December, 2024
The Richness of Life
I met a new wombat on my afternoon walk yesterday. She glanced at the prickle bushes on either side of the track, decided that ‘possible human threat’ was better than ‘definite puncture by thorns’ so decided to walk with me for a while.
Thunder muttered further down the valley. It was hot, humid, and the wombat had evidently decided to do something about it. She scrambled down a path to the creek, waded out to a comfy, sandy spot and just stood there, in water up to her tummy.
Our creek is cold. Even on the never-forgotten day when the thermometer said it was 56° C and humans and trees wilted, the creek felt like it came from a semi-thawed glacier.
Five minutes was enough for the wombat. She padded out and began grazing with a cold, wet fur to negate the heat rising from the ground. It must be uncomfortable for a short-legged animal to graze in a heatwave with a tummy so close to the ground.
Never underestimate a wombat’s ingenuity. These summer holidays will see the annual ‘we can defeat the wombat’ project by others in my family.
It began when a wombat enlarged her burrow under one of the roads up to the house. Worried that the burrow might collapse if a truck or tractor drove over it, the blokes in the family blocked up the burrow with a large rock. (There’s another entrance to it about 10 metres away, so no danger of suffocating the wombat.)
Within two days the burrow entrance had been expanded around the rock.
This time the tractor brought a boulder. Same result – a vastly bigger entrance with a rock and boulder in the middle of it.
The battle has continued for about six years now. The wombat is winning. Wombats always win. Half the road is now taken up by a massive burrow entrance. All it lacks is a sign saying:
‘If you had left me alone in the first place we might have coexisted.
Yours sincerely,
Wombat.’
Though probably it wouldn’t have been so polite.
Talking to the Animals
Humanity is probably lucky we don’t speak bird or animal, even if they’ve learned to understand us. Imagine an annual report card from your cat: ‘Often tardy in meal delivery. Frequently noisy during my naps. Demands to have the best seat on the sofa. Conclusion: Must Do Better.’
Every time we walked down a road in the heat, the birds perched on some breezy trees or ledge would be yelling, ‘Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!’. They’d probably be ruder for anyone cutting down a tree or laying concrete. If birds could talk we’d go through life with a chorus of ‘Vandal! Fool! Get out of here!’ Dogs obviously regard us as truly weird, sitting doing nothing except moving fingers on a keyboard instead of throwing sticks, crunching rope toys or finding a creek to splash in.
Humanity would possibly have died of humiliation long ago.
Books
Dear Reader,
This year I’m throwing subtlety out the door – and into the yard, where a wombat will probably huff in complaint. Please buy one of my books for Christmas. Or two. Or even three. As physical bookshops become an endangered species, people passing don’t glance in the window to see interesting new titles that lure them in. Book sales across the board are dropping by about a third a year, though every year e-book sales are climbing. I’ve discovered that few people under 40 want a physical book. Books are heaving, and if you need to move house every few years, lugging them becomes a major task.
I adore paper books, my subconscious trained by decades of holding them with pleasure and escapism. But these days the only paper books I buy are ones from my favourite authors, that I know I will want to read over and over again. ‘Read one time and forget’ books are loaded onto my phone.
Books for Christmas Out Now
If you are feeling generous...
Diary of a Wombat
Ages: 3+
Will be enjoyed by anyone from three to a-hundred-and-three.
Wombat Goes to School
Ages: 3+
Wombat Goes to School is the perfect gift for next year’s ‘just beginning school’ kids.
Ages: 9+
Tigg and the Bandicoot Ranger is a ‘mostly adventure’ book with a large dose of history added about the ‘Long Walk’ from Robe, South Australia to the Victorian goldfields, and about Chinese immigrants in Australia in the mid-1850s. It’s for ten and upwards, being released this week.
Secret Sparrow
Ages: 12+
Secret Sparrow is adventure too, set in World War I.
