Under the bonnet

Lately life has been very slow for me.

I’ve been on my own, except for Katie and Vicky of course, since Mum died in 2006, and although I never saw much of my Sister, I suppose things got a bit worse since she died in 2010.

In some ways things appear to have stopped, I spend a lot of my time home, and online. It’s true that I am a home body and enjoy my quiet time, and had it not been for the internet then I would have found something else to do on my own.

A strange thought occurred to me, I feel as though I have pulled the car off the side of the road and have decided to open the bonnet and see what makes things, in my life, tick.

And I’ve met a wonderful collection of people who were somehow always there, but just sort of unreachable.

They made things work in my life, they powered it in all sorts of ways.

I feel somewhat annoyed that it took this long to find them, but of course the ability wasn’t there.

Wolfie!

Time for soup.

It’s getting colder in Melbourne as winter draws closer, and the tummy of the average domesticated Werewolf begins to crave his Mothers soup, which is a standard in our family.

It’s a cheap and filling meal and wonderful for anyone who may be on a tight budget.

The other great thing is that everything you add to it, is to taste, that is, you can add or leave out whatever you like and the recipe shouldn’t go wrong… although I have a story about that.

Firstly, find the largest pot you have, I have a pressure cooker pot… the ring broke on the lid so I can’t pressure cook it (it takes a lot less time if you can) but I can simmer it just the same.

Add a combination of water and stock, probably less stock than water, and some salt… no more than a flat teaspoon. (If you don’t have stock then you can just use water, it’s all we used for years and the soup was fine… the reason I use stock is that I tend to leave an ingredient out)

(about 4 litres of liquid)

And you’ll need soup mix, this is a basic requirement for this soup, you must have this, You use about half a pack (a pack which fits nicely in two hands)

Please don’t panic about me not mentioning how much *exactly* should be used, as none of that matters, you will get used to how much you need and vary the ingredients yourself.

Put the heat on and simmer it, when it’s bubbling it should be a lazy sort of bubbling, not too fast! just barely bubbling, ok?

Now choose about three of the following, at least, or the lot… play with it, experiment, you can’t really go wrong… kind of… about a cup of each should do.

Potato, Carrot, Parsnip, Onion, Peas, Green Beans, Corn, Celery, Parsley, Leek, Bok Choy…

Pasta is ok too.

Now Mum always used a lamb shank, and what we always did was ate the soup, and the family dog would get the shank (Although Dad often had his eyes on it), But I tend to feel that sometimes a shank has hardly any taste, and it adds fat too the soup, so why bother adding it?  Therefore I have taken to using stock, which I buy in a packet from the supermarket… I also don’t like Onion much, and find that there’s enough flavour in the stock to skip the onion too.

I have taken to using broccolini too, which is something Mum never used (she hated corn too) but be careful when using broccoli from the garden, all I wish to say is inspect it, carefully… and wash it like mad.

Put a lid on (make sure the pot cannot be grabbed by a toddler) and let it bubble for two hours or so, at least until the soup mix is tender.

If it’s going well then the soup should develop a thickened look to the liquid.

On a cold night it’s fine to keep the soup on the stove overnight, and re-heat the next day for lunch or tea… You may find that it has turned to jelly overnight, it might spook some of you soup virgins, but all that it means is that everything has gone perfectly right… when you heat it, it will turn back into liquid.

If you still have some soup left, you can put it in the fridge, but don’t keep it much more than two days. or you could decide to freeze it, and microwave portions of it over the next week or so.

Or you may find that you eat it all in two nights, a family of three can do that fairly easily.

Now I did say that you can’t ruin the soup, However here’s My Sisters unfortunate story.

My Sister, Janice (Jan-eece), Could never make the soup taste like Mums, and she never understood why. While hers was perfectly edible, it always had a strange taste which was ok, but wasn’t “right”.

One day, many years ago, (70′s/80′s) She stood next to Mum and made the soup and it still turned out wrong.

Now the sad part.

I was talking to Jan on the phone one day, she had cancer, this was just a few years ago, and she didn’t have long to live.

