The Woman in Black – Day 20 NaBloPoMo 2017

20 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

The Woman in Black 2012. Directed by James Watkins.

This is quite an interesting film in several respects. Firstly, it was based on the wonderful novella of the same name by English writer, Susan Hill. Despite its Edwardian setting and reading like a period Gothic horror, it was originally published in 1983.

Secondly, it was part of the re-emergence of Hammer Film Productions, that most famous British horror studio. In the 60’s and 70’s Hammer was the spiritual home for so many people like me, who grew up watching Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Thirdly, it was the first bona fide adult screen role that Daniel Radcliffe took on post Harry Potter. And despite the fact (to me at least) he looks almost impossibly young, he really brings a lot of heart to the role of Arthur Kipps and undeniable star power to the whole film. And he pretty much carries the movie. I particularly enjoyed his scenes with Ciaran Hinds, and by the end, found myself genuinely caring about poor Arthur.

Despite being a fairly standard tale in many respects, this is a genuinely fine old-school horror film, with good measures of tension, scares and pathos. It also caused quite a stir in the UK when the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) decided to rate it a 12A instead of a more appropriate 15. The producers offered to cut a few scenes in order to get the lower rating – and capitalise on Radcliffe’s huge box office appeal to young audiences.

Nevertheless, this is still a good and very entertaining film. I think it’s worth a watch, if only for Radcliffe taking his first steps to shake off the shadow of the boy wizard.

Apples! – Day 19 NaBloPoMo 2017

19 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Fruit, Produce, Urban Farming Tags: , , , , ,

Spring is such a busy time around here. There’s so much to do – planting, weeding and watering are starting to take up a lot of my time – apart from the daily routines (aka playing with the bunnies and talking/singing to chickens) and making sure the greenhouse doesn’t dry out. And there’s always lots of eggs and plenty of salad greens to eat.

Berry fruit is starting to set and I think we’ll have a good crop of raspberries again this year. I was incredibly heartened to see my grape vine is setting fruit. It’s a pretty common Thompson’s Seedless table grape, but I planted it about 18 months ago to climb up over the chicken’s run and give them some shade through summer. It’s really thrived after I pruned it back in early winter and I’m hoping the fruit will make it to maturity. I’ve got a couple of other varieties that I bought in very small pots and I’m growing on. Hopefully, they’ll be ready to plant out at the end of autumn next year.

The vine is strong enough that I’ve been harvesting the biggest, most perfect leaves to preserve in brine and make dolmades, one of my favourite snacks. I’ve got enough now to make up a 1 kg jar (about 60 leaves) and I’ll do that sometime this coming week.

I’ve been experimenting with wicking boxes and barrels the last few years to cut down the amount of watering. This system uses a water reservoir that I fill up through a poly pipe and run off outlet just below the soil level so the plants don’t get inundated. I’m having a lot of success growing fruit trees on dwarfing rootstock by this method. In particular, the apples I planted in winter 2016 are doing incredibly well. I bought a Pomme de Neige (aka Snow Apple or Lady in the Snow), Sturmer, McIntosh and Royal Gala (all bare rooted from a local grower). They’ve all thrived in their wicking barrels and after taking all the embryonic fruit off last summer and light pruning this winter, they’re developing into healthy and strong small trees. I’m going to let them bear this time and I’m especially thrilled with the Royal Gala, which will be the first to harvest.

Baby Royal Gala

Now that we’re past the windiest part of spring (fingers crossed!) I’m going to thin the fruit soon – the Pomme de Neige is particularly laden – but I’m very happy with their progress. Despite living in Tasmania (traditionally called the Apple Isle), it can be hard to find good apples and difficult to know if they’ve been sprayed. It’ll be fabulous to have some home grown beauties! ❤

 

Garlic Harvest Blues – Day 18 NaBloPoMo 2017

18 Nov 2017 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , ,

One of the great things about keeping a blog is being able to compare harvests over time. And one crop that usually grows really well for me is garlic. We use it a lot so I grow plenty, and this year I thought with three beds, I might have enough to see our household through the year. And in the nearly eight years I’ve been living here I’ve only ever had a garlic crop fail twice, once about five years ago and this year.

