Possum Galore
A life ‘Down Under’!
City Skyline by Night
Dulcie's Famous Anzac Biscuits.
(“So easy! Why buy biscuits again?”)Ingredients:1 cup of sugar1 cup of oats1 cup of plain flour1 cup of desiccated coconut125 g butter1 tablespoon of golden syrup½ tsp of baking powder2/3 tablespoons of boiling water*(Makes approx 24 biscuits)Method:Put the oven on at 160 degrees centigrade.Add the dry ingredients; sugar, oats, flour, coconut, to a mixing bowl and mix them together thoroughly.Melt the butter gently in a pan with the tablespoon of golden syrup, stirring until combined.Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the melted butter and syrup.In a cup put ½ tsp of baking powder and add 2/3 tablespoons of boiling water*, mix and tip immediately into the well of melted butter and syrup. (It should froth up.)*(I like the biscuits chewy so I add 3 tablespoons of water and sometimes a little more. If you like your biscuits crunchy add only 2 tablespoons of water.)Mix all the ingredients together with the old worn spoon your mother gave you.Cover two flat trays with baking paper cut to size.Take some of the mixture and roll/squash it in the palm of your hand to make a circular disc slightly bigger than a 50p/50c piece and place on the baking paper on the tray. It should make about 24 biscuits, 12 to each tray.
Place in the oven for 15 /20 minutes. Keep an eye on them and remove when you think they look ready.
If you don’t have a fan oven the biscuits on the upper tray will bake quicker and may need to be removed before the lower tray. Half way through you could swap the upper and lower trays over.When cool, place the biscuits that you haven’t already eaten in an airtight container hide them in a place where no one else can find them except you.Enjoy at your leisure!
Racing fever!
We have had a lazy day. The only thing we did was water the plants and that was because we couldn't do it yesterday. Watering plants is not allowed on Mondays?!!! Crikey! It's a good job we are allowed to flush toilets!It may be Bonfire Night at home but down here everything has stopped for the Melbourne Cup! It is always held on the first Tuesday in November. I don't know why they chose a Tuesday, surely a Saturday would have been better. It is known as 'the Race that stops a nation,' so surely productivity must take a dip. They are very proud of it here and obviously reckon it is the greatest horse race in the World. It is certainly one of the richest with the prize money this year topping $6,200,000! (More than 3 and a half million pounds!)This year it is sponsored by Emirates and their tall leggy air hostesses are very noticeable, everywhere, towering over the tiny, squeaky voiced jockeys. There are 24 runners in this flat race...only 6 of the horses are Australian this year. The rest are from the Northern hemisphere. They all paraded through the city of Melbourne yesterday.It's the only time Dulcie has a bet and she has chosen horse number 5 ( her lucky number) Brown Panther. It is owned by ex - England football player Michael Owen. The favourite is horse number 6, Fiorente.Someone I had never heard of from Australian Musical Theatre sang the national Anthem 'Advance Australia Fair'. I guess I am going to have to learn the words for that!The horses race over 3,200 meters.Brown panther took an early lead and Dulcie was not pleased. She didn't want him to lead too early.'He needs to reign him in' she said.As if he could hear her the jockey did and he slipped back to third for much of the race.The race took just over 3 minutes and was won by the favourite Fiorente, an Australian horse trained by Gai Waterhouse. She becomes the first female Australian trainer to win the Melbourne Cup.Of the prize money, the owner(s) get 85%, Gai gets 10% and the jockey 5%...no wonder they are tiny, I bet they can hardly afford food!( We found out later one horse, Verema, broke it's leg at the 2000m mark and had to be destroyed. Shame!)Dulcie won nothing, Brown Panther came 8th, but Australia is delighted a home grown horse was triumphant.I couldn't give two hoots!
Breaking News!
Our Telly has survived Somali pirates and has just left Colombo in Sri Lanka. It is now heading for Singapore!
"Driving Miss Dulcie."
