Fangtober

I'm inventing my own blogtoberfest topic coz tonight it's ...
True Blood. Season 2, Episode 6.

Those who watch need no words from me.

Those who don't, well, you either like this sort of show or you don't.

Vampires are big at the moment but this show is kinda out there, on its own. I'm a fan of the vampire thing, I have watched many and read more. There's some rubbish out there. I am not a big fan of Twilight, although I saw the movie first and enjoyed it because it was a great holiday flick. But then I tried to read the book and it's just seemed to go on and on and on. And on. Fine if you're a teenager, but it didn't work for me.

For me it will always be Buffy & Angel. And now True Blood joins the ranks. Great TV.

We like sheep ... (Handeltober)

This time of year sets me to thinking about a lovely thing I did a couple of times, a number of years ago. I joined an exceedingly large collection of voices to practice and eventually perform a long and involved piece of celebratory music.

The Radio Community Chest's Combined Church Choirs perform Handel's Messiah at the Sydney Town Hall every year and have done so since 1941. As with most experiences, the journey is almost as memorable as the performances. During the years I participated, we were schooled by a very skilled conductor who taught us how to pronouce words without an Australian accent - for example, most Australians would sing hal-lay-lu-yarr but we were taught to sing something more like har-laieee-lawww-yarrrr.

It is such an amazing thing to sing -  long, involved, full of emotion, an epic musical journey. It has the power to hold me in suspense, make me shiver, make me cry and fill me with great joy. And it makes me stretch out my toes - that's my indicator for music that really connects to me on a deep emotional level. Weird, I know.

Well, how about that! I just went looking for the name of our conductor and found not only that but two short clips taken from an ABC program, Compass. Fly on the Wall Messiah was made in 2004, the year before Clive Pascoe died, sadly whilst undergoing treatment for leukemia. What a character he was, he would rouse on us (rightly so, we were pretty tragic at the start of our rehearsals) but we always seemed to laugh all the way through. He had such a wonderful way of imparting all the things we needed to learn (like pronunciation) in order to carry off this huge performance. And he flew down to Sydney each week from Lismore, where he was a professor at the Southern Cross University. The last year I did this was, I think, 1995 and it was the year they recorded it and put out a CD. Silly me, I never got around to buying a copy. Hope I can track it down one day.

Funnily enough, I was in the city on Monday and I walked right past St Stephen's church, thinking to myself, it must nearly be time for Messiah rehearsals to start - and start they did that night! I was considering doing it again this year but I didn't get organised - oh well, maybe next year. But I'll head off to see the performance in December.
Hallelujah!

Musings from a casserole

Cooked a lovely new dish last night, Lamb and green bean casserole. It has Greek influence, with cinnamon and fetta featuring in the dish. It's from this book, Apples for Jam:

We bought it the weekend my country brother visited, along with another one of her books, Venezia, a gorgeous cookbook, with its gold edged pages and black velvet place keeper. Splendiferous. It reminds me of our honeymoon there, last century (he he!) - two of our favourite dishes whilst in Venice are included: Squid Ink Linguine (me) and liver and onions (UV). UV is going to cook it for himself though, as I am no great fan of liver and in fact, offal is off my food radar (although I have to admit, I cooked Beef Wellington once, making the pate from scratch. So I have to qualify the previous statement: I will eat pate but that's about it when it comes to offal.)
It must have been a night for casseroles because Dad rang to report his best ever Uncle Charlie's Chicken. He felt this was in no small way related to the fact that he had cooked it in the french oven as opposed to an open baking dish. I'd showed him this method when he was down staying last week. Juicier and much more tasty figured greatly in his description of the meal so I'd say that's a resounding tick for cooking with the french oven.

UV and I ate our lamb and green bean dish while watching Merlin, the new offering featuring one of my faves, Tony Head. He's a swaggering Uther, very king-like and as always, brings something solid to the show. Even though it is a teenager's show, I like the way they are handling the story, the actors are good and they are keeping it fresh - plus the dragon alone would keep me watching (I happen to hold dragons in high regard).

Which in a round about way reminds me of my dream last night - Giles, or perhaps it was ASH himself, featured (how nice! - haven't had him in a dream before). I think I asked him about asking for someone's (?) approval. He said the person you should ask is yourself. This is not quite right but the gist. Just read a blog post that kind of echoes this thought -

The only thing we are going to be asked at the precious moment is why didn't you become you?
Elie Wiesel

Working on it ....

Great yarns

There's been some good ones of late. The revival in interest of that amazing story from the 70', A Lion called Christian, all the more interesting to me because I've had the original book since it came out in 1972. Nan brought this back for us from London, after one of her trips. I've always loved this tale of two Aussies in London, buying a lion from Harrods and eventually returning this 5th generation in captivity lion to the wild. Its reappearance on youtube had me spellbound, particularly as I hadn't seen any of the reunion footage. Then a program on tellie the other night retold the story in its entirety. I checked out the Born Free website and found that they seem to be involved with lots of rescue work. Good stuff.

Loving Who do you think you are? at the moment. So many good stories - particularly enjoyed the Colin Jackson episode. He was so enthusiastic and interested in all the history he learned and the people he encountered. The show is inspiring me to pick up again with family history research. Scotland, Devon, London and Ireland, among other spots, here I come (one day!)

And to stories fictional ... I watched an episode of Star Trek Enterprise the other day that was done really well. Carbon Creek has T'Pol telling the story of the Vulcans first encounter with humans in the 50's. Is it a family story or is it perhaps T'Pol's own story? As she says at the end, well, you asked for a story ... a great episode from the Star Trek franchise that works the best for me.