Tag Archives: Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens

The THREAD: October 2023

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So this THREAD is late, I know. It also doesn’t include pictures.

But I have a VERY GOOD REASON (and yes, that absolutely required shouty caps). This time last week, I had everything set in my mind about what I would write about in relation to October (because at that point it had shaped up to be a pretty good month, all things considered). But at precisely this time last week — as in 5:13pm last Saturday — I boarded a Manly Fast Ferry and set off for Circular Quay with The Bloke and one of his clients, who had asked us to keep that particular night free.

Because this person is not only a client, but is also one of The Bloke’s great surfing mates (specifically) and an all round good person (generally), we did as requested and made no plans, thinking we were heading out to dinner. But no — he was waaaaaaay more generous than that.

HE TOOK US TO SEE SIR PAUL McCARTNEY IN CONCERT.

And as a result of that amazing and completely unexpected experience, my tiny mind was blown and I failed to put fingers to keys because I was unsure how to adequately describe what had happened. To do so, you see, I need to rewind several months…which I will do when I start the October THREAD proper…which is NOW!

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

I have been thinking, since that extraordinary concert last week, about manifestation and serendipity. As regular readers of the THREAD will know, in June this year in our entire household was in the throes of Taylor Swift Ticket Acquisition Fever. It was an extremely serious preoccupation, and one which ended very fortunately for us, but not without considerable expense. Which is why, when July rolled around and Paul McCartney tickets went on sale (also at considerable expense), I was sorely tempted to purchase some but held off. I do recall saying, however — and Marvel Girl can attest to this — “If I am meant to see Paul McCartney in concert, the universe will provide. Imagine seeing a real live Beatle, though…that would be really something.” And not long after that, life continued and I promptly forgot about the tickets I had opted not to buy.

Until…one week out from the Paul McCartney concert — and with reports flowing in of how great the shows had been in Perth and Adelaide and Melbourne — I began feeling a little wistful. I even logged on to see whether there were any seats available for the Sydney shows. Still not making the connection regarding dates, I asked The Bloke to call his client to find out what we could bring for dinner…and found out it was not dinner at all. “I’m taking you to see Paul McCartney,” he said. “Can you believe we’re going to see a real live Beatle?”.

They were his EXACT WORDS — I kid you not. The Bloke had the call on speaker, so by this point my jaw was on the floor, as was Marvel Girl’s when I told her what had been said (followed by a short silence, and a firm affirmation that I had completely restored her belief in manifestation). Needless to say, I absolutely loved the concert and remain ever so grateful to The Bloke’s client for taking us along. Paul McCartney is 81 years old but played for over three hours, and got better and better as he went along. It was a once in a lifetime experience, capped off by us making actual eye contact with the man himself as his tour bus left the venue, driving away from the crowds and coming directly towards where we were walking instead, with the four of us waving to a real live Beatle who was waving right back.

Magical doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Anyhoo…I’ll try to stop fangirling now and get on to what I have been hearing, which — unsurprisingly — has been a lot of Beatles tunes, Wings tracks and parts of the Get Back movie Peter Jackson so brilliantly made. I can’t go past this section without including a final anecdote relating to the Paul McCartney concert, which relates to one of the encore pieces he played: I’ve Got a Feeling. During the song, John Lennon was on the big screen singing his part (lifted straight from the famous rooftop performance that ended up being the last time the Beatles played together), and Sir Paul was on the stage in front of him singing his part. For any Beatles fan — or music fan for that matter — it was spinetingling stuff, the kind of moment that brings genuine tears to your eyes. I still can’t quite believe I witnessed it, but am ever so grateful I did.

I’m going to move onto reading, because otherwise this entire post will end up being about last Saturday night, and we have a whole month to review. I have read a couple of great books this month, but not before I finished Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens — I know I mentioned in the July THREAD that it had won the Miles Franklin award, but please get your hands on a copy and discover how great Shankari Chandran is. I love her writing — almost as much as I love Maggie O’Farrell’s writing, and I also had the great pleasure of reading Hamnet this month. I know it’s not new, but it was novel I fell straight into and then…well, several hours had past and I was turning the final pages.