And we were discussing Mums soup.

“I do everything Mum does and I still can’t get it right” She said (I’d heard this many times over the years) and then I mentioned that I make the soup. “I bet you can’t make it like Mum does” She said… “I do, it’s exactly like Mums”.

“It can’t be” She replied

“Well it is” I said.

“Well what do you add?…. Peas?” “Yes”

“Carrots” “Yes”

and the list went on, “Salt and Pepper?”…. “Salt” I said.

“Mum always used salt and pepper” She said.

“No Jan, Mum only ever used salt, and so do I”

It had become apparent what had happened, Jan had thought that salt and pepper simply went together and Mum hadn’t observed the error, or thought that a bit of pepper couldn’t hurt.

We were both stumped, after all those years we had found the tiny error which caused such a huge difference in flavour.

So remember… no pepper, unless of course you find that you like the flavour.

And one final thing, when you serve the soup, shake a little worcestershire sauce into it, it just adds a bit of kick.

Wolfie.

Note:

* Give the dog a bowl of (cooled) soup, it will feed them too.

* If you use a shank, remove it *before* allowing the soup to cool, and wrap it up and put it into the fridge or give it to the dog, don’t allow the soup to cool with the shank in it.

* If you’ve used a shank, fat will form on the top as the soup goes cold, and you can easily lift this off, which I would advise.

A warming winter soup.

Choices made

I think I would have been around fifteen when I decided that one day I’d become a Disc Jockey at a radio station somewhere.

One of the reasons that I wanted to get into radio, was to meet people who I knew from this side of the speaker or screen, a quick talk would be one thing, but a possible lasting friendship would be another, how cool would that be?

As you may know, I didn’t quite reach my goal, and many times I’ve said that it was my declining health which prevented me from going further, and while there’s some truth in that, I think I had another reason for dropping out.

I loved my family.

You see, new radio announcers generally don’t get their start in the city, which is where I live, but way out in “The Mulga” somewhere.

For those overseas, When an Aussie mentions The Mulga, or a place Beyond the black stump, We mean it’s far away, to put it mildly.

For me, a Melburnian, there would have been a good chance that I would have been posted off to Western Australia, Somewhere North of Perth. Several of my radio school classmates headed in that direction.

And I always knew it was on the cards, but somewhere inside I had this nagging doubt that I was any good, I got a volunteer job on a community station in Melton, Which was about an hours travel by train and bus. I was happy to work there, do my twice weekly show, write, produce and edit reels and reels of tape.

Somehow I never really considered that I’d go any further, I wasn’t being paid, but I was happy and I could go home when it was over.

Then someone at the station dropped the word that there was a scout at the station, the kind who looks for potential talent, and I was supposedly on his or her list.

This was exciting, but also frightening… I realised that I may soon have a full-time, paid job… but where?

It was the question of where which got the better of me, I gave up radio soon after.

The thing I wanted most, was to be with my family.

…

So here I am at home, years later, and the strangest thing is that I’m meeting people via twitter, and sometimes, in real life too. People who I never thought I’d meet in my life, and I love it.

But there’s a tinge of sadness that comes with it.

The person who understood me the most, was Mum, and I know if She had still been here that She would have loved to hear of the People I’ve met and spoken with.

Stephen Tobolowsky, Who has a depth to him which I would never have known about otherwise, Julian Clary a quiet soul who adores his garden, Boy George who seems to be rocketing off at an incredible pace to anywhere on the face of the planet, which I doubt I could have matched even at fifteen.

My Daily exchanges with Carol Duncan and Helen Tzarimas which I cherish, and this insanely long list of names who decided to follow me, famous or not, it hardly matters, it’s astonishing.

These wonderful people help to keep me going, and I am truly thankful for that.

I want to run to Mum and say “You’ll never guess who I met today”, But She’s not here.

Yes I can tell others, but it’s not the same, My parents “got me” it took them a long time, but they eventually did. They knew what I liked and who I liked and I’m sure they would have been impressed that I was finally getting to know people, like I always wanted to do.

