Curious.

I've had a curious day. On the one hand I was feeling very virtuous as I completed my BAS (yucky quarterly tax reporting) and did three loads of washing. This high induced by hard labour was somewhat tempered by spending part of the day dwelling on the fact that the boy's school is next to a rather large electricity substation. This is a big issue for me - our family uses herbal toothpaste and shampoo from the health food shop and I would never dream of feeding my children a biscuit from a packet because of the dangers of trans fats. At after school pickup time I had this conversation with another mum and she showed me a YouTube clip of a group popping corn with their mobile phones. How in control of our lives are we really when we live in this modern world? It's an insurmountable question.

I finished The Paris Wife.  It was compellingly un-put-downable even though I knew it was going to end in tears. And it did - spectacularly - when Ernest left his first wife Hadley for her best friend. Sordid and sad. He then went on to repeat the same adulterous process three more times.

Half way into the book, I was surprised by the idea that Ernest and Hadley Hemingway thought that going to a bull fight while pregnant might have a positive influence on their unborn child. I went to a bullfight in Beziers when I was pregnant and was worried that it may have the opposite effect. Especially as I started uncontrollably sobbing as soon as the first poor, confused bull was shunted into the arena. Kim and I discussed it at length at the time and I considered keeping my eyes closed.

A week before, we had been reading aloud Roald Dahl's Boy while trying to drive around Cornwall in a motorhome. Here's Tobes at the wheel:

Apparently Roald's father took his pregnant wife on a tour of famed beauty spots so that she could gaze and gaze at beauty in the leadup to her confinement. While gestating I may have seen a bullfight yet I also saw Paris in the springtime, the snow capped Pyrenees and the azure blue Amalfi coast. That should have overcompensated...shouldn't it?
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