The Great Gallipoli Escape
Ages: 10+
The Great Gallipoli Escape is pitched at boys, but as many adults seem to be reading it as kids, as it’s the only reconstruction of the almost-impossible task of moving tens of thousands of soldiers over three nights, from trenches that could be only a few yards from the enemy.
A Waltz for Matilda
Ages: 10+
A Waltz for Matilda is the book most female readers fall in love with, leading them to the next eight in the series. Every few weeks someone emails to say they’ve named their daughter after Matilda O’Halloran in the book. It’s a gentle bush saga, covering a century, and perfect summer reading.
Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies
Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies is the first of four books, with a plot that slowly unfolds till in book four you finally realise who Miss Lily really is, and what her lifetime’s work and love has been.
Matilda and Miss Lily were supposed to be ‘young adult’ books, but most readers, or at least the ones who email me, are definitely ‘older adults’.
The Angel of Waterloo
Becoming Mrs Mulberry
The Angel of Waterloo, Becoming Mrs Mulberry, and The Sea Captain’s Wife (see below) were written for adults, and the one I’m just finishing will be too.
The latest, The Sea Captain’s Wife, was first written when I was fourteen as an indignant response to Golding’s brilliant Lord of the Flies, where stranded boys become savages.
Mine is about an island where castaways have learned that the best way to survive is by helping others to have the most pleasurable life possible, from food to music to sex. (It is for adults.) Mair McCrae walks along the shore looking for a ‘beachie’, a sailor washed up by the sea to claim as a husband. But the man she finds is not a sailor, but the heir to a shipping company. Instead of staying on the island he takes Mair back to his family in Australia where – possibly – someone is quietly removing heirs to the company.
I hope you find the book impossible to put down, and also the perfect escape for summer reading.
Thank you a million times if you do buy one of my books as a Christmas gift, but if cash is short, as it almost certainly is, they’re in most libraries too, where you’ll find hundreds of authors’ irresistible books. When it comes to book borrowing, always give in to temptation.
Books Coming Soon
Awards
This year’s awards are at jackiefrench.com, and I’m deeply grateful to all judges, and everyone who contributes to Australia’s richness of literary awards.
The Summer Garden
Our garden is slightly wonky this year: everything except the tomatoes is ripening or
blossoming about a fortnight early. The tomatoes might behave better if I got round to
feeding them. Note to self: do it late this afternoon, when it cools down.
December is not the time to build an outdoor pizza oven or pave a courtyard. Leave that
to autumn, when it’s a joy to spend all day outside. Hopefully most summer veg, like
corn, beans, lettuce, zucchini et al. are already in. I like to treat myself to something new
each year. This year it’s native Atherton raspberries, which don’t need pruning and have
been fruit every day for the past three months with no sign or stopping. They are not
quite as luscious as European ones, but still delicious, and the ‘no work’ aspect is good
too.
I love December gardens. The roses are still in their spring bloom; the ‘almost feral’ gold
and red gladdies are blooming, the apricots are sweet and fragrant and a luxury, as
apricots don’t respond well to cold storage and travelling. Any supermarket apricot will
be floury and tasteless, just like how you’ll never be able to buy the best of the white
peaches, because they bruise as soon as you look at them.
One of my favourite memories of my grandmother is watching her eat an enormous
white-fleshed peach, the juice dripping down as she bent over it. It was the first peach
she had truly adored since she’d been a child, when almost everyone had backyard fruit
trees.
The white-fleshed peaches make the most delicious bellini: freeze a few whole
peaches, then peel them, slice off the frozen flesh, bung it in a bender, then fill
champagne glasses with the slush to about a third full. Fill with chilled champagne.
There is no drink quite as wonderful.
In other words, December is a time to enjoy your garden instead of sweating in it. Just
make sure you keep up successive plantings – beans and corn in particular – and that
the garden doesn’t quite disappear under the weeds. Mulch thickly.