While that career in radio passed me by, time with my Family did not, and I have no regrets.

Wolfie!

My Short Fuse

The PE teacher at high-school, who I almost bit on the ankle once, said that if we should ever feel angry, we should beat up our pillows… I was against that, for one thing, I’m a passive sort of fellow who rarely go angry… I think it’s because I’m large. You never see Clydesdale horses who are pissed off, they’re calm and together, while Shetlands bite. It’s the same with Dogs… Nine times out of ten it’s the little dog who’s full of agro, while your larger dog couldn’t care less.

And I am passive… oh you noticed that bit about taking a chunk out of the PE teachers ankle, eh? well yes, there was that, In the 80s Physical Education was a bit like boot camp, do this, do that, twenty pushups from you for doing the wrong thing… it was supposed to cultivate respect, or something… But I just thought he was a prick.

One day I was made to do these pushups for some crap I had apparently done, and he was standing, right there, within easy reach, and I was tempted, oh so sorely tempted to sink my teeth into his ankle, seriously too, drawing blood and all.

I was mostly angry with him, I hated sports and PE, and I hated wasting my time with it when I could’ve been laying around in the library, absorbing a book on inventions.

I stopped bringing my uniform, and kept saying “I forgot it, sir” which really meant “I didn’t bring it, you skinny cunt, I don’t want to join in”.

Once he bought me a huge pair of shorts, which would have fitted Dumbo, and asked me to put them on… I was torn between wearing them and having the balls to say that I wouldn’t… but years later realised what I shoud’ve done was streak naked through the high-school, who’s main building seperated each classroom with massive sheets of glass, making sure that everyone would’ve got a good view… and I would’ve been expelled, a good job too, I hated the place something fierce.

Sometimes I think that I am an angry person, that deep inside something is bubbling away like a sleeping volcano that may erupt.

I have no tolerance for religion anymore, it’s something that got in my way, stunted my views, tripped me up, blocked my path and basically made life difficult.

When I aired my views to my dear but brainwashed Mum, She yelled out “You’re a Heathen, Just like your Father”, What could a kid do? Although there were times that Mum raised her own doubts.

Dad used to say that he thought the Bible was “A big fish story”.

I highly suspect the reason I was packed off to Sunday School when I could have spent the day resting, was Mum was having problems with my emerging sexuality, and wanted to put the fear of God into me… not that the sunday school people were like that, they were pretty nice people, Not the fire and brimstone type.

Or it was to do with My Cousin who was going through relationship problems, so they’d send all the kids to sunday school to give them a free hours woman to woman chat.

There was a touch of tradition there too, Mum and my Sister had attended, and Mum had a family background with the Salvos and their band.

The first time I saw cancer, it was with Laddie, my very special collie x shepherd, who was my right arm, rather like Katie is today, it was always Laddie and I who did things together.

Laddie taught me responsibility.

Then the cancer came along, and he literally mented like an ice-cream in the sun, I prayed and prayed for him, but nothing could be done, and in the end he died at the vets surgery, just an hour before he got the needle.

I saw a tumour grow in Timothy, a lovely cat, this ball grew inside him at frightening speed, and there was nothing I could do about it, He was put down too.

The next was Dad, who writhed in pain in bed, he had tubes hanging out of him, and there was this smell, it’s always the same smell, like rotting wood, I know what cancer smells like now, I’m too familiar with it, it lingers in the room.

Dad would rush to the toilet and cry out in pain as he tried to move his bowels, there was a mess on his hands, on the walls, a pervasive odour of urine in stained Pyjamas. Dad was a giant, full of brawn and it whittled him down to this, there were prayers again, not that any of them did any good.

Benny, My lovely Malamute, which Dad gave to me after Laddie passed on, was out gentle giant, a loving being who adored everyone, including cats, especially cats, but never other dogs, even females. He taught me how to be open, and be myself, and not worry what others thought, Benny was the escense of Wolfie, had it not been for him, I would never have come this far. He could really let rip with his deep howls, which were useful as Mum lost most of her hearing in the weaving mills years before, She couldn’t always hear the phone ring, but Benny could, and it would get him howling… “What did the phone say?” We’d ask him, and he’d howl in reply… Visitors loved the show, and Benny was always very keen to show off to people.