My maincrop variety (like so many great gardening stories) started out with a few cloves someone gave me. I think it was a standard Tasmanian purple skin (but who knows?) and it keeps quite well for six or seven months. Over the years I’ve built up my stocks, only keeping the best and biggest cloves to replant the following autumn. And I carefully rotate beds, mulch them well and leave them to get on with it. Generally, there’s not a lot to do except weeding – they don’t like competition.

I carefully checked a couple that were starting to die back a few weeks ago, and was shocked to see as I eased the soil back that there was very little bulb development. Also, they were slow to get started and we had a lot of rain – so much that it looks like 30-40% rotted in the ground. I’ve heard from friends that I’m not the only one to have problems this year – but I don’t know if that makes me feel better or more concerned!

Harvesting garlic as I’ve said before, is something of an arcane art. Too early and the heads aren’t properly developed, but leave it too late and bulbs will split and don’t keep. After some very warm weather and a thunderstorm last week, I decided it was time to pull the worst affected bed.

It was pretty “meh” compared to previous harvests but I suppose is better than none at all.

Part of this year’s poor garlic harvest

The next bed doesn’t seem to be as bad, the plants seem stronger and stems thicker, but it’s dying back and will need to come out in the next week or so.

The final bed looks like this season’s winner, all named varieties I bought from a local specialist grower, specifically for their long keeping qualities – planted later and correspondingly will be harvested later. And they’re looking very good – thanks Letetia 🙂 I think I might be changing my maincrop variety next year!

It was warm out in the yard today, a really beautiful spring day, and while I took a break in the shade of the plum tree, I found some very well formed reminders that summer’s just around the corner ❤

Prune plums forming on the tree

Have a great Saturday everyone and see you tomorrow 🙂

All Charged & Ready – Day 17 NaBloPoMo 2017

17 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Inspiration, Writing Tags: , , , ,

So, after a good night’s sleep and a fabulous session this morning with The Superstars, I did all my enrollment stuff for next year’s online study. And (as always) I feel incredibly invigorated by having a study plan 🙂

As is usual with undergraduate degrees, I need to do 24 units of study. I’ve just finished the 18th and start Documentary Screenwriting next week. So at the end of next year, I’ll only have one unit left!

The last unit will be an independent project, so I need to start thinking very seriously about what I want to do. Because my degree will cover two major streams, I can do something writerly and creative – like a suite of short stories or poems – or a scholarly screen studies project – perhaps an analysis of a particular director or suite of films. Also, other students I’ve chatted with, managed to get placements in organisations or private businesses to do specific research, but I’m not sure if there’s anyone in Hobart I could do that with!?!

I am very undecided!

Time to contact my course convener I think, and have a serious talk about my project!

In the meantime dear reader, any suggestions you might have would be gratefully accepted ❤

Have a great Friday, I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Sage flowers – for wisdom!

Time to Sleep – Day 16 NaBloPoMo 2017

16 Nov 2017 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Creative Writing, Inspiration, Music, Performance, Produce, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Well, that was a ride and a half!

I’ve just submitted an 1800 word short story and 500 word exegesis for my Speculative Fiction assignment and I feel like I could sleep for a week. Unfortunately, there isn’t time for that!

Tomorrow (Friday here in the southern hemisphere) is the day I get to play music with The Superstars at Oak Tasmania, and we’re deep into preparation for a private function we’re performing at next weekend. These men and women are simply fantastic and I’m truly blessed to be able to write and perform with them ❤

Maybe I’ll be able to post some photos next week of our performance – I always love action shots 🙂

Meanwhile, there’s lots of gardening that needs doing over the weekend, a jam session at a friend’s place to go to and lots of new movies to see. I’m particularly keen to check out the Kenneth Branagh Murder on the Orient Express, Killing of a Sacred Deer, Loving Vincent and Jungle. Let me know if you’ve seen any of these films, I always like to hear other people’s opinions 🙂

I’ll leave you with a wonderful discovery I made in the greenhouse yesterday – the first Rocoto chilli flower for the season ❤

Love is the Thing – Day 15 NaBloPoMo 2017

15 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Writing Tags: , , , ,

A very quick (but important) post to mark the midway point of this year’s NaBloPoMo.

