Looking both ways

The word January - the name we have for the first month of the Gregorian calendar, comes from a Roman god. Janus, a god with two faces, looked both towards the future and the past. Big headed, he must have stored all the spent days in memory - far sighted - he must see clearly what is to come. Sometimes his two heads featured twin-like faces, sometimes one looked old and the other younger, one bearded and the other downy with youth.  He was both historian and forward thinker - an appropriate figurehead for the year.

The Romans thought of him as a deity of passage, of beginnings and endings. The doors to his temple stood open during times of war and closed during peace. He is the god of gates and doors. He has a yin yang quality, a tail chasing quality.He rocks back and forth between what we were and will be.

Some Papuan tribes too believe that we move ahead by walking backwards. Being able to see only the present moment and the days past, we face history and not the future. Like an oarsman in a rowboat we sit with our backs to the future, we look to the past to meet the approaching days. 

The last days of the old year seem tidily swept away by the middle of January. It is possible to write 2014 without error and scrubbing out. I'm able to remember the weekdays again after the fug of holidays, Mondays seem like Mondays again. It's a good month to lay plans, to outline projects, to make lists - to look forward like Janus, the uncertainty of things to come hedged by  his knowledge of history.

I like lists, even if not much gets achieved they are a witness to intention. Some of my lists are chores, some of them notes - shorthand reference to the way the days fall in a particular month. Above all January means cherries and swimming to me so here's a sort of list and a recipe for cherry cake.

January 1 through 31

north winds
blackberries
cicadas
house flies, horse flies, blowies
lawns that are bone dry
first tomatoes
bare feet, blisters, stubbed toes
electric fans
bees
jam
tennis, badminton, board games, cricket
snakes
picnics
beach towels hung along verandahs
cake: Christmas cake, cherry cake, pavlova
kitchen ants, bullants, ants in pants, Ant and Bee
sleep outs
sea swims
bindies
sunburn, ant bites, all sorts of itches
cherries, blackberries, apricots and mulberries
icecream, icy poles, ice cubes, eskies
bushfire
shorts and sandals
snakes
sweetcorn in standing rows

Sour Cherry Cake

The vinegar in this recipe piques the taste of the already sharp cherries and the geranium leaves infuse the plain cake batter with a rose fragrance. If you don't have rose scented geraniums you could leave out the vanilla pod and add a few drops of rose water to the batter.The cornmeal gives the cake crumb substance and is a good foil for the soft fruit.


250 grams soft butter
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon white balsamic vinegar
2 cups pitted morello cherries
1 1/4 cups self raising flour
1/4 cup medium ground cornmeal
pinch of sea salt ground between your finger tips
3/4 cup raw sugar
2 eggs, separated
1/2 cup milk
1 vanilla pod sticky seeds scraped into the milk
6 rose scented geranium leaves

Set the oven to preheat to 170 C 
Combine 100 grams butter, 1/4 cup sugar, and the vinegar in a bowl and then pour into a pan and heat over a medium flame until thick and bubbling. Add the morellos and stir to coat the fruit in syrup. Remove from the flame and cool.Butter and line a cake pan and lay the fresh clean geranium leaves face down over the bottom. Pour over the cherries in their syrup.
Mix flour, cornmeal, and salt in one bowl. In another beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. In a third beat the remaining butter until light and creamy and pale in colour. Pour sugar onto the whipped butter and beat for 2 - 3 minutes. Add the yolks one by one. At a low speed beat in flour and milk in which the vanilla seeds have steeped. With a light hand fold in egg whites. Pour the batter over the cherries and bake for 45 - 50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean - this can depend a little on your oven's fidelity and size. If your oven runs hot turn it down to 165 C half way through baking.

Old time funnies

Do what you will

It's a mite cold down south this Summer but the light is good. The days are long enough for holiday luxuries - waking slowly from sleep to read, eating late or early or not at all or making a meal from fruit cake and coffee and calling it lunch. No-one has to be anywhere except where they are right now and now can be lingered over. 


In the lovely lump of days between Christmas and the new year coming in we've established a routine of nothing much and it goes like this - someone - not me - when they wake to make tea and toast and bring it to bed. I'll be just conscious enough to decide on a jam. We have to three on the go: an apricot from a backyard tree old enough to be my mother, a sour cherry from local morellos and a mulberry and blackberry with that mix of floral and smoke scents that bring to mind a north wind and the whiff of a eucalypt fire. We have 14 jars of apricot on the shelf - some of them will go to good homes the rest are calling for toast and scones to be made and made often. We have three of the cherry and the same of the blackberry jam which elevates each jar to a rare and endangered status. If we are to have one of those on toast the bread better be up to the job. 

After breakfast in bed it's a book and or a chat or the radio, or nothing at all and a good look and the ceiling. When we are upright enough for wandering we might watch a ship slide along outside the window or a cluster of boats tack into the wind straight out from the lighthouse and back. If the cricket is on, the telly's on too with the sound switched down and the commentary coming from the radio instead. You can still hear the knock of the ball on the bat if that's your thing.

Soon it might be time for a walk. Or not. If we strike out along the beach we are bound to find sea glass and shells and sand to bring home and the dogs will paddle or swim and bark at each other and birds. 

Next lunch and a game. Maybe some friends will call in and we'll eat salad alongside a savoury tart followed up by stewed fruit or left over Christmas cake. Scrabble, Lotus or a Trivial Pursuit-like game called Parliament can be started in earnest, abandoned for something else and come back to later. 

There has been a jigsaw puzzle on the table for a week and no-one has needed the space for anything more important. Like a video run on a data poor phone its assembling itself in clumps of colour. Mark sits to it for a moment or two or an hour each day depending - I wouldn't dare drop a piece into place even if I found the piece and knew the place, unlikey as that might be. 

The afternoon can be as long or as short as you like. When the sun goes down is another matter. It's over almost before it's begun. Twilight is not our thing in the Antipodes. You can watch the sun dip into the sea or walk out into your own holy illumination. You can turn your back on the sky and see your shadow stretch out on the sand. 

In the summer slack you can do as you will.