Addicted.

I knew better yet I just couldn't resist. While packing school lunches this morning I ate the merest sliver of baked chocolate cheesecake even though I knew I was going to a 9.30am Bikram Yoga Class. Big mistake. By Standing Head to Knee Pose I felt the full consequences - faint, nauseous and tingly in my extremities all at one. It is a bad, bad feeling.

So now I have declared a moratorium on doing our tax until after the school holidays which start this afternoon. I'm not going to kid myself - four children and time to do tax...it's never going to happen. Sometimes I think about back in the day when I used to manage the Trust Account for our business, how did I ever do that? I've never been gifted at maths  - l'll fess up that I did veggie maths at school. Then I  console myself that I did manage to get a First Class Honours Degree........the problem being that it is in Art Theory.

Anyway I digress. I have been musing about addiction and what I might admit to being addicted to. This is what gives me heart palpitations and sweaty palms if I go cold turkey. You are welcome to either laugh or cry.

1. Green Tea:

To be honest, most days I knock back five or even six cups. I know this is too much because if I don't drink it, I get a headache. Don't be put off by my teacup, it is a 'breakfast cup' and has the dimensions of a bucket. Actually, I used to like coffee (a good old Australian flat white). Actually, that would be an understatement. We took an espresso machine to hospital when I had Mimi. And then three years ago an old school friend and I went and had a week at The Golden Door in the Hunter Valley. There was a time when we would have roared with laughter if someone from the future had told us that we would move heaven and earth to have our families looked after so that we could detox, diet and exercise our heads off. We used to be a tad hedonistic when we got together (she has lived in Melbourne, London and Launceston to my Sydney, South of France and Hobart). So, for a whole week, we gave up caffeine, alcohol and red meat and got up every morning in time to do tai chi while the sun rose. For about six months I drank no caffeine and then it started sneaking in in the guise of green tea. Alcohol, unfortunately was another story, I'm ashamed to admit that we broke out the bubbly on the flight home from the Golden Door, much to our fellow inmates glee!

2. Bikram Yoga:

I try and go to Bikram Yoga classes at Studio Newtown at least five times a week. Otherwise, I get the above listed withdrawal symptoms. I have been a convert since my first class in Hobart three years ago. As it is an international phenomenon, I have been to Bikram Yoga classes in Hobart, Sydney, Bali and I tried to go in Paris yet was turned away as it was only five weeks since my fourth caesarian. I tried. I have also been to garden variety yoga classes in Bali, in the gorgeous gardens at the Ayana and overlooking the ocean at the Karma Kandara and in India, on the roof of the Lake Palace and on a hilltop at the Devi Garh. Not last year, but the year before, when I was pregnant and living in the South of France, I used to lug myself into the cobbled streets of Beziers at least twice a week to go to classes at the Yoga Centre. It was a world away from extreme, sweaty, scantily clad Bikram Yoga (which was three hours away in Marseilles). Genevieve must have been in her sixties yet looked twenty years younger. In class, her hair was always 'coiffed' and she wore full 'macquillage' and colour matched her toenail polish with her yoga outfit - her fingernails were always an immaculate French polish. Are there any other Bikram Yoga practitioners out there reading this reading this to appreciate the humour?! I learnt the French words for every body part along with stock standard yoga poses - Chien qui Tombe, anyone?


Earlier this year I did a week long seminar with Bikram Choudhury himself. You can read all about it in graphic detail here, here, here, here and here. Say what you will about him but he really is a walking advert for the yoga that he sells - can you believe that he's over seventy (that's him in the middle of the picture in the speedos with his hair in a bun)? I think I'd rather have yoga than botox any day.

Bikram Yoga is a ninety minute open eye meditation where you also get to work your body inside and out. As extreme as it sometimes seems, in class, I have NEVER seen anybody come to any physical  harm. At my last Body Pump class at a gym in town, they had to get an ambulance for someone who was having a heart attack.

3. Gowans Auctions:

Thursday is viewing day. Yesterday, I had to fight every fibre of my being to stop myself heading out to Main Road, Moonah to check out what was on offer - maybe this week that unknown 'thing' that I didn't realise that I couldn't live without just might be there. My reaction caused me to investigate the whole addiction question. Let me tell you, in my life, on Thursdays all roads lead to Moonah, either by car or, I have even been known to rollerblade from the Cenotaph along the Cycleway, which conveniently runs just behind the auction sheds.....with a double pram. Last Thursday, I mistakenly took the children and bought a Wendy House. It maxed out the credit card. It has to be the ultimate way to go shopping, the stock changes every week and then there is the rush involved in trying to choose the price. Unfortunately you can't always call it cheap thrills as it can be ruinously expensive....and everything in between. Last week you could have bought the entire six volume set of Gibbon's 'The History of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' or a brand new, stainless steel, freestanding Smeg cooker, if you were so inclined. I bought the Wendy House:

Note to self, remember NOT to take the children out to Gowans. However, I might just have a quick look at the catalogue for what's up in next week's auction.....online.

