Art Of Elegance Fair February 12, 2012

Get thee along to the Dunolly Town Hall for a spot of High Tea and to cast your baby blues across the miles of divine vintage wares on offer.
For further details on the lovely stall holders- and their gorgeous goods - click HERE.

Be careful where your brain takes you on dark nights.....

I've had a bodgy back of late so I blame the happy trippy pain meds for what I'm about to share with you.
I figure that if I have to have the images carved onto my brain then it's the least you can do to share the horror with me.

Picture this....

*wavy dream-like special effect to show this is a dream. This did not really occur although there's every possibility it very well could*

Apparently our neighbours invited us to accompany them on a tour around Europe.
With 2 days notice.
According to my dream Dad shouted us the whole trip.
My dreaming self woke up to find that we were in a dark wooden panelled room with lots of carving, a la Black Forest cuckoo clocks galore and bearskin rugs on the freaking freezing floorboards.
Yes, I had dream-worthy hyperthermia.

Anyway, as I barely recalled the flight or the packing or the whole applying for a passport thing, hubby tells me he managed to get things sorted.
Except for the Nat Geo mags, Readers Digests and no clothes which I insisted on packing in my stupor brought on by mixing cheap red wine with travel sickness meds and anxiety.
Do you think my subconscious is telling me something there...?

So, we go for a wander in this Germanic-type country and find ourselves in, guess what...?
A religious retreat.
With it's own attached museum.
And shop.
Please remember the shop.

Next, I'm on my knees amidst the old carved pews...no, not praying but unpacking that useless reading material I packed (cos a tour of Europe isn't complete unless you lug unneccessary kilos of toilet-paper-substitute around the continent) and donating them to the religious retreat.
For those who didn't really want to retreat from the "Laughter is the best medicine" or "Test your word power" or those who claim to read the Nat Geo letters to the editor but really look at the photos of topless native gals.

And then it happened.
Sorry, that should read...And then (drum roll) IT happened!!!!!111!!!
I look up and in waltzes hubby waving his hands about to show me the religious icons he'd bought at the shop and was donating them back to the museum (although I tried to point out they were actually reproductions but, being male, he didn't listen).
And I was kinda distracted.
By what he was wearing.
Cos he hadn't just bought cheap knock-off icons in the shop.
Oh, no, my subconscious played merry hell with me and frocked him out in a floor length terry towelling pastal pink surplice (with gold embroidery on the bib) that tied at the middle leaving the sides open.
Remember...the sides were open.
He was only wearing a pair of red Rio jocks underneath.

And he thought this was perfectly acceptable??!!!!
Der!
Everyone knows pastal pink souvenir surplices clash with red jocks.
I woke up, promptly dragged all the blankies off him and smacked his bum for halting my dream before I got to explore more of Europe.
I may need to invest in some cheap red wine....

Henry Jerrold - poet, performer, party boy and permanently pickled but a kind soul nonetheless

It seems the old habit of sending the black sheep of families out to 'the colonies' was alive and well in 1852 when the (some articles say older, others say younger) brother of famed author/playwrite Douglas Jerrold washed up in Sydney onboard the ship 'William' on May 13.

It appears their mother, acclaimed actress Mary Jerrold nee Reid, had passed away on the final day of 1851 which may have precipitated her son Henry to travel to the other side of the globe.
To try his luck in new climes or to give vent to his wanderlust, one cannot tell.
But he was already in the grip of the grappa.

I have been unable to track down many mentions of this chap, Henry Jerrold, prior to his unannounced arrival, which gave no indication of the future infamy he would soon acquire around this over-grown island of ours; in and out of the pubs, police courts, printers, prisons and the odd benevolent asylum.
Henry was very much over-shadowed by his celebrated brother and (I assume) his own activities in England may not have bourne much scrutiny or rated more than a brief mention of inebriated behaviour akin to his newspaper infamy in Australia as I have found mention of his propensity for agitating newspaper offices for hand outs from 1838 until 1852.

Henry Jerrold was a clever, cheerful soul who was heavily chained to the bottle but who could recite Shakespeare and various poetic quotes in any situation, as well as pen his own original compositions, probably due to his sometime performing profession.
He and his famous sibling Douglas were both put to the printing trade by their actor father, Samuel Jerrold, who had also started off his working life as a printer.
And he did attempt to gain employment on these shores as a printer as proved by this tale from the Kiwi newspaper Star in 1882.

I first found mention of this poet in my trawlings of newspaper archive Trove; an article from the Dunolly Express had been picked up by a number of other publications stating how, during his stay at the Dunolly Hospital in 1867, Henry Jerrold had penned several sacred poems for the Church of England Bazzaar.
Whether he was there to dry out, have a broken limb attended or just pinch the nurses' bottoms, this act struck me as being from a generous, talented soul.
Pity I cannot find any hint to what these poems may have been; he was forever referred to as "brother of the famed editor of Punch/writer/author, etc" and, quite possibly, while his original compositions may have been pleasing, they may not have had any great value attached to them at the time of creation.

