Eiffel Tower

Gustave Eiffel's iconic tower is perhaps one of the most recognised buildings in the world. Certainly a potent symbol of Paris, it inspires longing and memory in many of us.

And she looks great photographed from any angle. From afar

Or up close and personal. 

I'm so looking forward to seeing her again this year. 

Dreaming of France, a great Monday meme from Paulita at An Accidental Blog

Audrey

Last week we saw lots of special birds at Lake Macquarie. This week we just have one special bird. Audrey.

We first met Audrey back in 2001 when we spent a year living in a house right on the waterfront. It was a great year in many ways, and it was really when my interest in birds started. At one stage we noticed that there seemed to a pelican who looked injured. We rang the local wildlife rescue people to let them know, and they said "Oh Audrey? She's fine."

Twelve years later Audrey is still going fine. It's always such a thrill to see her.

Her distinctive profile is easy to spot when out for a walk

Then we found a pelican preening out the front of our holiday accommodation. I was so excited with the reflection on an idyllic calm morning, that I only realised it was Audrey when I looked at the photos later. 

Audrey's a bit like Nemo with her Lucky Wing

To me it looks like trimming your nails with garden shears

She does a great job though

She's an attractive gal 

Swimming away all preened and looking good

She groomed in the same spot a few times while we were there. It was great to see her up close.

The image quality improves markedly when you click on a photo and look at it with the lightbox.

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

A Monster Calls

I must be one of the last people on earth to read this book. It was certainly one of the big books of 2011/2012. I'd seen the striking cover around and about a lot. I'd seen many, many bloggers reading it. People on Goodreads reading it. And it won awards. Lots of awards. Big awards too. The Carnegie Medal. The Kate Greenaway Prize. The British Children's Book of the Year Award. The Red House Children's Book Award.

Still, I didn't really know anything much about the book. I hadn't read Patrick Ness before but had at least seen his books in the shops, and had never even heard of Siobhan Dowd. I was glad to take advantage of a little free time to get to a book from the TBR. I think A Monster Calls is a good book to go into with as little knowledge as possible. So if you haven't read it yet, and are inclined to, don't read much further, and go find yourself a copy.

A Monster Calls gets off to an electrifying start.

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.

Conor was awake when it came.    

He'd had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare. The one he'd been having a lot lately. The one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. The one with the hands slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on. The one that always ended with-

A Monster Calls is the moving story of 13 year old Conor O'Malley, bullied at school, lonely, his Dad has moved to America and started a new family, and his mother is battling a serious illness. Is his visiting monster there to help or to hurt Conor? The monster begins to tell Conor three stories in a rather Dickensian A Christmas Carol kind of way.

The Second Tale

 One hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever towards the ground. Villages grew into towns, towns into cities. And people began to live on the earth rather than within it.

From Jim Kay's excellent website

Award winning author Patrick Ness was asked to write A Monster Calls based on an idea by Siobhan Dowd. Sadly Siobhan wasn't able to write the story herself as she died from breast cancer at a mere 47 in 2007.

Stunning illustrations by Jim Kay really help build the story, and it's fitting that he won the Kate Greenaway Medal for them. The back flyleaf tells us Jim Kay used everything "from beetles to breadboards to create interesting marks and textures". The Guardian had an interesting piece on how Patrick Ness and Jim Kay worked on the book together, but without ever meeting. 

I read much of this book sitting as a passenger in a car (with Eurovision blaring as ever), still I was transported into Conor's world, and cried heartily at the end. A tribute to the powerful storytelling and illustrative powers of Patrick Ness and Jim Kay. 

Wondrous Words Wednesday 15/5/13

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 are from my recent reading of Memoirs of a Suburban Girl. 

1. Tappets (Noun)

On your way to Surfers, the yellow Ford's tappets start tap, tap, tapping and the old girl starts sounding very sick and tired, so SB stops at a wrecking yard in a ten-house town to fish through a pile of car parts.

A tappet is a projection which imparts a linear motion to some other component within a mechanism. Wiki

A lever or projecting arm that moves or is moved by contact with another part, usually to transmit motion, as between a driving mechanism and a valve. The free dictionary. 

Picture source

I think that this would now constitute the maximum amount of time that I've ever spent wondering about an engine part.

2. Stobie pole (Noun)

And then when the older sister steered the old Holden around a sharp bend, it started to shimmy on the loose rocky balls, and she was finding it really hard to keep control, to the left, to the right, to the left, and she decided to brake heavily because she wanted to stop the car quickly but, oh, no, she was too young to know not to slam the brakes on a dirt road, and next you were all in a spin, and the car did a full circle, slid off the road into clumps of spiky grass, narrowly missed a Stobie pole, crashed through a wire fence, flipped on its side, and then over again until it landed upside down and came to a stop.

A Stobie pole is a power line pole made of two steel joists held apart by a slab of concrete in the middle. It was invented by Adelaide Electricity Supply Company design engineer James Cyril Stobie. Wiki

Picture source

I've been to Adelaide a few times but must admit to not noticing that their power poles were any different to ours. 

