A cricketing legend

Great excitement in my house.  The Mittagong Under 11s – aka the Australian cricket team – have managed to win a Twenty20 match and two fifty-over matches.  Three in a row!  This has thrilled Erstwhile, because every time South Africa B – sorry, England – beat the Aussies, cricketing experts crawl out from cubicles and from behind phones to tell him exactly what went wrong with the Australians.  We don’t need telling.  They just weren’t that good.

They have my sympathy.  My cricket career was just as illustrious.  It comprised one school term.  It sounded good, though.  After all, if you represent your school at sport, then logically you must have some ability.  My ability, undeniably necessary, was that I was perfectly willing to make up the numbers, which made up for my lack of height and co-ordination.   All those sporty people who would have missed out if it hadn’t been for me – whole sporting careers that would never have been because for a relay team, you need four people.

Most of the time, I spectated.  I was there as filler, really – and because someone had to watch the oranges, sausage rolls, Chelsea buns and Fanta as it all dried out in the sun, and to maintain the supply of baby oil.  The cricket wasn’t all about the cricket for most of the team.  It was about getting out in the sun and getting the darkest tan possible.  I became expert at rubbing baby oil into those difficult-to-reach places on teenage girls’ bodies.   In those three halcyon months in which I represented my school at cricket, I only took the crease once. 

It had to come. We only had three girls who could play cricket well, so more often than not, our team failed to make the runs required to win.  I was so far down the list that the page had to be turned over to find my name.  But one day, we didn’t have sufficient bodies to prevent me from having to bat. 

I padded up.  I swung the bat a few times to get the feel of the willow.  I walked out to the crease and gave a look to the bowler that suggested that I meant business. 

The bowler sized me up.  She bowled the gentlest bouncer in history.

Over my head it sailed.  Took the bails right off.

Cross my heart, I swung at it.  No contact.  Not surprising.  The bat I was wielding and the pads I was wearing were almost as big as I was.  And I had spent most of the afternoon applying copious amounts of baby oil to body parts.

We were all out.  I was supposed to save the day.  I didn’t even save face.

After that, I found I was better at cooking than batting (swimming, catching, hitting something with a racquet).  Which is good, in my opinion.   When sportspeople win, they get all the glory.  When I cook, then everybody gets the good stuff.  Sausage rolls, Chelsea buns, Fanta.  Winners all round.     

White christmas (recipe)

This recipe is easy.  Just finding copha is the difficult part.  Kremelta from New Zealand, Végétaline froma France, and Palmin from Germany can be used in place of the copha.

Number:         24

Utensils:        greased slab pan, approx. 20x30 cm

Ingredients:    1 cup powdered milk

                        1 cup dessicated coconut

                        1 cup mixed fruit  (chopped jellied sweets can be substituted)

                        1 cup rice bubbles  (rice krispies)

                        1 cup icing sugar

                        1 cup (250g) copha

Method:          Collect the ingredients.  Blend all the ingredients except the copha.  Melt the copha slowly over a low heat, then pour over the dry mixture, blending well.  Press the mixture into the pan.  Cool and allow to set.  Cut into fingers or squares.

There goes Santa Claus...with my waistline

Over at last.  The great Christmas overindulgence.  Why do we sigh with relief when Christmas is done?  Is it the end of fevered shopping for family we barely know?  The nerve-rending round of goodwill to all men?  The 361^st repeat of ‘Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer’?  Personally, I’m over the feast – the hunting, the gathering, the gorging, the disgorging.  By New Year, I’ve eaten the entire cast of ‘Twelve days of Christmas’ (pick your own version) and the feast of Stephen.  Plus one or two giant Toblerones.

It’s a time of tradition, right?  So traditionally I make little chocolates in place of cards, because nothing says I’m thinking about you more than putting a few hundred calories onto your hips.  I bake two batches of Erstwhile’s mother’s Christmas cake; one to eat at Christmas between bites of leaping lord and chocolate, one made into smaller cakes to be discovered in June in some dark cupboard recess.  There’s four boiled puddings, because the quantities feed an Edwardian family of 13, not three.  And, as family tradition dictates – and there’s no more tyrannical tradition – I hunt a ham about mid-December. This is so that everybody is traditionally tired of ham well before Christmas Day.  This year, hunting the ham involved learning to drive very carefully through snowy countryside.

It feels strange to have a cold Christmas.  On my last Christmas back in Oz, we had my brother and his family down from the coast on Christmas Eve.  We went swimming and ate by the pool. There was nothing - no carols, no videos from the Northern Hemishphere, no shivering voices from the other end of the phone - that prepared me for the darkness of a winter Christmas.  The lack of festive mingling at neighbourhood barbies, Christmas parties, Carols by Candlelight in the Domain.  Cricket after Christmas lunch.  That I would make my cakes and puddings not on a day sweltering in heat, but because the weather was so miserable and cooking made the house smell good.  And those little sausages in bacon?  It feels like I'm eating the Baby Jesus.

On Christmas Day, my sister rang.  After the snowfall of the previous couple of weeks, she asked me how I was enjoying a white Christmas.  I knew what she meant, but I thought about that other White Christmas that I don't get to enjoy.  Not Bing's, but a mixed fruit slice.  A simple thing to make, you would think.  It is; it's usually what I make kids do to keep them out of my hair while I panic about whether I've bought the right present for my mam.  Sadly, I haven't made it since I moved here.  Two of the ingredients are not to be found on the supermarket shelves - full-fat dried milk powder and Copha, a vegetable shortening made of hardened coconut oil.  I can source the milk powder, but Copha?  An Australian cultural food to me - and a heart attack in a 250g block to everybody else.

Rather than waste time and money risking the NHS at Christmas, I spent the cash on my family’s traditional breakfast of Froot Loops.

Why Froot Loops?  That’s another story.  Right now, I’m off to find another recipe with which to disguise ham...