Harvest: new potatoes planted in August; Tom Thumb tomatoes, peas, silverbeet, baby
carrots, lettuce, tiny beetroot, celery tops, zucchini in warm areas, dandelions, bush
pumpkins in warm areas or where they live have been started in pots; asparagus and
artichokes in cool areas.
Fruit: cherries, plums, peaches, apricots, early apples, nectarines, passionfruit, gooseberries, cape gooseberries, Valencia oranges left on the tree, lemons, strawberries, raspberries, Atherton raspberries, blueberries, loganberries, avocados, lillypillies, figs, red or green finger limes, otherwise known as ‘vegan caviar’ and delicious added to cold drinks so their tiny bubbles burst in your mouth, or as a
topping for smoked salmon, or added to fruit salad.
If you’re going away on holidays place containers of water, topped with oil, under ripe fruit trees to catch fallen fruit and stop the spread of fruit fly. Fill bottles with water and upend them in the soil to keep your young plants damp, and mulch heavily to keep moisture in.
Many pests – not just fruit fly – are attracted by the scent of overripe fruit, so keep
harvesting: pick everything as soon as it’s ripe, or a bit before. Food for the fruit fly or
codling moth fall earlier. Never leave fallen fruit on the ground: call in the geese or
chooks or do it yourself. Use fruit fly nets as fruit ripens.
For the Vases
Ours are filled with purple bottlebrush, white or green hydrangeas, red and gold gladioli
with bud vases of hybrid musk roses that perfume the entire room. Their scent is the
perfect complement to the fragrance of just cooked fruit cake.
How to Make Your Garden Gorgeous in Two Hours Before Aunt Myrtle Arrives
Step 1. Mow the lawn. Also water it, to give the illusion of greenness and because wet,
freshly-cut grass smells delicious.
Step 2. Dash down to the garden centre. Buy two bales of lucerne hay and two pots of
something flowering. Stick the lucerne hay over any weeds or messy bits and call it
mulch. Bung the flowers either side of the front door.
Step 3. Open a bottle of something cold and sparkling as soon as her car pulls up.
Greet her with the bottle in one hand and a full glass in the other. With a bit of luck, in
twenty minutes she won't even think of asking you to give her a little tour of the garden,
much less give you any advice on pruning the roses.
Gifts for Blokes
Men are not easy to buy for. They usually have very decided ideas about what they
want and have bought it months before for themselves.
In one area however males are incredibly easy to buy for. Clothes. Forget about dinky
little gizmos for their desks, wooden puzzles, yet another pair of long-handled barbeque
tongs. Just find out their shirt size, foot size, head size and colour preferences (though if
your Dad wears orange towelling hats it may be best not to pay too much attention to
this last one).
Adolescent boys can be given sport’s store vouchers (most sell a range of good clothes
and shoes), book vouchers, after-shave, torches and car cleaning kits once they have
their learner's permit. (They don't have to actually own a own car. This is a subtle hint: if
you use my car, help clean it.)
The most successful gift for a couple of boys for me was the very cheap collection of
stick-on moustaches and beards. The boys spent hours trying on black, brown or white
ones of various sizes, before deciding on THE look for the rest of the day. It was
hilarious and wonderful.
Tiny combs or pots of green, purple, yellow and red hair colour are fun too – and
thankfully wash out at the end of the day. Both are great when it’s too hot to go outside
and play backyard French cricket. (Grandma was about four foot nine and almost
completely round but she beat every make around in backyard cricket).
And almost anyone loves chocolate. If you don’t know if they like it dark, milk or white,
give an assortment. Other good gifts are any cook book by a male author; or a basket of
home-made or commercial fudge, home-made biscuits, crackers and a luxury cheese or
cheese collection, marmalade, gourmet chilli if they love hot food, nuts to nibble on or
any edible you know they love.
Every year Bryan looks forward to ‘Linda’s biscuits’ – thin, spiced crunchy tit bits that
she only makes and gives at Christmas.
A commercial Christmas cake won’t do it: it needs to be genuinely delicious. In other
words, home-made.
Some festive december recipes
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