French Food Safari

In preparation for our own French Food Safari next month we've been revisiting the captivating SBS French Food Safari on DVD. The fabulous Maeve O'Meara and wonderful chef Guillaume Brahimi lead us on an amazing tour of France via their sensational foods. We visit Paris and some regional areas over the 9 enchanting episodes. A range of Australian chefs demonstrate classic French recipes such as bouillabaisse, steak tartare and raspberry souffle between the French stories.

The vision of course combines extraordinary Parisian vistas with the incredible array of French foods. So many shots are mouthwatering. They visit many places I'd love to go, where I will go- Ble Sucre, Le Comptoir, Pierre Herme. They hang out with masters like Paul Bocuse and Guy Savoy. Take a peek here:

Along the way we learn lots of cool stuff too.

Escoffier invented the military style system of chef hierarchy in 19th century. Chef de cuisine, sous chef, chef de partie, commis chef.

Escoffier also told us of the 3 secrets of French cooking- butter, butter and butter.

Bistro comes from the Russian word Bistra- which means hurry.

Alain Ducasse has 19 michelin stars- more than anyone else in history.

A baker, like the doctor, is someone we trust.

The Croquembuche developed by Carenne- originally in the shape of a fez, the conical shape developing later.

The French meal has been recognised by the United Nations on the World Intangible Heritage list.

The wood fired oven at Poilane has never gone out since it was first lit in the 1930s!

Finally I learnt the secret that Maeve's fabulous, distinctive tops are from Custo Barcelona.

Dreaming of France, a great Monday meme from Paulita at An Accidental Blog

Memoirs of a Suburban Girl

Memoirs of a Suburban Girl isn't my typical reading fare. But I'd long remembered the amazing review from Lisa at ANZ Litlovers a little while ago. Can it really have been back in 2011? Eeep. And I'd harboured a lingering desire to read it. 

Recently I was at my library stocking up on a completely unrealistic number of books to take on a short week away- my travel reading eyes are always so much bigger than my reading stomach. But I was determined to read it before it was due back and it's such a slim little volume (a mere 158 pages) I figured I could knock it over in a few days. That turned out to be quite wrong. It actually took me a few weeks. It's a dense read despite the brevity, and I struggled a bit with the somewhat jarring use of second person plural, but I'm really glad to have finally read it. 

Memoirs of a Suburban Girl is a novel not a memoir, still it's a harrowing read. Our unnamed Suburban Girl is a 17 year old living in suburban Adelaide in 1979 when she meets Spunky Boy, SB. The relationship quickly turns violent and nasty, and yet she is enmeshed, trapped with her now Shitty Boyfriend. 

The language and soundtrack is like a flashback to my own teenage experiences. 

1979
The week before you meet him, you race into the disco full of excitement, 'Born to be Alive' pumping out on the dance floor, darkness punctuated by strobe lighting and punters packed in like sardines. 

Thankfully that's where any similarities end though. Suburban Girl is all too soon living with SB, working to support him, cooking his meals, and being beaten and abused by him in a myriad number of ways on a daily basis. She soon works out that he is a pathological liar and his past and present is a tangled web of lies.

So you battle on. You are not stronger than him physically but inside you have all sorts of plans and thoughts and ways to kill him off. You feel like damaged goods- a dented can of corn at the supermarket, a bag with a ripped corner and the rice is starting to spill out. You keep a big brick wall around a special part of yourself and none gets access to it, and that damaged part of yourself that lies behind the wall, is your secret, your shame, your craziness, and your strength to keep going.

All the time while reading I was hoping that this was indeed a true work of fiction, but it does ring awfully true. Turns out it is indeed based on Deb Kandelaars' life experiences, Wakefield Press released it in 2011 to coincide with White Ribbon Day, a campaign to end violence against women. Memoirs of a Suburban Girl is much more than an issue based story though, it's a great read for its own sake.

The Birds of Lake Macquarie 2

On my recent trip to Lake Macquarie we of course saw lots of fabulous birds.

Pelicans of course. Pelecanus conspicillatus. I love the sight of such massive birds sitting on street lights.

They don't seem to think that they look preposterous...

even though they do.

It helps to take a photographer on a walk too

There were lots of herons and egrets about. It was only going through the photos that I realised we had seen two different egrets! All looking spiffy in their breeding plumage. 

Little Egret. Egretta garzetta.

Great Egret. Ardea alba

Great Egret. Ardea alba

We saw many white faced herons too. Egretta novaehollandaie

I think the Noisy Miners could see themselves in the reflection!
They perched themselves on the car door every day
and scrabbled about on the roof.
They've never done that before

I've show you some birds at Lake Macquarie before.

Today is World Migratory Bird Day, an important day to think about ecological impacts on the estimated 50 billion birds that set off on their own extraordinary journeys. 

The image quality improves markedly when you click on a photo and look at it with the lightbox. 

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