This morning my Facebook and Twitter feed turned literally into images of rainbows and love hearts. The results of the national marriage equality survey were handed down by the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning, and it was quite a resounding cry of “yes” from the nation, 61.6% in fact.

It was glorious, wonderful, moved me to tears and was entirely expected.

Heartfelt congratulations to all my LGBTI friends – but it isn’t over yet! A bill was introduced in the Senate this afternoon but there are already grumbling from conservative members to strengthen religious exemptions.

After a quick break to celebrate, we have to follow through and make sure that the marriage act is formally changed by parliament.  Why? Because the ability for every Australian to choose how they life matters, because human rights matter, because love matters ❤

 

I Saw the Light – Day 14 NaBloPoMo 2017

14 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Inspiration, Movie Review, Music, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

I Saw the Light (2015) Directed by Marc Abraham.

This is a movie I’ve been meaning to watch for quite some time – yes, it’s been in my pile of shame for too long! – and I’m really sorry I left it so long to give it this a first viewing.

Hank Williams had a tragically brief life but meteoric career and penned songs that remain classics of the country and western genre. He also inspired artists such as Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan and can be seen as something of a stepping stone in popular music from the 40’s across to the post-war boom in record sales and interest in celebrity.

As much as I enjoy Tom Hiddleston’s diverse body of work, I seriously wondered if he could pull off portraying Williams but he really delivers the goods – who knew he could sing as well! He is matched by Elizabeth Olsen (also on leave from MCU duties) as his first wife Audrey, and the chemistry between them on screen is great. It is shot with great care and obvious love for the material, (kudos to DoP, Dante Spinotti) which gives the whole film an appropriately melancholic air. This was a passion project for director Marc Abraham, who started working on this as far back as 2009 and it is lovingly crafted in a very traditional bio-pic manner.

However, I can see why this was a box office flop. Almost the entire film is taken up with Williams’ relationships and his ongoing battles with alcoholism and painkiller addiction. While that’s undoubtedly the story behind his death at 29, I would have loved to have seen a closer, critical examination of his music and songwriting.

A beautiful looking film, with a stellar performance by Hiddleston – good but not great.

Star Trek: Discovery – Day 13 NaBloPoMo 2017

13 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , ,

Star Trek: Discovery (2017-) CBS Television Studios. Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman.

As many of you are probably aware, I’m very much a movie person rather than television but in recent weeks I’ve become completely hooked on Star Trek: Discovery.

I’ve always loved science fiction and I’m old enough to remember the original when it first aired. Up until now, I’ve always thought of the Star Trek universe as reasonably vanilla but Discovery is a completely different beast. Characters are quite real, conflicted, have agendas outside of Starfleet, suffer very human maladies, like PTSD, and (despite all the standard space opera shenanigans) it has splashes of wry humour.

The cast are all excellent but Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp and Jason Isaacs are absolute standouts and the scripts have been very solid.

I’ve just watched the first half of season one, apparently it will be resuming in January and it has been signed up for a second season. I can’t wait!

Let me know what you think and I’ll see you tomorrow 🙂

A Sunday Sidestep – Day 12 NaBloPoMo 2017

12 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Creative Writing, Inspiration, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I’m coming down to the pointy end of another unit of online study, so this is going to be a brief blog post today.

This unit has concentrated on genre fiction, specifically Gothic and speculative fiction and despite being behind now with weekly work, I’ve really enjoyed it enormously. Starting with Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) we moved on to Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark (2001) for a taste of contemporary American Gothic. (I honestly found it an intensely disappointing experience.)