I was up at 6.40 am but did not retch! Normally when I have to get up early my body reacts to the un-natural break in routine and I start retching. I don’t know what is happening to me...perhaps it’s because I am now living upside down.I went with Will to work and drove the car back for today Dulcie and I had a busy morning and needed Roxy. Dulcie was up and ready when I got back at 7.45. She had a doctor’s appointment booked for 9.30 and was not looking forward to it at all. I am pretty sure it was the doctors that she was not looking forward to and not the fact that I would be driving her, but I couldn’t be certain.‘Are you a fast driver, Nick?’ she’d asked at tea yesterday.‘No,’ I said. Will raised his eyebrows in disbelief!I had some breakfast and then we spent some time clock watching. Dulcie went through the jobs we had to do: visit the fruiterer, and the butcher, go to the post office, shopping at Aldi and call at the bank. We looked at the clock, still not time to go. She read out the Aldi shopping list, still not time to go. I took some recycling down under the house and the rubbish out to the bin by the gate and then we sat and watched the clock some more. Finally at 8.45 she said ‘Let’s go!’Will had gone through the route a few times with me and I had checked it out on google maps but I was still pretty nervous as we got into the car. We set off and I drove very carefully, not going too fast, not getting to close to the car in front. I had ‘Dulcie Nav’;“Through these lights, straight ahead, right at the next lights...”The lights were against us. I ended up having to stop at every flippn’ set practically and a few times had to resist the urge to put my foot down and dash through.We arrived at the shopping precinct where the doctor’s was at 9.09 am.“We’ll go get the veggies,” she said.She linked my arm and we got the bag of oranges, a sugar loaf cabbage, a sweet potato and half a jap pumpkin. She likes her jap pumpkin. It’s the only thing that disappoints her about Aldi’s. They don’t sell jap pumpkin. I took the shopping back to the car while she waited on a bench and then we walked to the doctor’s.She had made them some biscuits. She always takes them a tin of her biscuits when she goes. They know her very well but when she had been making the appointment the other day she had had to spell out her name to the ‘new’ receptionist...three times! Dulcie was not impressed.As we got to the door she said ‘Oh it’s her!...D...U...L...C...I...E!”We went in.The new receptionist was sat behind the desk and an older lady was standing over her.“Hello, Dulcie” said the older lady and then went back to instructing the new receptionist about something.( I later found out from Dulcie that the older woman is called Glad.)I left her in the doctor’s and went to the post office to pay the water bill. When I got back to the doctor’s Dulcie was not in the waiting room so must have gone into see the doctor. Glad looked up as I walked in.“I’ll just wait here for Dulcie,” I said. Glad nodded and continued to chat to another woman customer sat in the waiting room. They were bemoaning the cost of parking at hospitals in the area. They looked at me a few times to try and draw me in but I didn’t feel qualified to comment so just kept on reading the posters; ‘The symptoms of whooping cough’, ‘Do you have shingles?’, ‘Can’t get rid of that cough?...No?..you’re going to die then aren’t you!’They started sharing tales of how they had had to make complaints against hospitals for one reason or another. I was still not qualified to join in. The phone rang and the new receptionist answered it. Glad went back to check on her and the other customer picked up a magazine.‘We support stopping smoking’ said another poster. ‘Having to rush for a wee? It’s not normal. We can help,’ exclaimed another.Glad finished instructing and came back to chat to the customer and they started sharing their ‘induced coma’ stories. Flippin’ heck! If it had been their experience with Pancreatitis I’d be laughing!The conversation flagged and then the customer said;‘So when do you leave?’It became clearer. Glad was leaving and she was shadowing/training the new receptionist.“Friday, hopefully,” she said but she pulled a face which the new receptionist could not see and which I and the other customer took to mean ‘but probably not because this twit needs a lot of help!’‘And what are your plans?’ asked the customer.‘Well, firstly get my will sorted out,’ said Glad.Yikes! I thought she must have a cough she can’t get rid of!“I need to do some cleaning. I need to get my eldest daughter over as well. Do you know she has 10 boxes piled up in her old room full of clothes. I’m going to say to her ‘for my Christmas present do you think you could you sort these?”I was getting drawn in. When Glad went on to say she had a friend who was 70 and the only way she could get into her son’s room, because it was so cluttered with stuff, was through the window, I smiled...that was it, I was now involved. They were looking at me as they were talking. What could I say?..What could I contribute?...I could feel my blood pressure going up...and I knew that was not good because another poster had warned me about it. Just when the situation was getting critical Dulcie appeared and I was rescued.Dulcie had to sign something and then Glad leaned over the counter took her hand and said;“I’m leaving, Dulcie, but don’t worry Marie will still be here and our new receptionist, here, will look after you.’“I had to spell my name out three times!’ said Dulcie indignantly.The new receptionist looked abashed and started to explain but Glad went on, cutting her off...“My husband died in September, and I have so much to sort out.” She came round the counter and gave Dulcie a big hug.“I’m very sorry” said Dulcie, “it happens to us all.” Men always die first seemed to be the message I was hearing. I was a bit uncomfortable about that.We left taking the empty biscuit tin with us.We called at the butchers for 6 pork chops and then it was back to Roxy and we headed off to Aldi. The ‘Dulcie Nav’ was starting to falter;“Are these the lights we turn at?”They were the right lights. I remember from looking at google maps.Dulcie chose the parking spot at Aldi;“That space there, under the tree.”We spent quite a long time looking at cereal. She picked a packet up, looked at it and then handed it to me saying “does it have iron in it?”“Yes,” I said.“But it’s bloody 99% fat free!” she said, “and I need all the fat I can get!”We got everything on the shopping list and headed back to the car. As I was packing the car I suddenly realised I didn’t know how to get back. I had checked out the route to the doctors and the route from the doctors to Aldi, but nor the route home. I just trusted my sense of direction and it worked out fine. We had one more stop before home...the bank.There was an empty parking space right by the door. Dulcie was happy with that. She linked my arm and we walked in. It was quiet. There were only two windows open and they both had customers being attended to, but we stood right by the ‘queue here’ sign.“Look at the arse on that!” Dulcie said out of the side of her mouth, looking at one of the customers leaning on the counter ahead. I laughed out loud! You could hardly miss it.The boss came out of a door behind the counter and opened up a new window.“Oh, we’ve got Bruce,” said Dulcie. We walked over.“Hello Bruce,” she said. I think he came out especially to serve her. I wondered what he thought of me. I may be a pussycat on the inside but on the outside I could pass for a nightclub bouncer!Later on after lunch, I drove on my own over to the local pharmacy to pick up her prescriptions.“Ah,’ smiled the pharmacist, ‘These are for Mrs Rodgers!’It’s absolutely true!Dulcie really is a legend!