Benny got cancer, and I prayed, I prayed a lot, but he withered away until eventually his back legs couldn’t hold him, he cried as the vet examined him in our Bathroom, He couldn’t move. His cries sounded like “Oh No!, Oh No!, Oh No!” It was like someone was mourning a child who had just been run over by a train, the sound stabbed me like a knife.

He was given the “green needle” and off he went, we carried him off in a bag.

There was myself, who I’ve written about before, so we’ll skip this.

Then I smelt that smell in Mums Room, That same musty odour, and I told her it was there, I knew that one of us had it, or the carpet was damp, I hoped for the latter, but it wasn’t long before Mum passed on.

Then the phone went one night and it was my Sister, She had Ovarian Cancer… She fought it for over a year, and I really thought she was gaining th upper hand, but she didn’t. Three lots of chemo I think she had, three lots?
I could barely handly one lot… I didn’t think She was as strong as that, and was amazed with her fight, but it was a fight that she lost, and she was cremated last September.

So don’t talk to me about how great your God is, how merciful, and how wonderful he is, there was no help from above. If God was so great, then why did we get cancer in the first place? why were we all forced to suffer? why was I allowed to remain alive even though all my family are dead?

Religion is my trigger now, it sets me off quicker than anything.

I despise it.

God botherers on twitter get a mouthful of abuse if they try to suggest that as an athiest, I’m wrong, I’m not wrong, I know from painful experience that I’m not wrong.

I hate being angry, I really do… there was a time that I was more tolerant, but I can’t be now.

In my opinion, religion has held back science to such a degree that had it been allowed, then perhaps medicine may have been decades ahead of itself, and perhaps there would have already been a cure, perhaps… my family would have still been alive.

I seethe with rage everytime some nut says that “Evolution is just a theory”.

Personally I think Science ought to be using a new word, call it a “fact” instead, get rid of that stupid word, why is science so precious about it anyway, If the whole of Australia suddenly feels that what we used to call biscuits are actually Cookies (Because as you know, The Americans are ALWAYS right, and as a second class country, we’re just not as good as them, they just know better) Then “Theory” can be changed to “FACT.

Science can do this, because unlike some people, we have that flexibility.

So I fight religion now, each and everytime I come up against it, I blog on athiesm, I retweet stories about how catholic priests rape kids and treat Homosexuals poorly, claiming they spread AIDS while simultaniously banning condoms, I post scientific literature on Facebook and discuss it in science forums, I add my voice to the many who are waking up from history and seeing the logical truth which we can clearly see in our age.

Religion is dying, allow it to die, it’s a sad relic of our tribal history.

So please forgive my little explosions on twitter and other places, I really hate being angry, but these days I am just a little more bitter than I’ve been before.

Wolfie!

Just a little post about Christmas

Despite being a Hitler worshiping, Baby eating Atheist, I still like Christmas.

It’s not the same as it used to be, a real family occasion, with Mum and Dad and a quick visit from Jan, We’d exchange gifts and then fill the day with some other activity, which could have been going to my sisters for Christmas dinner… which usually featured a roast, It’s summer here in Australia so there was usually pork in the Webber outside.

I caught myself typing “Porn” just then, probably out of habit.

But there were “Family issues” so we started going to the local pub, and that was fine, there was just the three of us and we didn’t want much.

Then Dad passed away, and left just Mum, Benny and I. Benny was our loveable Malamute.

My Cousin asked us if we’d like to spend the day with them, and we accepted, and that is still the current state of play despite My Mother having died a few years back.

I love my Cousin, but I do feel a huge fish out of water there, they’re all madly into Football, and despite it being the middle of Summer, the talk is always about Footscray. Last year Yvonne got a large, framed photo of someone which looked like it had been photoshopped to look like an oil painting, I have no idea who it was.

