White-necked Heron

It's great finding new birds. Recently Mr Wicker noticed a new bird in a local dam. We jumped in the car to check it out one day.

It turned out to be a rather magnificent White-necked Heron (Ardea pacifica) in breeding plumage. I'd never seen one before- I've now seen them about a few places, locally and in the Blue Mountains- they're quite distinctive even when driving past.

Enjoying a meal

They look so intent on the search for the next meal

This dam soon dried up soon after these shots due to our rather awful record breaking hot summer. I hope he/she has found somewhere new to feed. 

Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from Alyce  at home with books

Wondrous Words Wednesday 30/1/13

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

I recently read Anna Quindlen's Imagined London. As befits a Pulitzer Prize winning author there was quite a vocabulary, and more than a few new words for me. 

1. Catafalque (Noun)

On that first visit to London one of the first stops I made was in Westminster Abbey, at the catafalque of Elizabeth I; in my girlhood, before anyone used (and overused) the term "role model," that distant princess was mine, refusing to be demoted and undervalued because of her gender, determined to be the greatest ruler England had ever known and making a go of it, too. 

A raised bier, box, or similar platform, often moveable, that is used to support the casket, coffin, or body of the deceased during a funeral or memorial service. Wiki.

2. Ishmaelites (Noun)

Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people looking out of upper windows, it dwells remote from the British Body Politic. 

In the Bible, the son of Abraham who was cast out after the birth of Isaac. He is traditionally considered to be the forebear of the Arabs. The Free Dictionary. 

3. Scrim (Noun)

Perhaps it was that I wanted to see what I had learned, what I had read, what I had imagined, that I would never be able to see the city of London without seeing it through the overarching scrim of every description of it I had read before. 

An open-weave muslin or hessian fabric, used in upholstery, lining, building, and in the theater to creat the illusion of a solid wall or to suggest haziness, etc, according to the lighting. The Free Dictionary.

4. Fealty (Noun)

But little is left of the Empire except a few stray Caribbean islands, the good-natured fealty of the Canadians, and the fact that, according to one cab driver, the second most common dinner dish in the U.K (after roast beef and Yorkshire pudding) is tikka masala. 

1. a) The fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. 

b) The oath of such fidelity.

2. Faithfulness; allegiance. The Free Dictionary. 

5. Bowfront (Adjective)

6. Greensward (Noun)

But Park Lane was savaged in the early part of the last century, the bowfront houses with gardens running right down to the edge of the greensward largely demolised and the road along Hyde Park widened into a major autobahn. 

Bowfront- having an outward curving front. 

Greensward- ground that is green with grass; turf. 

7. Jeremiad (Noun)

The jeremiad that followed about the effects of immigration on the economy, the crime rate, and unemployment was as old as time, and as literature. 

A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom. 

8. Foursquare (Adverb)

The long graceful rows of identical buildings, standing foursquare to the street, give nothing away about the lives inside except, perhaps, that on some cosmetic level they are lives well lived. 

In a forthright manner; squarely. 

Piano Rock

I bought Piano Rock on my last trip to New Zealand two years ago, but hadn't got to reading it yet. So I figured it would be perfect reading material for my recent trip over the Tasman. It certainly was, it filled an hour or so of my time on the plane beautifully.

Piano Rock is the story of Gavin Bishop's early childhood in the remote parts of the South Island of New Zealand in the 1950s. Three year old Gavin arrives in Kingston in 1949 with his parents. Gavin's father has moved the family to Kingston on the edge of Lake Wakatipu for his job with the New Zealand Railways.

Gavin describes their remote, simple life. Sometimes lovely, sometimes harsh and brutal. Gavin learns very young that "you can't have a dog that bothers sheep", and what happens to a dog that does, and that pigs are for food. He also mentions the rather quaint old custom of wearing brown paper to help prevent travel sickness.

He starts school early at 4.

"Might as well," Mr McLeod, the teacher, said to Mum. "He's ready for school."

Kingston School was a one room school, with 12 pupils and one teacher, a mile from Gavin's house. Four year old Gavin walked to school and back, occasionally the kids next door would give them a ride on their big old horse, Chum. Gavin was the only one in his class and would receive special sums and lessons.

Gavin was to grow up to become on of New Zealand's pre-eminent children's author and illustrators (he received the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year honours list while we were there), but he found his passion from an early age. Art was his favourite subject at school, and he drew all the time and everywhere.

I drew forts and houses on my printing books and dogs and cars on my arithmetic books. One day I was asked to write the alphabet on the blackboard. When I put funny faces and arms and legs on the letters I got a smack from the teacher. 

My copy of Piano Rock, is a beautiful hard bound copy, with a textured cover, and illustrations throughout. A style emulated by the newer release The ACB with Honora Lee by Kate De Goldi, which I should have bought while I was there. Actually there were a few books I should have bought while I was there over Christmas, New Zealand titles don't seem to be that available here in Australia, but it is nice to try and keep up with a few Kiwi authors.

