I like my coffee hot

I come from a family of enthusiastic coffee drinkers. Before babycinos were invented, I sat with my mother while she had a cappuccino and I was allowed a spoonful of chocolatey froth off the top. In my first year of university, my mother called me for the sole purpose of excitedly reporting my younger brother had had his first coffee. (You'll be pleased to know he wasn't four but of a legal coffee drinking age) In our family, coffee isn't merely a hit of caffeine to gird the loins, but a social punctuation in the day, a chance to catch up with family of friends or enjoy a quiet moment on your own reading the paper, or more likely in my family, to draw up extensive 'to do' lists. However, in recent years, going out for coffee with mum had been a cause of embarrassment. When it comes time to order, she first makes sure she locks eyes with the unsuspecting server, and then, with over annunciated words like she's speaking to a toddler says "I'd like a strong, HOT latte please". If social decorum didn't have to be regarded you could be sure she would stand up, grab the server's head between her hands, put her face only inches away from theirs, and like a boxing trainer giving a pep talk to his bloodied novice, look them in the eyes and in a gravelly voice say "Make my latte fucking HOT you prick". After mum orders I wait in trepidation for our coffees to be served. At least 50% of the time Mum has a sip, screws up her face, clunks the cup back on the saucer and says with disgust. 'It's not HOT".

Well dear mother, you will be pleased to know that I no longer will squirm in my seat when you say these words, I will no longer smile sweetly at the waiter as if to apologise for a slightly senile parent. Because enough is enough. 

Firstly, may I say we are certainly blessed in Melbourne to have a thriving coffee scene. There are few places in the world you can feel safe in going to pretty much any no-name cafe and getting a decent coffee. No, it might not be single trade and the espresso might not be pulled by a bearded hipster who freshly shat the coffee beans that morning, but generally it will be okay. And I am a bit of a coffee snob, so I do love that we have so many cafes taking coffee seriously. It's wonderful to be able to try freshly roasted single origins from around the world, take part in cuppings, and write poetry over a cold drip that's been extracting for 8 to 10 hours.

But for god's sake, what is wrong with making the coffee HOT? I know that the coffee tastes better at a certain temperature and NO, when I ask for a hot coffee I do NOT mean I want it so scalding that it loses all flavour. But when I am increasingly paying up to $4 for a latte, I actually want to enjoy it. I would like to be able to sip it, rather than knock it back like a shot of vodka because if I don't it will be stone cold by the time I finish typing this sentence. 

In certain establishments asking for a hot coffee is met with scorn. If you are talking to a barista who has taken to wearing a t-shirt bearing the chemical symbol for caffeine they are likely to inform you of the optimal temperature for serving coffee and then stare at you, forcing you into submission. To get your coffee hot you have to be strategic. I have started asking for my coffee "a bit hotter than normal" because if you come right out with it and ask for it hot the barista is likely to burn the milk just out of spite. 

But generally, I end up bending the knee to the 21 year old barista who stares at me from high above with their advanced barista certificate in non-traditional brewing methods hanging from the wall. So  after waiting ten minutes to order my coffee, I give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't ask for it hot, I just simply ask for a Strong Flat White and I ask in a perfectly pleasant voice. I sit down, wait ten minutes for the coffee to arrive, take a sip, and yes, it's lukewarm. The energy I would expel in taking the coffee back, the strong gesture in returning it, is often just too much for this people-pleaser to bear.

So I sit there, and stew (but only for a minute because that's how long it takes for me to finish my coffee). When I get up to leave I scrape my chair back in a final, childish act. I walk into the cool day outside, and scream to the world "Make my latte fucking HOT you prick!!".

T-shirts have a shelf life (sorry for the pun)

David and Goliath Shady Oaks Trailer Park t-shirt, garment of Victoria Thaine, resident of many bedrooms and known to have lived on the floor for long periods of time. Died peacefully on the 13th May in Yarraville, Melbourne with family by her side, in fact, wearing her. She was bought in New York in early 2002 when $30 in American dollars for a t-shirt was actually pretty pricey. In the first days of her new life she had her first outing during the NYC protests against the invasion of Iraq, in the wake of September 11. As she settled in to life in Australia, Shady Oaks lived a colourful social life but partying took its toll. After years of abusing her body, a sudden physical change occurred. Shady Oaks got arrested for indecent exposure when a rather large rip exposed her owner's breast. After that her mental and physical health took a turn for the worse and while she made a few attempts to go outdoors, life was largely restricted to under the covers. The photo below is the last known public outing of Shady Oaks, and that's how she'd like to be remembered, when life was good and beer free flowing. Please note she has requested no flowers and funeral arrangements will be announced in later issue.

Some songs will never leave you. A musical memoir, part one

Recently, when I moved house, I went through my CD collection. It felt strange, going through relics from a bygone era - because let's admit it - that's what they are. Even vinyl is maintaining the status quo better than CDs. I felt sad about this until I put one in a car stereo the other day and it had a scratch in it that made Stevie Nick's voice sound like a strangled cat.

 However, I digress. The point I'm making was...I was feeling nostalgic. 

Some events from my past I just don't remember clearly (or choose not to remember clearly). But there are certain songs that will forever take me back to specific places and people. Everyone experiences this I'm sure. I doubt these memories will ever leave me. But just in case I forget…here's the start of a mini memoir, in musical chronology.

 1987 - Elton John, One More Arrow

 When I turned 9 years old I got my first cassette player and with it, Elton John's album Too Low for Zero. I use to lie on my belly in my carpeted bedroom and listen to it over and over again. One More Arrow was the perfect song for a young girl about to discover she loved drama. This song leans towards musical theatre. I loved it. It seemed so dramatic. "one more arrow, flying through the air, one more arrow lying in a shady spot somewhere, where the days and nights blend into one and he can always feel the sun, through the soft brown earth that holds him, forever always young"

 1990/1991 - Public Image Limited, Seattle.