If anything is knitted, you can bet it’ll come in three colours, yes THOSE colours.

I never liked Footy, It always seemed to me that it was about a bunch of Men trying really hard to prove that they were Heterosexual, possibly too hard.

This year, for the very first time, I have a mobile phone which I can tweet on, so yes, you can bet that there will be tweets and photos from there.

I do feel a bit sad when I’m there though, Katie is at home and misses me, and I’ll miss her… I always hated being away from my dogs. My parents used to take me on a lot of interstate trips, which I loved, but I hated leaving my animals behind.

It’s the 17th of December, and I have not sent a single card away, I had intended to, but I feel it’s too late for my Overseas friends, anyway.

Years ago I had a bit more Money to play with, and I loved buying Aussie things and sending them to my friends, I loved having the opportunity to be generous. but things changed.

After Mum died, every cent went on food and bills and things, when Before, Mum took care of most of it, She insisted. So I’d pay the Phone and Internet bills, and any Vet bills, while She bought the food and payed for the rest.

I had assumed that at some point, I would have had a job and not been in such a hole, perhaps I could have sent Mum a share of what I bought in, but it didn’t work out that way.

This year I have decided to be less generous, and focus on what I need. Some things around the house need fixing, My Bathroom is a shocker, My Bed is being held up by phonebooks, and I need lots of new clothes.

So I intend to send people cards, I think I have left it too late though.

Christmas is not what it used to be, I was thinking of giving it a miss this year, but I still put the tree up for Katie and I.

Compared with others, I have a bed and a roof over my head, it’s not perfect, but it’s mine.

Wolfie!

Parting of the ways

I visited my Sister last Saturday, She was alert and was happy that I’d come to see her. We chatted about little things for an hour or so and I held her hand. It’s always been a pleasure to hold hands with my parents or Jan, we were close like that. Her hand was warm.

Due to a stroke a couple of days earlier, she had gone blind. She thought, and hoped that all it was, was a severe migraine, as she’d been having a few beauts in the last month or so, but the doctors felt that she’d been having mild strokes all along.

I was with my neighbour in his renovated garage yesterday, where he sleeps and uses his computer when I got a phonecall from my teary Grand-Niece, April, Who gave me the bad news that Jan had passed on.

I felt sorry for April, as Jan and her had been very close. I had memories of being a child, fearing that one or both of my parents might die, and felt somewhat lucky that I was grown up before I lost Dad, and it was another nine years before I’d lose my Mother.

Dad was in hospital with Cancer, He’d been a big bloke, as strong as an ox, and now skinny and weakened, with catheters and drips hanging into and from him, what the cancer had done to him was utterly awful. I had been in tears going in to see him… which had been difficult as my own health wasn’t the greatest either, It would be eight years before I found out why I felt the way I did.

When Dad passed away, I thought I’d cry, but I didn’t cry much… and I should be, shouldn’t I?

Someone suggested that perhaps I was mourning while Dad was sick, I’d cried it all out then and there was nothing left.

Years later I was dreaming that I was on a grassy hill, by a grave, and Danny Boy was playing, it was so strange that the words spoke to me like they did, it wasn’t a song that I liked all that much and certainly wouldn’t have been playing on my radio as I always had it set to a rock station.

The song, at least in my mind, was sung by a Father to his Son, the Father had died and was in his grave. He was hoping that his Son would go out and prosper in the World, but asked that now and then that his Son thinks of him and pays him a visit.

I saw the whole scene from above, as though it was filmed from a helicopter, it was beautiful, and it was then that I cried my hardest.

2005 was perhaps the worst.

My beautiful Malamute, Benny, had cancer, and I still remember him crying in agony, he couldn’t move anymore, and his cries sounded like “Oh no, Oh no, Oh no” they cut into my like a knife.

I held him as the vet gave him that final needle, I felt absolutely crushed, he was my baby, I cried for the next few weeks.

I’d discovered blood coming from my bottom, and that began my own battle which took the better part of that awful year.