I have been able to locate two of his original poems, the first dedicated to the poet Thomas Moore on his death , written only a few months after Henry Jerrold's arrival in Australia, while the second was composed ( or at least published) 16 years after he landed in Sydney being his thoughts on Australia in 1868.

In 1862 the Talbot Times reported how this poor 'Tramp' was "half-witted and evidently unable to take care of himself" as Henry was, yet again, before a police court on, yet again, another charge of drunkenness.
Given the heart-felt plea by the journalist who wrote about how this gentleman deserved to be cared for by the government in Yarra Bend (asylum) it is telling that the same 'half-witted' person was able to pen poems of note in the following years of 1867 and 1868.

Yet, this description is of one so hopelessly addicted to drink in 1852 as to leave one to wonder at how his wit and intellect survived to engage listeners let alone to keep body and soul together sufficiently to roam the distances he did across the country.

There are a multitude of entries of his appearances in the many police courts up and down the country - from QLD to NSW, South Oz and Victoria, each and every place it was the same tale : drunk and disorderly.
Although there were a few instances where he was able to convince the magistrate he had not been under the influence I wondered if Henry had knocked off enough grey cells by that stage as to seem 'punch drunk' to the passing policemen.

Henry was reported as having been lost in the Queensland bush when he missed a track, existing on water, grass and leaves for almost a month before he was found and taken in to be nursed back to health in 1865.
Possibly the best way to go cold turkey and give his liver a rest but it didn't last long.

He claimed Charles Dickens as a friend, he was not above breaking into pubs he was barred from (and being "soundly thrashed" for his troubles), and he was once discharged from the Warrnambool Gaol on the condition he left town immediately, with talk he would 'tramp it' to Melbourne in December 1868, age 60.

The final mention I was able to find of Henry was in 1869 when he was once more charged with being drunk and disorderly, this time in Prahran, but as it was only the 8th day of the new year his celebrations had obviously continued for some time past the fireworks stage.

I  assume that, given his age and long years of alcohol abuse, Henry may not have survived that Summer in Melbourne; the long trek from Warrnambool, the heat, the continued drinking and the lack of any further mention in the press lets me think he found whatever rest he'd been searching for.

Almost organic free fruit foraging

 I've turned into a forager (she says in a bad imitation of a colonial British colonel through a walrus-like moustache).
I've found blackberries!
FREE Blackberries!!
Woot!
Yes, this may involve a rampant blackberry bush that isn't so secret but the exact location will not be pried from my lips.
Oh, alright, you twisted my arm.
Huntingdale station.
Noticed big, juicy orbs hanging from the bush as we swept past on our way to Clayton via the treadly bikes, no signs of it being sprayed, no signs that it's been hampered in any way.

So, we wended our way back to the bush with snap lock bags, which we filled with as many as we could reach.
Unfortunately there was a shedload of the big, juicy orbs hanging just out of reach on the other side of the fence.
Yes, the obligatory fence blackberries seem to find themselves leaning on.
We walked and looked and found a way over this fence...in fact we walked right over the fence - no, we didn't perform the second coming, the fence was fallen down and we could literally walk right up and over, give or take a wiggle or 10 over the barbed wire.
*ouch*

Anyhoo....we worked our way through enough of the deadly blackberry bush to come to the conclusion the thorns are everywhere, they snap off in clothing to give double the bang for their buck and the bastard scratches sting like molten candle wax when the hubby accidentally sprays mozzie spray onto the gazillion tiny cuts.

But we managed to snaffle about 4 kilos which are now freezing in the freezer for future jams and desserts.
Sometimes....this kind of delectable goodie is worth the pricks.

Cycling adventures in urban forests sans hair

Good grief, haven't I been slack!
Nevermind, think of it as a holiday from the internal blatherings and bleatings of my brain.
We've been cycling almost every day - except when the temp gets to eleventy hundred degrees and then we hide in the cave.
The other day we dragged the poor Feral Aspie teen to Ashburton via part of the old Outer Circle Railway trail aka the Anniversary Trail - which is a lovely ride, must take camera next time.

Very happy to find that the new Solway Bridge over Gardiners Creek is finally open and able to be used, after taking torturous detours (well, torture to my unused cycling muscles).
We returned in a slightly different manner, taking him through the small patches of urban forest created from some of the sections of the old railway line, lovely tracts where you'd think you were in native bush far from the maddening traffic.
Well, we were s-l-o-w-l-y puttering through one such section (I told you, my non-cycling muscles)  when something grey fluttered gracefully up from the forest floor at one point.
Beady eyed Feral Aspie teen followed it up to the low hanging tree branch with his eyes and identified it instantly as a Tawny Frogmouth.
Lovely thing, it sat there patiently while 3 stupid pink monkeys stared at it and it's partner in rapture, wondering if this showed the urban forest to be a healthy little pocket of bushland in amidst high-priced suburbia.
Well done to those friends of the Urban Forest on a great job.

And as we get quite hot in our helmets while cycling, we all clippered our hair to a # 3 cut.
Just to put you off your tea...