There was one passage in Hamnet which struck a chord with me at a very deep level, describing Hamnet’s mother Agnes:

She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare.

Agnes is, of course, the wife of William Shakespeare, who wrote the play Hamlet one year after the death of his son, Hamnet. It’s a play that holds a special place in my heart, having seen it performed for the first time on the day my grandfather passed away. We never really let go of the ones we love, whether it be casting out our fishing lines while they are alive, or casting our memories back when they have left us.

Ahhhh…moving on to eating, life-sustaining activity that it is. At the end of the school holidays (mid-October) I took my dear mum to a concert at the Sydney Opera House (more about that later), and before the show we dined — and I do mean dined, because it was fancy — at Aria. We began with a couple of sparkling glasses of French champagne, then proceeded to enjoy our selections from the pre-theatre menu, which included multiple amuse bouche offerings from the chef (Matt Moran is a genius) and even an palate cleansing pre-dessert. I had never eaten at Aria before, though have had the pleasure of dining at Benelong (inside the smallest Opera House sail) multiple times. I have to say I enjoyed the menu at Aria more — though perhaps that was because it was entirely new to me, or because we had a view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House (instead of sitting in it), or because I was having a truly extravagant meal with my wonderful and ever-so-deserving mother. OK: it was probaby a combination of all three, but I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a dinner out so much.

And now onto admiring, in which (be warned!) I will wax lyrical about yet another concert I went to — this time the one I attended with my mother. We were fortunate to see violinist Joshua Bell perform with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in the newly renovated Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.

Bell is famous for performing at an extremely high level, having made the transition from child prodigy to virtuoso violinist many years ago. Yes, he plays a Stradivarius rumoured to be worth as much as $14million (USD), but his technical prowess and musicality cannot be attributed simply to the quality of his instrument. Now aged 55, Bell has been practicing and perfecting his craft for decades. He is renowned the world over for the purity of his tone, which was described by one reviewer of the concert I attended as ‘silvery’, which almost describes what I felt when I heard Bell play.

It was like listening to a moonbeam.

Silvery, yes – but also bright and clear and radiant and possessed with profoundly otherworldly beauty. As I sat, enthralled, listening to the notes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor spill seemingly effortlessly from Bell’s instrument, I felt tears forming in my eyes. It was another one of those unforgettable, breathtaking experiences, and I was beyond grateful to share it with my mother, who promptly declared it the best concert she had ever been to. I thought she was just saying that to be nice, but she then informed me the best concert she had been to before that was seeing Victoria de los Angeles at the Sydney Town Hall before I was born, so…I suspect she was being truthful?!

And just as aside, did you know that William Shakespeare invented the word moonbeam? That’s also true.

So now we come, finally to doing. I think it’s fair to say that for much of the month, I have relishing the tingling highs that have come with seeing some truly fabulous performances, eating some delicious meals and reading some brilliant books, and then nursing myself through the crashing lows that inevitably follow those experiences. For me, being able to bear witness to cultural greatness is one of the great privileges of being alive, and this month I’ve been beyond blessed — so much so that I even forgot to mention in the reading section above that I also devoured the latest offering from my literary hero, Trent Dalton, which is called Lola in the Mirror. Reading that book is one of the best things I did during October, along with watching both seasons of The Bear on Disney+, which is a complete tour de force. I defy anyone to watch that show and not be viscerally affected.

So that brings me to the end of the October THREAD, knowing that it has been a rollercoaster month of highs and lows, punctuated by some spectactular perfomances: on the stage, the dining table, the page and the screen. It is the sort of month that has made me feel truly alive, and glad to be alive, and wanting to share that feeling with everyone I encounter — but with my family most of all.

I hope October was a good month for you, too. I wonder what November will bring us?!

Mind yourselves,

BJx

PS I’m just gonna leave this here…because who doesn’t want to sing along to Hey Jude with a real live Beatle and 50,000 of your new best friends?

The THREAD: July 2023

Posted on by • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, First World Problems, movies, music, Musings, Travel and Trips, Trips and Travels, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Another month has rolled around, and with it winter school holidays and both my kids’ birthdays. I know they’re getting older (obviously), but I find it interesting that they are now beginning to comment on how quickly time flies by. When they were little, they felt like eons or entire geologic eras passed between one birthday and the next, but now they are experiencing the passage of time in a different, far more adult, way.

