Mobile 'phone

Where would you like to take your call, sir?

Seen on return from Surrey to Oxfordshire, pic by Bev.

Another Doctor

Just a quick note to offer my congratulations to my friend Brett Homan on getting his PhD thesis passed by the examiners. As he says on his blog:

"Yesterday I received my examiners’ reports, and they both recommended that I ‘be awarded the PhD degree without further examination or amendment’ (though not without criticism, I must add)."

I came across Brett through his blog, built around his thesis work, as well as interesting asides and broadsides arising.
One of the most interesting is the experimental 'post blogging' of the Sudeten Crisis of 1938 (normally known as the Munich Crisis) here. Sounds obscure, but it's basically taking the unfolding crisis day by day through the newspapers of the time. One of the biggest traps of history is that we know what happened next, and thus what didn't and couldn't happen*. Real life as it unfolds isn't like that, of course, and there are insights and understandings to be gained from trying to immerse yourself in the period and not have their future at the forefront of your understanding. Watching the crisis 'unfold' (which also incidentally explains the absurdity of calling it the Munich Crisis) was a thought provoking, interesting exercise.

Realising Brett was in Melbourne as well, we managed to meet up for a discussion on matters aerohistorigraphical (it's a very exclusive club) and it's been interesting for me to have a peek at writing on aviation history from an academic approach, rather than my journalistic and publishing one. The differences are actually quite major, and as ever, there are lesson and ideas (as well as absurdities) in both approaches to learn from. I'm not sure if I was any help to Brett, but his blog, chats and thesis was certainly of interest to me. And now I can now uncross my fingers at last.

Well done, doc!

James

* Illustrated by the concepts of coins marked 'BC' and a cartoon of a villager saying to his wife "I'm just off to the 100 Years War dear..."

Sunday roast

There's something about roast beef. Needs to be pink, of course!

Bev decided to venture a go with Yorkshire Puddings. They worked, and were reet topping.

Wouldn't you rather be here?

Oh, and for those who thought our blog was going to be all art history and aeroplanes, food (and its related topics of markets, cooking and chocolate) are leading the rankings. Funny that.

James

Ghost in the park

I guess you can see why it's called a ghost gum. Here the white trunk nearly disappears against the sky.

Closer... futher away!

Once apon a time, in a village (pretending to be a city) called Oxford, with Rosie and Ross, we saw...
A building reflected in a pane of glass.

That pane of glass was in a window.

And that picture of a window had been digitally manipulated to make it seem straight up.

While the whole window was much bigger indeed.

James

mmMovida

Some evenings are just so:

... so wine-sipping, chit-chatting, thought-batting, people-watching, prawn-scrunchingly good.

Last night, we met at the National Gallery of Victoria for a wee peek at what's on. Perhaps the John Brack, or something more suited to an evening browse? Let's start with a good long look in the book and gallery shop, adding many things to the mental list of 'books I want to read/to own someday'.

Time to toddle across the square to the lounge at the ACMI, where the wine's nice and we can swing our feet from the barstools while speculating about the function in the other half of the bar. Academic conference. We bet on an academic conference; some sort of specialised field.

Shall we go to the gallery now? Mm, I'm hungry - let's stick our noses in the door at that disastrously wonderful and unfortunately popular spot for those who love good food and wine, conversation and a little bit of spying the crowd. Go away, fancy city suits, we want a table!


Why is it that really good service always makes you feel as if they have saved a spot at the bar just for you? We started on our glasses of tempranillo, before taking a cosy spot up at the long counter bar, where we could watch all the action and let food be brought to us in delicious hot little plates of Spanish goodness.

Bread appears: one of them salty rye and the other topped with sour dust of smoky pimenton. A bowl of oil. A croqueta, hot and sizzling and cracking open. Within minutes, that Movida feeling starts to come over me again: a sense of deep goodness about this food. It makes me pleasantly, slightly gleefully silly; very happy.


One huge mother of a prawn comes in next, in a deep-fried covering and with some cracked corn and bamboo (we think it's bamboo) baby greens. And small stuffed pimenton, filled with potato and salt cod.

The pace is good and we hit the braised portobello mushrooms in Pedro Ximinez sherry, beef cheek with just a tang of aniseed and some cauliflower mash, and the pork belly with crackling, mm, that crackling, chorizo, black pudding and slow-baked beans.

Do we dare?

Yes, we do: churros and chocolate to share.


When we eventually roll out into the misty damp night, down the graffiti-ed lane where Movida sings Spanish dreams to its eaters, we're too late for much but a one-room show at the gallery. Fittingly, the night sky.

And home. Pleasant dreams.

- Bev

(Pics by James and any handy flat surface for long exposures...)

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NOTE; PLEASE QUOTE THIS REFERENCE (TELEGRAPH) IN ALL YOUR RESPONSES.

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