Blancmange

I’ve spent the last few days like a normal person who’s never had cancer and doesn’t suffer from fatigue, and who does normal productive things like painting their child’s bedroom. (Kudos to me).  The colour of paint was chosen months ago (Carnation) but on the spur of the moment, I decided we should add a pale trim colour.

Imagine my delight when the selected delicious colour had an equally delectible name.  Blancmange.

Blancmange.  Roll that around your mouth in like a spoonful of dessert in your French-est accent.  Blohn-mohnge.

I have no idea what exactly Blancmange is, except that the literary playmates of my bookish childhood ate it in the nursery at tea-time.  Usually these teas followed a long day of roaming around, unfettered by parental supervision, solving a smashing mystery or having a splendid adventure.  I was enthralled by the names of unfamiliar dishes like spotted dick and roly poly, treacle pudding or the rather more humble bread and milk. (Someone please tell me that’s not stale bread dunked in milk with sugar spooned over it).  But Blancmange was the most exotic sounding of all the storybook desserts.  In my head it looked like a chocolately brown quivering jelly, with a fluffy snow-white garnish.  Distinctly mountainous.  (Maybe Mont Blanc somehow got confused with Blancmange in my mind).

However the Blancmange paint is a very pale pink, so delicate it is nearly white.  So it’s safe to assume that my childhood imaginings do not resemble the actual dessert. 

I suppose I could google it, but I’ve quite enjoyed the invented dish floating around in my head all these years.  The reality could disappoint.  I prefer the imaginary dessert, plump and glossy, flavoured with endless possibility.

Quotalicious

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else: you are the one who gets burned. ~ Gautama Buddha


Smouldering Heart of the Blues by ecstaticist

Lest we forget

This ANZAC Day, I’d like to remember not only the fallen, but also the returned, and especially those who are broken of spirit.

I want to remember all of those people who marched off to serve their country, and came home with pieces torn out of their souls.

For the horrors they witnessed.  The horrors done to them.  The horrors they committed.  The terrible things made necessary by war, and the terrible unnecessary things condoned in a world gone mad.

I want to remember those who endure the terror and trauma that never really leaves, that seeps and surrounds and informs their days, and their long dark nights.

Lest we forget.

Photograph by Dept of Defence

Knowing things before they happen

This is where it gets tricky.  Knowing things before they happen.

We were out driving in convoy on the weekend, with my parents-in-law following us in their large 4WD.  As we passed a sporting oval, the road was lined with parked cars, leaving one full and one very narrow lane.  I caught myself thinking, they are going to have an accident.  So briefly, it was nearly a physical sensation, not a thought.  Just then my husband made a comment, which distracted me just long enough to put it out of my mind.

Seconds later, we turned into the side street, and the car behind us disappeared from the rear view mirror. 

Yes they’d had the accident.  A very minor one (no one was hurt), but an accident nonetheless.

Which presents me with a quandary.  Should I have attended to the whisper of a sensation and somehow warned the in-laws?  Was that even possible?  Say I had somehow managed within a few seconds to convince my husband to fumble for his phone, to ring his parents, to say something succinct enough to create the conditions to avoid the accident – what then?  I would be a frootloop, right?  (Warning somebody about an event that subsequently does not occur - because of that warning - is not a good way to establish yourself as a credible witness).  What if I’d had the time to warn them and yet it still occurred?  Then I would just be a freak.  And not a helpful one, at that.

Not that it matters now.  There wasn’t time to do anything except note the feeling.  And politely keep my big (presentient) mouth shut after it all came to pass.