Naturally, having teenaged children has the tendency to make me feel considerably older, too. But the thing that brought me up short recently was a conversation I had with a friend while out of a walk in the glorious winter sunshine, and she asked me about holidaying in Hawaii, as she’d never been. I feel very fortunate to have winged my way between Sydney and Honolulu quite a few times during the course of my life, but admit to being aghast when I realised my first Hawaiian vacation took place forty years ago when I was seven years old.

Gulp.

So let’s move on — life may be short, but it’s still for the living. Let’s dive in to the July 2023 THREAD.

THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO

I’ve been thinking, as I would imagine many people have, about Sinéad O’Connor. While she was best known for Nothing Compares 2 U, as news of her untimely death at the age of 56 has spread around the world, the song I have found myself listening to is I Am Stretched on Your Grave. Based on a translation of an anonymously written 17th century Irish poem, Táim sínte ar do thuama, she recorded the lyrics over the top of a drum beat with very little instrumental accompaniment (save for some fiddle at the end of the piece). You can see her performing it live here, if you’d like — I suspect that is how she would like us to remember her: powerful, passionate, with superb and subtle control of her instrument.

Despite living in the Antipodes, I feel like my generation grew up with a succession of Irish singers who provided the soundtrack to our formative years. Bono is the most obvious of these, and thankfully he is still with us. But I am also thinking specifically of Dolores O’Riordan now, sadly, of Sinéad O’Connor. Knowing that both of these awesome talents have left us saddens me more deeply than I expected it to. I’m also feeling a little downhearted that a whole bunch of kids are probably only discovering today what a incredible talent Sinéad O’Connor was — I hope they also find out how damn brave she was, too.

Rather than dwelling on sadness, however, it’s best that I move onto hearing. Strangely enough, I’ve been listening to another Irish voice, that of Cillian Murphy, who is probably my favourite actor of all time. I listened to a great interview he did with Marc Maron, whose WTF podcast is one I find myself dipping into from time to time with great enjoyment. I have not yet seen Murphy in Oppenheimer, because I want to see it (if possible, should the scheduling stars and planets align) in 70mm as Christopher Nolan intended it to be viewed.

I suspect Oppenheimer is going to be among the most important films of the decade, if not the century, and by all accounts Murphy delivers a truly impressive performance, along with a stellar supporting cast. What is so lovely about Maron’s interview with Murphy, however, is that ranges all over the place — from the various guitars they own, to what it’s like to live in Ireland, to Murphy’s upbringing — and intersperses some heavier material (primarily about the film) with funny anecdotes, including one about Marc Maron meeting Cillian Murphy at an airport and failing to recognise Christopher Nolan, who was sitting right beside him. All in all, it’s an entertaining podcast and I’m looking forward to seeing Oppenheimer as soon as possible.

I have been reading a lot more than usual lately, because school holidays have provided me with the time and space to do so. I have read a couple of thrillers/mysteries, such as Michael Robotham’s Lying Beside You and Sarah Penner’s The Lost Apothecary, and also re-read Raymond E Feist’s fantasy epic The Magician.

More recently, I picked up a copy of Shankari Chandran’s Song of the Sun God at Townsville airport and decided to buy it because the story begins in Ceylon in 1946. After reading The Seven Moons of Mali Almeida, I have been interested in reading other novels set in Sri Lanka, and this multi-generational family saga was compelling and beautifully written despite detailing the horrors of civil war and the challenges of migration. This book felt very alive to me, full of small but significant details that enriched the action. Specific ingredients are added in scenes where food is being prepared, for example, and the ordinariness of these actions only highlights the massive upheaval the family members are dealing with: physical violence, social dislocation, philosophical and religious disputes. Chandran’s descriptions are brief but evocative, deftly weaving together history and emotion and relationships:

The map stretched, inviting and blue across the wall. The world was such a vast place, surely ther ewas somewhere they could go: somewhere they would be safe from riots and growing rage.

I was delighed to learn that this week Shankari Chandran has won the Miles Franklin award for her latest novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens. I know, having read Song of the Sun God, that the seemingly saccharine title will hide a book of depth that is unafraid to broach difficult topics, and am looking forward to reading it.