I was 11 years old. I walked into a record store and was tossing up between two albums (and I will admit, they were on cassette). It was either going to be Belinda Carlisle's Runaway Horses or the P.I.L. Greatest Hits so Far. I went with the latter and changed the course of my musical taste forever. My friend Camilla and I loved this album. We loved the Sex Pistols and Johnny Rotten. We were lovely little girls and certainly not true anarchists. I think we just liked the way Johnny danced in his music videos. We knew the words to every song and I have a clear memory of us sitting on the back of the school bus on the way to sport singing 'Seattle' very loudly. "Don't like the look of this old town, what goes up must come down". 

1992/1993 - The Cure, Catch 

This is where all the songs I listened to invoked the image of certain boys I had a crush on. The Cure, Catch will always remind me of a boy called Andrew Hoffman - a little grommet in the coastal town of Coffs Harbour where I grew up. We hung out at parties, and once, when Camilla and I were on holiday with her father in Minnie Waters, we snuck out after dark to go and visit Andrew and his friends at a nearby camping ground. I remember they were playing the Sex Pistol's song Who Killed Bambi, loudly that night. I always remember that Catch is Track 2 on the album Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. It's the only song that got played on that album for a while.

1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, Mayonaise  (Track 9 on Siamese Dream)

Similarly, the Smashing Pumpkins song Mayonaise makes me remember Scott Newbie (or Newby). He was a bit older than me; a skater boy with a long blond ponytail. He had lost one or both parents to cancer. This was not something I was used to dealing with, and while in my fantasies I entertained what a comfort I would be, in reality I probably just shuffled awkwardly in his presence. We often bumped into each other at the local shopping centre - Park Beach Plaza - the social hub for teenagers. I even wrote a poem about him when I was at university. I doubt it was any good, but I always wondered what happened to him.

Here's a few music clips. I had to put a young girl's cover of Mayonaise in here. Mainly because if youtube was around when I was a teenager there would likely be an archive of videos like this one, of me, bearing my soul to the world. (I wouldn't have known how to curl my hair though). 

How not to eat wallaby

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. I am, in my humble opinion, a mean cook. In the most rustic sense. I don't whip up macaron towers or serve dinner guests food that involves smears, foams, pollen, air, dust, gravel, or bitumen (not yet on any menu I've sighted but surely it's a given). No, I cook hearty feasts, and I cook them well. So wallaby shank did not seem like a peculiar challenge. I planned to slow-cook them, just like I would lamb shanks. I was cooking for my new boyfriend and I wanted to wow him with my cooking prowess. He's Scottish and so was naturally dubious of eating an animal his fellow countrymen seem to think hop around our city streets like tame pets, but I pointed out that he had eaten kangaroo, another  'hoppy' animal, so it would be unfair to discriminate. I reassured him that wallabies were not endangered and I did not get the meat on the black market but at the Queen Victoria market where all the other middle-class foodies shop so we were safe. Two hours passed. And the shanks would not become tender. We drank some beer. We tried to be patient. Another hour passed. We drank more beer. I checked on the shanks and they just weren't tender. We drank more beer. Half an hour passed. The shanks weren't tender. We drank more beer. 10 minutes passed. The shanks weren't tender. We drank more beer. 5 minutes passed. The shanks weren't tender.

At this point, at 11 o'clock at night, I made a decision that every other good (drunk) cook would make in this situation. I opted for the failsafe back-up plan. Toasted sandwiches.

We were hungry.

Things I have learnt: Wallaby shank meat, shitake mushroom, and tasty cheese sandwiches DO NOT WORK.

Tarred and Feathered - A Sexual Awakening

I haven’t been tarred and feathered, nor have I seen it happen in real life. But I’ve seen it on HBO, which is pretty much real life anyway isn’t it? I was watching the wonderful series Carnivale, which lasted only two seasons and was set in the dustbowl of America in the 30’s. Towards the end of the second season, a character called Jonesy gets tarred and feathered in retribution for an accident that kills one of the locals. 

There is a close-up of the bubbling tar before it is recklessly daubed and smeared on his torso, and then, in his mouth. Despite having witnessed far worse acts of violence in other parts of my real-life – The Sopranos springs to mind – this had me squirming in my seat. 

It’s not so much the fear of pain – tarring rarely caused death. The tar used when this punishment was popular was Pine Tar, which has a boiling point of only 60 degrees. So while there would still certainly be pain and discomfort, the punishment aimed to humiliate and degrade. 

Watching this prompted a memory of watching an Australian children’s movie from 1980 called Fatty Finn. I’ve posted the trailer below. I don’t know if it was a popular movie at the time, but I remember there was a scene where either Fatty Finn or a member of the gang that tormented him was running around naked. I’m sure he had to sit in a bucket of tar. At the very least, at my pre-pubescent age, I had some understanding that a bottom was something to be interested in. And the tar? Maybe I found it exciting in the same way that some people find hot wax dripped on their skin sexually arousing. However, I also remember that the boy running around naked had shoes on, and that this made his nakedness even more pronounced, that just by having shoes on I was reminded that actually, yes, clothes are the norm and I should find his nudity shocking and arousing. So I can’t quite put my finger on what was most titillating here. But I’m glad HBO led me back to a little known Aussie film called Fatty Finn.

What I’ve learnt today: A shopping trip for candles may improve my sex life. (or asking boyfriend to keep slippers on at sexy time).