Piano Rock was a finalist for the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards. 

Nelson Market

I do love going to markets especially when on holidays. Recently I made a very brief visit to the Nelson Saturday Market whilst in New Zealand.

I love the colourful things

Cool shell poppies

The colourful people

And the local delicacies on offer.

And that kids hair!

Some fudge may have died in the making of this post

Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from Alyce  at home with books

Imagined London

I'm going to Paris this year! Which is Tremendously Exciting. But I'm not only going to Paris, I'll also be making my first visit to London. Which is Pretty Exciting too. Major world city and all that. To someone who grew up watching British TV shows and reading English books London seems familiar, which of course it is to some extent, but also new.

Anna Quindlen, whilst American, had this same experience too. London was her favourite place in the world from her extensive reading of English literature, dating from her own childhood. She has been taken to London by many of the world's greatest authors and despite not taking her first trip until well into her forties, but her enthusiasm never waned.

For a person raised on books, walking through streets in her mind's eye, engaged in the love affairs and life losses of imaginary men and women, London is indisputably the capital of literature, of great literature and romance novels and mystery stories, too. There can be no doubt. The London of Thackeray and Galsworthy, of Martin and Kingsley Amis, of Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers, of Nancy Mitford and Elizabeth Bowen. The London of Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and Charles Dickens. 

Anna loves exploring the London of her imagination on foot, but she warns us that London is a labyrinth where even experienced residents may get lost. What hope for the hapless tourist? But it's exciting to read of Charles Dickens London, the British Museum and St Paul's. I'm looking forward to walking about and possibly getting lost in London Town too.

Anna discusses the change in novels about London over time. Older books she feels make "clear what any reader knows about London: that geography is destiny."

It is one of the central tenets of English literature: Where you live tells us who you are, or who you have become, or who you want to be. 

The literature of London now reflects its modernity, as it should. It also reflects, less happily, the everywhere-is-anywhere ethos of easy air travel and effortless chain imports that has homogenised most of the developed world. Only the detective novels, perhaps needing some firm undeniable bedrock for their uncommon tales of murder, blackmail, and back channel plots, still draw heavily upon clear and specific delineations of place..... Ethnicity, too, has become its own setting, so that novels of the immigrant experience are among some of the best and most successful that modern London can offer. 

I always love rather random facts, and Anna shares a few with us.

An Anti-Gallican Society was set up in 1745 to "oppose the insidious arts of the French nation".

There was a Clink Prison in South London (1144-1780), that gave its name to all prisons to come.

One third of London is said to be parks and gardens.

The best selling book in America in the decade following WWII was Forever Amber. A book that I'd never heard of til now.

Tie dye?

I've always had a strange love for tie dye. Sadly my last tie dye shirt died quite a few years ago now.

Perhaps it's time to get a new one?

Sadly these aren't t-shirt designs. Although I reckon I'd buy that second one. 

They're homegrown beetroot. 

Giving their lives for a rather delicious beetroot hummus. Loosely based on this recipe. I forgot the onion, and used peanut butter again instead of tahini, as I learned from Nigella. 

Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from Alyce  at home with books

Wondrous Words Wednesday 16/1/13

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

Today's words come from my recent reading of T.S Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

1. Serried (Adjective)

She probably escaped with ease, I'm sure she was not drowned-

But a serried ring of flashing steel Growltiger did surround.

Pressed or crowded together, especially in rows. 

The answer was actually there in the illustration!

2. Terpsichorean (Adjective)

Reserving their terpsichorean powers

To dance by the light of the Jellicle Moon.

Of or related to dancing. 

3. Braw (Adjective, Scottish)

For your Pollicle Dog is a dour Yorkshire tyke,

And his braw Scottish cousins are snappers and biters,

i) Fine, splendid

ii) Dressed in a fine or showy manner

4. Prestidigitation (Noun)

At prestidigitation

i) Performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand

ii) A show of skill or deceitful cleverness. 

5. Legerdemain (Noun)

At legerdemain

i) Sleight of hand. 

ii) A show of skill of deceitful cleverness. 

6. Brummell of Cats

In the whole of St James's the smartest of names is 

The name of this Brummell of Cats

George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (7 June 1778- 30 March 1840) was an iconic figure in Regency England, the arbiter of men's fashion, and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV. Wiki.

Picture source

7. Strassburg Pie

And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie

A pastry containing pate de foie gras and bacon, wiki says this was formerly known as Strassburg Pie in English, as Strassburg was a major producer of foie gras. 

A modern incarnation

Although they apparently used to look more  like this extraordinary creation!

All other definitions from thefreedictionary.com