The other book I read and loved during the past month was Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra, which is a retelling of the Greek tragedy from the perspective of one of the greatest figures of the Ancient World. The novel gains a sense of immediacy and accessibility from being written in the present tense: not only do we witness what is happening to Clytemnestra as it occurs, but we are also privy to her thoughts and feelings in those same moments. She becomes far more relateable, and as a result her quest for vengeance seems almost reasonable — even though she takes the lives of those who have betrayed her in brutal fashion. Clytemnestra was a magnifiently drawn character and the novel was a great read.

On to a different type of consumption now: eating. Oh boy…there are two parts to this section of the THREAD this month. First off, there’s the part where we went away on holidays and all the (delicious, amazing, high end restaurant quality) meals were included, so for a week I ate incredibly well but didn’t actually feel hungry again until I got home, so I probably ate too much. OK, let’s be clear. I know I ate too much. But the most extraordinary thing about that holiday was I didn’t have to plan or shop for or cook a meal for an entire week so it was totally WORTH IT!

Now that we’re home, I’m onto the second part. I’ve been working on providing the family with simple, tasty food. It might not be a fancy ceviche, or a differently themed cuisine each lunch time, or martinis by the infinity pool, but at least I’ve created some headspace to get back into eating well and as cleanly as possible. Tonight’s dinner? Swedish meatballs on cauliflower puree with broccoli. Last night? Pesto chicken with tomato and feta risoni and green beans. Tomorrow night? No flipping idea…that is tomorrow’s problem!

Speaking of problems (and freely acknowledging that most of mine are of the First World variety), you may recall a couple of months ago I finally finished watching The Americans. Working out what to follow such a show with was not easy — but I finally settled upon Schitt’s Creek as a palette cleanser, and that hilarious and beautifully executed sitcom well and truly did the trick. Various parts of Rose family parlance have subsequently entered our own family lexicon, and I imagine they will stay there for quite some time.

Since then, I’ve been admiring a few things on the small screen, including Shantaram on Apple+. I was initially hesitant to watch Shantaram, because I was not sure I would be convinced by Charlie Hunnam’s attempt at an Australian accent (and now, having watched it, I would give his efforts a solid B minus). I read Shantaram years ago, but not so recently that I could recall it in vivid detail. The storyline is compelling, not least because it’s based on the author’s real life (and crimes). The slums of Bombay in the 1980s are brilliantly brought to life — even if they were actually filmed in Thailand — though I was not particularly satisfied with the ending.

I then watched The Essex Serpent, starring Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes, also on Apple+. The Essex Serpent is a period drama with moody visuals and interesting themes (think: science vs religion, women vs the patriarchy, rich vs poor). Both leads were eminently watchable (as always), the Essex coastline was suitably mysterious, and the hysteria generated by the “serpent” believable. I really loved Clémence Poésy as Stella Ransome, the ailing wife of the local vicar, Will Ransome (played by Hiddleston). Strangely enough, however, the ending of this show did not satisfy me either — it felt a little bit too neat. Humpf.

Anyway, that brings me finally to doing, and to our family holiday to the Great Barrier Reef. Despite dramas with planes on the way to and from Queensland (which included missing pilots, missed connections, an unexpected overnight stay in Brisbane on our way home and much gritting of teeth along the way), the vacation itself was spectacular and we were blessed with fine weather, even if it was a little windy at times.

In addition to the incredible food (which I mentioned above) we met some great people, including a lovely family from Switzerland who are currently living in Adelaide for a year. We also had some fantastic experiences: snokelling, hiking, sailing, paddle boarding, kayaking, and puttering around in dighies. One highlight of the trip was feeding fishy kitchen scraps to reef sharks off the resort’s jetty, another was watching glorious sunsets over the sea (which for this Eastcoast dweller is always a bonus). And as a final bonus, we saw some whales from the helicopter when we were transferring back to the mainland.

Anyway, that’s a wrap on the July THREAD.

I’m off to a themed trivia night I’ve been roped into and (no pun intended) have to get into my cow girl costume…fingers crossed we come home with a prize!

Until next time, mind yourselves.

BJx