Leaving vampire fiction, we moved on to speculative works and Jean Rhys’ stunning post-colonial Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), one of my favourite novels. The thread of our study, looking at how Gothic fiction was melded into more speculative themes reminded me of that other retelling of the Jane Eyre story, Wild Island (2016) by Jennifer Livett, which was just as good to read the second time around.

Then, the course came to Margaret Atwood’s brilliant and disturbing The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and I confess I spent way too long re-reading it and watching the recent television series. But Atwood’s prose is wonderful and I find this book inspires me both as a writer and as a feminist.

Now, in the final weeks, as I’m writing my own piece of speculative fiction, we are reading and discussing Paolo Bacigalupi’s short story “Pump Six” from Pump Six and Other Stories (2008). The main threads of  Bacigalupi’s fiction are speculations on the future of humankind, based on many current and often divisive environmental and socio-political concerns. He paints a realistically grim picture of the future which I’ve found stays in my mind long after I’ve read it. I’ve started but never finished his novel The Windup Girl (2009) and I wonder if subconsciously found it too scary. But I plan to go back and read it as soon as I’m able.

So, the rest of today I’m playing catch up with academic readings and responses, trying to add a little more to my own fiction and scoping out an accompanying exegesis. For the most part it’s been a really wonderful few months living with these works and I’d recommend all of them to you – except for the Charlaine Harris – but at least I know and can articulate why I don’t like that kind of fiction.

What do you like to read? I love to hear your thoughts and recommendations so please leave me a comment below. Take care everyone and see you tomorrow 😀

The Annual Egg Glut Games – Day 11 NaBloPoMo 2017

11 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Baking, Chickens, Cooking, Produce, Urban Farming Tags: , , , ,

 

Despite being mostly older ladies, my six lovely chickens are laying for all they’re worth at the moment. So, as we do every year, I’m giving away eggs to family and friends and making a lot of egg-based dishes. We’ve had custards and cakes, hard boiled eggs in salads and whole egg mayonnaise.

At the moment, I’m also suffering from a spring glut of salad greens – life is tough (not)! So, I picked a bunch of vegetables this morning and made a rich and luscious pastry-free quiche for lunch. It’s a very easy recipe and I often make it as a vegetarian meal as eggs are a great source of protein. But today, I added a couple of rashers of diced bacon, fried with garlic. It also works really well with cooked and shredded chicken, pork or cooked white haricot beans or chickpeas. I’d also recommend adding chopped fresh Italian parsley or chives, it’s really dependent on what you have on hand.

 

Deb’s Vegetable & Bacon Quiche (Serves 4)

 

6-8 free range eggs

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 thick bacon rashers

2 small leeks, washed and chopped (can be substituted with shallots or spring onions)

4-5 cups shredded green vegetables (spinach, silverbeet, kale, collards, rocket, pak choy, mustard greens)

1/2 cup milk (can be substituted with 1/4 cup cream)

1/4 cup plain (all purpose) flour

2 cups of grated Colby cheese (Cheddar would be fine)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

a little grated nutmeg

Method: 

Preheat an oven to 160 C (320 F). Dice the bacon and fry gently. Add the minced garlic towards the end, taking care not to burn it. Take off the heat and allow to cool. Whisk the eggs until frothy, grate in nutmeg, mix in the milk (or cream) and flour.

Using a fork or mixing spoon, gradually add the chopped vegetables and grated cheeses. Stir through the cooled cooked bacon, making sure everything is well incorporated and coated in the egg mixture.

Pour into a greased 20 cm (8 inch) souffle dish and bake for 45-55 minutes. This makes a soft-set quiche, but if you want it firmer, I recommend covering with foil and baking a further 10 minutes.

Serve alone as a light lunch or with a salad for dinner.

Let me know if you try this and what you used in your mix – I love your feedback!

Take care and I’ll see you tomorrow ❤

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