Eat Your Veggies!

I love serendipity. A mere few weeks or months ago I would have walked past these lollies in the Reject Shop without a sideways glance or a single regret. Just recently I was stopped in my tracks by them.

I remembered a recent-ish blog post from one of the many Parisian blogs that I torture myself with most days. I had only accidentally found the more humdrum gummi bears, that are the birthright of French children, and not the more exotic Dragibus and Tagada that I fear shall need to wait til my next trip to France (don't miss that link it's great, although it may not make you want to eat any of the Haribo products featured) .

So it was with great excitement that I found a packet of Haribo anything. I was then very surprised  to read the ingredients. Sure there was the usual Glucose syrup, Gelatine, Dextrose, Citric acid. No surprises there really. But then Fruit and plant concentrates (Safflower, Spirulina, Apple, Sweet potato, Carrot, Radish, Blackcurrant, Hibiscus and Lemon). Safflower- more than likely to be oil I suppose. But Radish! I've long been aware that the French are crazy for radishes. There are French Breakfast Radishes after all. But are they crazy enough to want them in their lollies? And the Germans are crazy enough to make radish lollies for them?

Of course I was fully intrigued by this time. Would they taste like radish? Or kumara? Or please God no spirulina? And then I read on down the label. There is further interesting banter:

This is a genuine branded product that has been parallel imported.
The composition and taste of the product may differ from the local equivalent product.
It does not have the official support of the local distributor.

Hmmm, almost a warning- Innocent Wide- Eyed Australians Beware! Those crazy Europeans types have put radishes and kumara and even goddamn spirulina in these lollies!!!! Eat at your own risk. Who knows what could happen?

You might start wanting to eat radishes at breakfast instead of vegemite on toast. That would be rather unsettling, and rather Un-Australian. Ever willing to rise to a culinary challenge I ripped open the packet tonight.

My first professionally lit shot! (The photographer was holding one of his fancy lights off to the side)

All those vegetables but then only four colour variants? There goes my theories that there may be any with individual flavours. Each one does taste different to the others, they weren't like closing your eyes and trying to work out what colour of the giant python you were eating. But try as I might I can't discern any radish in any of them. It's tempting to think that the orange one might be carrot and kumara, and that the green one is spirulina and apple. But they all just taste like generically sweet lollies. The texture is quite a bit firmer than our traditional Australian brand lollies (is that what they were warning us about?), and not all that appealing for me. I don't know that these have immediately converted me or made me an addict. And we will just have to wait and see if I suddenly crave radish for breakfast in the morning.

Wondrous Words Wednesday 16/3/11

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  


I have just recently read Peter Ackroyd's The Lambs of London. And while I wasn't completely besotted with this book, it did have a lot of great words in it.


1. Mantua-maker

There was a pipe shop here as well as a mantua-maker, a carpenter's workshop and a bookshop.

Hmm, no clues there really. Seems a mantua-maker was basically a dressmaker or seamstress. It's astonishing how a whole industry can become defunct and near unknown.

A more preposterous mantua

2. Jakes

'The city is a great jakes.'

I didn't understand this sentence at all, which was a worry to me as it was in the very first paragraph of the book.

Jakes (n) from my Shorter Oxford
1. A privy, a lavatory
2. Excrement, filth

It all makes so much sense now that I have looked up the meaning. And explains the very first sentence of the book. ' I loathe the stench of horses.'

3. Harlequinade

He had no recollection of William Ireland, who had been seated by the door of the Salutation and Cat; Ireland had in fact been partially obscured by a wooden pillar around which various advertisements- for a harlequinade, for an exhibition of acrobatics- had been pasted.

Harlequinade(n) from my Shorter Oxford
1. A kind of pantomime; the part of a pantomime in which a harlequin plays the chief part.
- a piece of buffoonery
2. A piece of gaily-coloured variegated work.

4. Mullioned

William stood in front of them, having refused the offer of a chair, and looked out of a small mullioned window at the dome of St Paul's.

Mullion (n) from my Shorter Oxford
A vertical bar in the lights in a window, esp in Gothic architecture.

I know that I've looked this one up before. Maybe I'll remember it this time.


But the best word I came across this week was goatsucker. And I found it accidentally, flipping through a crossword dictionary at a book store.

Goatsucker is another name for the birds otherwise known as nightjars (of which I have heard, but know essentially nothing of, and don't believe we have them in Australia).