Then in 2006, My Mum passed away, I think it was cancer. She’d lost a lot of weight and was so thin. I wanted her to see a doctor long before this, but she had always refused.

One day she went to have her ears checked at the place where she’d get her hearing aids adjusted, and I waited for her. When her doctor came out, he whispered to me that there was a tumor in her ear and that he was sorry… I didn’t quite catch, or expect that, I tried to get him to repeat himself, but al he said was “I’m Sorry”.

I told Mum, but again, she refused to see a GP.

Eventually I did get her to go, she had x-rays which came back showing something white in her lungs, her heart didn’t look the best either.

I got up very early on that final day, which was unusual.

Mum and I had tea and vegemite on toast, and later that Day we shared a pastie.

She had been laying on the couch a lot, and feeling useless. I knew the feeling after months of chemo, so I didn’t mind her pottering around if she felt that she had the energy for it.

Then she sat down on the couch next to me and watched her afternoon tv shows, I was on the other couch talking to a friend on Secondlife via my laptop.

Mum said “I feel really good” and asked “Do I look good?”.

The afternoon sun shone through her hair, and she did look good, and I told her that she did.

Then we both settled down.

After a few minutes, she told me that she couldn’t breathe, I called the ambulance, but it was much too late.

She died in front of me, I had tried to keep her alive, mucking through what I recalled of CPR, but it seemed that her lungs were full of fluid, there was nothing I could do.

She passed away in my arms, she was so light, it was hard to believe that this was Mum, and dead.

I didn’t cry, what had happened to my was monumental, the person who’d always been there was gone, it was like a huge stone wall was inches from my eyes. I had no real emotion, just a weird frazzled, lost sensation.

I did freak out a little bit, I remember that much, I felt that, although I had tried to save her, that somehow I’d killed her in failing, I felt horrible. I remember telling my sister that “I felt evil” it was the strangest thing.

Once in a while, I did cry a little for her, but not like I thought I should have, perhaps we watch too many movies and think we should behave like the actors on the screen, and perhaps that’s not really true to life at all.

After Jan died, I felt an odd sort of buzzing in my body, and an odd sort of relief that she’d passed. but no sadness, not really… except that another family member had been claimed by cancer, and that I really should have seen her more often in my lifetime.

Months could fly by when I wouldn’t see her, and when I did, it was almost always rushed, Jans life, like her kids, was always scheduled, everything had to be pre-planned and booked in, they never seemed to have any time, it was like that song by Cat Stevens about the boy who told his Dad “we’ll have a good time then” and there never was any time.

It was partially due to my Brother in Law, who was jealous and possessive, I was thinking of this bloke last night, he hated anyone else having fun, he’d rant at me to go out and get some sun when I was a kid, knowing full well that I liked to be inside with my music… when I got a bike and found that I liked it, he took it and hid it, I thought it had been stolen. He made up some excuse that I shouldn’t have left it where I did because someone might have stolen it, and that was a lesson… but he only took it because he was an arsehole, yes, I got it back.

My Nephew had a small trike, which had been given to him by Mum one year, He loved it, he loved it more than the toys his Dad bought him… so that was hidden once.

He did the same to my Niece and Grand-Niece too, Mum had bought an NDS for April, which she enjoyed just a bit too much, so that was hidden.

He hated family, if anyone went to visit, there were snide remarks.

I relented on going to their place at christmas anymore, deciding that staying home with my dog would be much better, so I did.

The next year Mum and Dad decided I was right, so we began going to a Pub for Christmas Lunch instead, the atmosphere was a lot better.

He wanted my Sister all to himself, and what upsets me was that Jan complied with him. I felt disgusted, it was as though the 60′s sexual revolution never happened, She was a 50′s housewife, stuck in the 21st century.

He chased friends away when they got too close too, nobody visited.

Well Andy, you kept Jan away from everyone, Now someone’s taken her from you, Have a pint of your own medicine, mate.

My prediction for you is a long and lonely fate in a nursing home with nobody around you, it’s all you deserve.

Wolfie!