R

Cumquats.

This morning I harvested my first crop of cumquats for the season:

And between the million things I did today I made Moira's Cumquat Compote - the recipe for which she so kindly gave me just before she relocated to Melbourne.

All you do is get your hands on 500g cumquats:

Make sure they are clean and get rid of all the bits of stalk. Put them in a heavy, non reactive pan and add just enough water to not quite cover them. Bring to the boil and then simmer for half and hour:

 Stir in 350g raw sugar and boil for five minutes before putting into sterilised jars. Et voila:

It's meant to be delicious with cheese or ice cream and let me say that Moira wasn't kidding when she said that it was very simple to make. It was. So if you are stuck for cumquat recipes, give it a burl.

In other news, I have recently purchased this water bottle:

And yes, you are really seeing a stylised image of Bikram Choudhury, from way back in the day when he was about twenty years old, emblazoned on the front. Don't let that put you off as this bottle is insulated. That means that even if you add tap water on your way into the hot room, it will keep it cool and magically transform it from mere tap water to icy cold nectar from the Gods.  How did I survive for so long without one?

R

Matching.

Look at our girls:

Ten years between them and both in the same top. It helps that I picked them up yesterday on sale for $13 - 75% off. Bargain. Mimi of course insisted that we had to have an outing  into town with the girls sporting their new fashion so we went to the cafe at Fuller's Bookshop:

I had a restorative green tea while the children shared a honey milkshake:

The flavour must have prompted Tobes to keep us amused with his new favourite joke:

'What bees gives milk?' Anyone, anyone? 'Boobies'! This joke comes courtesy of Bikram Choudhury via the Advanced Seminar I went to on the Gold Coast. I'd totally forgotten that I'd passed it on to Tobes. Same sense of humour. Hmm.

I've finally finished my most recent Jilly Cooper obsession and have moved on to this which as you can see from the cover I borrowed from the library:

The Paris Wife is meant to be fiction yet draws very heavily of fact. It's about Ernest Hemingway's first marriage (he had four). I have had a bit of an ongoing Ernest Hemingway fixation so was keen to get my hands on this. I'm not sure at Chapter Six whether I love it or loathe it.

I find Ernest Hemingway, the man and his work, compelling. He was so incredibly talented and yet so tortured and ultimately tragic. I have been chipping away at his books for years and have yet to get through his oeuvre. So far have I've loved A Farewell to Arms, Across the River and Into the Trees, and the posthumous A Moveable Feast. I read The Garden of Eden while in France - we were living near Aigues Mortes where part of it was set. What better excuse. I'm ashamed to admit that I strugged with For Whom the Bell Tolls. Maybe I shouldn't have typed that.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of cooking date night dinner. It's a very casual affair - I'm wearing my bathrobe. Did you know that you can find most Gourmet Traveller recipes here on their website? I am in the process of tinkering with the delicious Cauliflower and Taleggio Risotto with Anchovy Pangrattato which I am going to make with pumpkin as pasta. Fingers crossed it works.

R

Day 1.

It was standing room only in the Ballroom at the Radisson Resort at the Gold Coast today for Bikram's first day of Beginner and Advanced classes. All up it was five hours of intense yoga. Yes, five hours.

Here is the room as people were still arriving and before cameras became prohibited:

When the Beginner's class started you really couldn't see any carpet as it was obscured by mats - mats as far as the eye could see. The room was mirror free and heated by a gas blower at one end of the room so it wasn't bakingly hot yet the obverbearing humidity more than made up for it. It was punishing.

Bikram directed the class from this stage seated on this chair wearing a high cut Speedo and a black sweat band tied over his forehead (you'll just have to conjure up the complete picture in your minds eye):

Bikram said that Pranayama Breathing sounded like a swarm of locusts descending whereas to me it sounded and felt like being sucked into the vortex of the torture chamber. Wow it was hard yet Bikram serenaded us and recounted bizarre annecdotes throughout - he told the class that he lost his virginity on his 28th birthday.

The Beginners series runs like a well oiled machine. If you've done Bikram Yoga then you've heard the words before - today they were in an Indian accent by the man himself. According to Bikram they are going to make a film about his life story and either Francis Ford Cuppola, or George Lucas or Steven Speilberg is going to direct it.

When the first class finally finished after two long hours we had a fifteen minute break where I sloped back to my room and had a shower - I felt like throwing myself into the pool, but there was no time for that.

Then it was time for the Advanced series where things became much more free form. Both of this year's reigning Yoga champions were on hand to demonstrate and wasn't that a mindpopping show. We were also introduced to such postures as the Mountain and the Cock - as if. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor incredulous. I wish I could do Lotus pose. Maybe tomorrow.

When it was finally all over I couldn't help giggling at the hoard of sweaty, dishevelled and barely dressed people who surged through the resort reception, past all of the uninitiated families on holidays, on their way back to their rooms.

And have to get up tomorrow to do it all over again.

R