The more observant amongst you will have noticed that I could only be bothered getting the A-M off the shelf. You will have to wait until another time for the more abundant N-Z words.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

It's a strange experience watching such a famous movie as Breakfast at Tiffany's. The images of Audrey Hepburn/Holly Golightly are so iconic, that all her outfits look familiar. Holly's gorgeous LBD from the opening scene.

That fabulous hat that Holly wears to visit Sing Sing.

Although mercifully, images of this hat appear to be not so commonplace.

It's like she ran into one of those fancy chickens while rushing around a corner and somehow the poor creature got impaled on her forehead.

These images are all so commonplace, so absolutely iconic, that it makes you think you have seen the movie, when in fact you haven't seen it at all. You know it's set in New York. You know that she has a thing for Tiffany's. You know that there's something vaguely unseemly about it all. The familiarity makes you think that you know the story. And then it starts, and clearly, you've never seen the movie, and in fact have absolutely no idea what it is about. 

You have no idea that it is associated with Moon River. You have no idea that Holly Golightly is quite loopy, and refuses to name her cat (who plays more than a minor role in the movie) because of the possible impermanence. And then it was so exciting to later discover that Orangey the talented cat actor, won two feline Oscars for his work. 

As a long term shiftworker I can't but help but coveting her alluring eyemask and ear plugs with tassels.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a great movie to watch, and an excellent way for my friend and I to kick off our Audrey Hepburn phase, watching Movies Made Before We Were Born. There is an intriguing morality to this movie, which belies the Truman Capote novella I suspect- a novella that I now most definitely want to read. 

The Lambs of London

I love reading detours, the wonderful paths we happen along, diverting us from what we feel we should really be reading, but enriching our reading just the same. This is the tale of such a diversion.

Recently I started what will be a rather slow read of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare.

An extraordinary book, in print since its publication in 1807, written by two rather extraordinary authors. A cursory Google about the Lambs was enough to be intriguing. Mary suffered bouts of mental illness and stabbed and killed her mother in 1796. Charles, an essayist and writer, also had periods of mental instability, but looked after his sister after her crime, and died of erysipelas, aged 59, another tragedy of the pre-antibiotic era.

My literary detour was to read The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd which I discovered on my library catalogue.

I've long been intrigued by Peter Ackroyd's books. He is a biographer of Dickens amongst many, has written about Oscar Wilde, and has written massive tomes about London, which I know that if I ever get to visit the opportunity to visit London, I will be dreadfully keen to read. Here was a much shorter book in which I could dip my reading toes and partially satisfy curiosity about Ackroyd, about London and the Lambs all at once!

Well, that was the plan. Certainly, Charles and Mary Lamb are major characters in The Lambs of London. But the book isn't really about them. It is much more about William and Samuel Ireland, but The Irelands of London would not have drawn me in quite so easily.

It's not that there isn't warning. It's right there on the first page:

This is not a biography but a work of fiction. I have invented characters, and changed the life of the Lamb family for the sake of the larger narrative.

I guess I really should have read a biography of the Lambs instead. That's what I'm really interested in. I found this work of historical fiction frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying. Not that it was a bad book, it's not. It's just not the book I wanted to read. I'm not sure about his motivation. I think the Lambs must have had quite a fascinating enough life of their own. I'm not sure why Ackroyd needed a "larger narrative".

Charles Lamb is working as a clerk at the East India Company, when he buys a book from William Ireland, who is working in his father's bookstore. Charles and Mary befriend William, and share his passion for all things Shakespeare. Charles does blame Mary's friendship with William for her increasing restlessness. Perhaps this is why Ackroyd needs the larger narrative supplied by the Irelands? To explain Mary's illness. But can't it just be a mental illness?

Many of the literary references went sailing past my head, but these didn't interfere with the story too much. It seems clerks of 18th century London were much better read than modern day doctors. There was just too much William Ireland for a book I wanted to be about Charles and Mary Lamb. I was rather peeved at one point when a beggar removes a fake goitre from her face (!). Goitres of course are growths arising from the thyroid gland in the neck, and not from the face. I've tried to find something about goitres being on faces in the 18th century, but haven't found anything to support this use, but did come across some rather interesting stuff.

The picture is from a fascinating article about the historical treatment of goitres. I really wonder how the belief started that the touch of a dead mans hand would be curative for a goitre? Now that's astonishing. And not quite where I expected this post to go, but you just never know where life, or reading, or blogs, will take you, do you?

