova
Auguste Comte
Nicolaus Copernicus
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Erasmus Darwin
Daniel Defoe
René Descartes
Denis Diderot
Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Desiderius Erasmus
Johannes Scotus Eriugena
Gustave Flaubert
Anatole France
Frederick II of Prussia
Galileo Galilei (Eppur si muove!)
Edward Gibbon
André Gide
Vincenzo Gioberti
Graham Greene
Heinrich Heine
Thomas Hobbes
Victor Hugo
David Hume
Cornelius Jansen
Immanuel Kant
Adam F. Kollár
Saint Mary Faustina Kowalska
Nikos Kazantzakis
Johannes Kepler
Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais
Pierre Larousse
Gregorio Leti
John Locke
Martin Luther
Niccolò Machiavelli
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maimonides
Nicolas Malebranche
Jules Michelet
John Stuart Mill
John Milton
Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Blaise Pascal
François Rabelais
Ernest Renan
Samuel Richardson
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
George Sand
Jean-Paul Sartre
Baruch de Spinoza
Laurence Sterne
Emanuel Swedenborg
Jonathan Swift
Miguel de Unamuno
Maria Valtorta
Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde
Voltaire
Gerard Walschap
Émile Zola
Huldrych Zwingli

Protests so far not outlawed by the NSW government

or at very least reputed to have embarrassed the editors of the Vatican's index librorum prohibitorum [latina]

If there's still hope for Ingrid Betancourt...

VIVA FIDEL!

Nihil sub sole novum

Insert Cliché Bingo

Shamelessly ripped off another blog, which offers the wise words that "getting vox-popped is the foodie equivalent of getting happy slapped."
Who's for other forms of bingo? Corporate? Working families? Or should I stick to recommending websites of great public utlity for the Pulitzer prize for fiction?

Flora and Fauna

Things are settling down in the new château, hurrah! The location is convenient, the bedroom has a bookcase, the kitchen is positively luxurious and the bathroom is nearly fixed. The other occupants are emimently friendly -- warm and cuddly for the most part, and even the owl is a softie once you get to know her. There's even quite a decent garden, and I seem to have the treehouse all to myself for the time being.
Watch this space for political developments. I'll have this microstate on the road in no time now I have an address: proposals for diplomatic relations, joint declarations of war, suitable châtelaines for the human and further cooking experiments to be directed here.

Fanfare Piston Circus

Fanfare (n):

('fænfэə(r), fæn'fэə(r)) [Fr. fanfare perhaps an echoic word.]
a. A flourish, call, or short tune, sounded by trumpets, bugles, or hunting-horns.
b. transf. and fig.
c. A style of bookbinding decoration developed in Paris in the 16th century in which a continuous interlaced ribbon, bounded by a double line on one side and a single on the other, divides the whole surface on both covers into symmetrical compartments of varying shapes and sizes.
Hence fanfare v. intr., to sound a fanfare.

(The Oxford English Dictionary)

Activities planned for the one-night interval between one lot of marking and another

Errata et corrigenda, or steps toward a standard distribution

GRADUS [gRadys] n. m.–1821 ; abréb. de Gradus ad Parnassum « Degré vers le Parnasse », oeuvre de 1702. ▪ Dictionnaire de prosodie latine. — PAR EXT. Dictionnaire poétique. Un gradus français.
(Le nouveau Petit Robert)

gradus, ūs, m. [ GRAD- ],
a step, pace, gait, walk: gradum facere
Plur., steps, rounds, stairs: in gradibus Concordiae stare
Fig., a stepm stage, degree, grads
An approach, advance, progress, march
A step, degree, grade, rank, stage, interval
(C. T. Lewis, An Elementary Latin Dictionary)

Work may fail for any of the following reasons:

• no evidence of having read the prescribed material closely;
• sloppy, inconsistent presentation;
• preponderance of paraphrase, mere plot summary or listing of superficial characteristics;
• excessive use of quotation for illustrative purposes only, without any attempt at analysis;
• excessive level of generality in answering a question;
• inappropriate or obscure expression;
• incoherent general structure;
• inadequate referencing;
• late submission of work without extension.

(Guide to the Interpetation of Grades, Department of English, University of Sydney)

Affirmative action

Bloomsday crops up in mysterious places...
Can anyone able to cope with Ulysse gramophone remember how many yeses there are in ouï-dire? La ci darem...

On the glorious path towards recognition of statehood (II)

The deciding factor? A kitchen eminently suitable for further pastry adventures!

Further arguments upon the desirability of bakers

(i) the spare-moment confection of collations to be enjoyed upon return from place of employment;


(ii) an eye for stray pâtisseries, coupled with a sense for the level of fringe benefits compatible with a class-457 visa.

Q.E.D.

Enfin!

Dépôt courrier 18/01/08
"Date de la dépêche" 18/02/2008
Arrivée 02/06/2008

Croissants!

Bash your butter into a perfect rectangle.

Roll out dough to be as wide as the butter, and three times as long.



Fold butter inside dough.
Refrigerate for 30 mins. Press down on ends to seal, roll out. Repeat. Refrigerate for 30 mins. Repeat.


Roll out sheet of dough and divide into long triangles.
Stretch pieces slightly and roll up, only handling the ends, not the middle.

Let rise for a couple of hours in a warm place. Keep damp.


Brush with beaten egg and cook around 20mins -- start at 200c then drop to 160c.
Eat! Croissants you haven't cooked can be frozen for up to a week--put them in before rising, then allow a few hours to rise and defrost when you take them out.

Birthday bashings

or what happens when you invite unsupervised minions to the pub...

Châteauneuf-upon-Hunter

Truth be told I had rather a good weekend away from the search for a viable homeland, and ended up accompanying the human to Conferenceville to discuss the finer points of a contradiction in terms.

He prattled on as usual about fiction that insists on telling you it's fiction, to an audience largely bent on explaining how and why every word of their memoirs should be believed even if things didn't actually happen that way. They all richly deserved each other; and possible fractiousness was staved off by a panel chair who saved the day with a can of shaving cream.

The welcome was warm, the natives were hospitable, the food was excellent and the couches were Chesterfield. No complaints save the fake fireplace: all flame and no heat, which led me to propose my patent cold remedy to a most ungrateful colleague:












My own ulterior motive for visiting Châteauneuf-upon-Hunter was of course to find a suitable châtelaine, but as usual, nothing doing. Sigh! They're getting hard to find on the CityRail network.