The Whale Rider

Like many people, I knew of this story because of the 2002 film Whale Rider. I saw the film at the time, with the rest of the world, but haven't seen it since. I was excited to include Witi Ihimaera's 1987 book The Whale Rider into our February reading schedule for my 1001 Children's Books You Must Read quest. It was timed to coincide with New Zealand's national day Waitangi Day on February 6, it's just taken me a while to get to blogging about it. 

The Whale Rider tells the story of Kahu, a young girl growing up with her extended Maori family in coastal, small-town New Zealand in the 1980s. We know it's the 1980s because of references to the protests at the controversial Springbok Rugby tour of New Zealand in 1981, and the French nuclear testing at Muroroa Atoll in the Pacific. Whiti Ihimaera creates quite a broad political backdrop for his local story.


The story begins with the birth of a child. Kahu is the first child born into her generation.  Since the time of the mythic ancestor, Kahutia Te Rangi, a high chief who travelled east from Hawaiki on the back of a whale, the first child born has always been a male. The leadership of the tribe is passed down this unbroken male line. Kahu's grandfather Koro Apirana, is the current leader, and is devastated at the birth of a girl.


I really enjoyed the story, but found the book got in the way of the story. I'm lucky enough to be a frequent visitor to New Zealand, and have been for the last 15 years. So I know a smattering of Maori words. But the sheer volume of Maori vocabulary made it very difficult for an average Pakeha reader to follow.  There was a four page glossary in the back of my library edition. But sadly even this was inadequate. Some words just weren't there, sometimes important words like korero (meeting/discussion), and phrases were not included at all. Some Maori langauage usage is obviously vital, such as when Koro Apirana starts up a regular session to instruct the young men of the village in the ways of the tribe. 

Just the men, he added, because men were tapu. Of course the instruction wouldn't be like in the old days, not as strict, but the purpose would be the same: to keep the reo going, and the mana of the iwi. 


This lead to constant flicking back and forth to the glossary. I really think that it could have been handled better for non-Maori readers (footnotes for instance, or even just brackets of translation, and it's very hard to piece together meanings of phrases from individual words, naturally they usually have implied meanings beyond the actual words).  Particularly frustrating as most chapters ended with the same sentence. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e.

It's all very well now in 2011 with our Google world to work out what this phrase means. This would have been impossible for me when the book was released in 1987, and I think would have severely curtailed the reading pleasure to be found within its pages. Luckily for us there was an exhibition in Christchurch in 2001 at the Christchurch Arts Centre (now sadly closed until further notice after the devastating earthquake last week) called Haumi e, hui e, taiki e. And they give a lovely explanation of it:

HAUMI E! HUI E! TAIKI E! is an exclamation, a cry often heard at the end of tauparapara (the classic chant to start a speech), waiata tawhito (ancient waiata) and whaikorero (ceremonial speechmaking), and a call for the things that are known in te ao wairua (the world of the spirit), to be given life in the living world. 

The back cover blurb of my library copy talks of "capturing readers with universal themes of conflict between generations and genders, respect for nature, family love and personal courage." I think the book certainly does that and more. It also tells us of the importance of cultural heritage. Rawiri has to leave NZ (to "cross the ditch" as the Kiwis always say) to live in Australia and New Guinea to reawaken his sense of belonging to his Maori culture. I know that I too appreciated Australia much more after I had lived 2 years in Canada (not that Canada isn't a great place, it's just that your eyes can see your home more clearly when they've seen other places too). I really liked the term "aggressively expatriate" referring to the white population in New Guinea. I think that's wonderfully expressive. 

I broadened my Whale Rider experience with revisiting the 2002 movie. It's an enjoyable movie, but there are some major deviations from the book. Several characters are renamed-  Kahu becomes Paikea, which has also become the name of the whale riding ancestor. Paikea here is one of twins- but her twin brother dies at birth in the opening scenes of the movie. The narrator switches from uncle Rawiri to that of Kahu/Paikea herself. And some other characters are changed considerably- Paikea's father life is quite different in the movie compared to the book. Still the movie has a gentle feel to it, and was an enjoyable way to spend a quiet Monday evening. 

I was intrigued to find that my library also had a picture book version of The Whale Rider. The picture book version was published in 2005, coming after both the original book and the movie. As such it is a bit of a mix of both. Kahu is still called Kahu here, although the ancestor Kahutia Te Rangi becomes Paikea again. Each version has a somewhat different version of Kahu's mother's death. Not sure why. The picture book focuses on the major events of the book- Koro Apirana's school for the boys to pick the next leader, the school concert, and the whale stranding. The story is a bit more obvious and circular in picture book format- Kahutia Te Rangi has one magic spear that refuses to leave his hands as he arrives at Aotearoa, and so he sends it into the future. "Go, fly forward, into the future and flower where you are needed most." Of course it is needed most in Kahu's time. The book is beautifully illustrated with lush, evocative oil paintings by Bruce Potter. 

This post is the first that I'm completing as part of the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up Reading Challenge 2011. Which is fantastic, because it's the books I'm reading anyway. 

Wondrous Words Wednesday 10/2/11

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading.  

I've just finished reading Witi Ihamaera's The Whale Rider- a rather fascinating insight into modern Maori culture. I plan to write a proper post on it sometime soon, but in the meantime thought I would pass along some of the many new words I came across in this book. 

1. Lambent

Even in his lumbering years of age the whale would remember his adolescence and his master; at such moments he would send long, undulating songs of mourning through the lambent water. 

lam·bent  adj.

1. Flickering lightly over or on a surface: lambent moonlight.

2. Effortlessly light or brilliant: lambent wit.

3. Having a gentle glow; luminous. 

---

[Latin lambns, lambent-, present participle of lambere, to lick.]

I do love the concept of lambent, I do rather think it's such a dreary sounding word for such a beautiful phenomenon.

pinched from flickr

2. Susurrated (and glissandi while we're at it)

The ice cracked, moaned, shivered and susurrated with rippling glissandi, a giant organ playing a titanic symphonic.

su·sur·ra·tion   also su·sur·rus 

n.

A soft, whispering or rustling sound; a murmur.

---

[Middle English susurracioun, from Late Latin susurrti, susurrtin-, from Latin susurrtus, past participle of susurrre, to whisper, from susurrus, whisper, ultimately of imitative origin.]

---

su·surrant , su·surrous  adj.

glis·san·do  

n. pl. glis·san·di  or glis·san·dos Music

A rapid slide through a series of consecutive tones in a scalelike passage.

---

[French glissade; see glissade + -ando (as in accelerando).]

3. Skirled

The elderly female whales skirled their happiness through the sea.

skirl  

v. skirled, skirl·ing, skirls

v.intr.

To produce a high, shrill, wailing tone. Used of bagpipes.

v.tr.

To play (a piece) on bagpipes.

n.

1. The shrill sound made by the chanter pipe of bagpipes.

2. A shrill wailing sound: "The skirl of a police whistle split the stillness" (Sax Rohmer).

---

[Middle English skrillen, skirlen, probably of Scandinavian origin.]

4. Plangent

The sound was plangent and sad as he tried to communicate his oneness with the young whale's mourning. 

plan·gent 

adj.

1. Loud and resounding: plangent bells.

2. Expressing or suggesting sadness; plaintive: "From a doorway came the plangent sounds of a guitar" (Malcolm Lowry).

---

[Latin plangns, plangent-, present participle of plangere, to strike, lament; see plk-² in Indo-European roots.]

---

plangen·cy n.

plangent·ly adv.

It's funny to note that all these words are from sections about the whales, which is actually not the major part of the book. The majority of the action centers on the people rather than the whales. But for some reason his writing about the whales had more words I didn't know. Although the people sections had many, many Maori words I didn't know. More on that later. 

Literary Blog Hop February 2-5, or maybe a few days late

Welcome to this week's Literary Blog Hop hosted by The Blue Bookcase!

Robyn asks: What setting (time or place) from a book or story would you most like to visit? Eudora Welty said that, "Being shown how to locate, to place, any account is what does most toward making us believe it....", so in what location would you most like to hang out?

This one is a bit of a no-brainer for me. I want to go to The Louvre in the early 17th century. The Louvre is fabulous now. I love the building, the grandeur, the artworks. 

But imagine seeing it as it was meant to be, as a palace for the King! Oh to be transported back in a TARDIS to the time of Louis XIII, Queen Anne and Cardinal Richelieu. How fascinating would that be? I haven't found a TARDIS recently, but I did read Alexandre Dumas's classic The Three Musketeers. It's nearly as good I guess.

Although somehow I suspect that I would miss some of the modern Parisian delights.... like macarons and champagne.  I wonder if it would smell, or be full of rats?