i have measured out my life with coffee spoons

This is possibly the most random post I've ever done, but I have a thing for coffee foam art. I like looking for faces or patterns in the foam. These were some super cool ones I found on my flickr travels. How cool would it be to be able to do one of these in your morning latte?! I think you can do barista courses somewhere where they teach you how to do these very cool foam pictures. I remember a place in Richmond, Melbourne, where the coffees were works of art, and you were loathe to drink them and melt the little Mona Lisa in your mug.

A seahorse!

A butterfly!

A witch?

A flower!

Richard!

Heart!

This is starting to sound like the roll call for Captain Planet or some such.

Teddy bear!

Black cat!

Squiggles!

Panda!

Bunny!

Who feels like a coffee now? Ha ha.

Anyway. Reasons Green Ink has been quiet lately:

• London has been experiencing some beautiful weather lately, especially on the weekends - and hence staying inside in front of a computer hasn't held much appeal!
• I've been working on an article for a friend's magazine
• I've been reading a lot
• It was my birthday on Tuesday and the celebrations spilled over into several days! It was the best birthday ever (more on that later)
  
• Work has zapped quite a bit of my energy
• I've written posts but then was worried they were just stupid/boring so didn't post them
  
• I've had a few existential crisises - in my head only, of course, but it has affected my motivation slightly. Funny that I've just posted heaps of coffee pictures and I'm reminded of a line in the early seasons of Friends where Rachel says, "everyone I know is either getting married, or getting pregnant, or getting promoted....and I'm getting coffee! And it's not even for me!!" I need to make a list somewhere of my Top 10 Motivators and drag it out whenever I'm having a "I can't do this" day! Reading this and this has helped (I will write my thoughts on this more later)
  
• About to have a weekend filled with sun, sight-seeing and (hopefully) good wine and Portuguese custard tarts. Maybe I'll do some writing on the beach.
• I am very happy, and that tends to be when the days melt into each other.
  

Now I'm off to grab a latte!

a mirror we should all have

I took this at a friend's housewarming party a few weeks ago! She has a charming, tiny little flat, full of hidden steps, pink walls and chandeliers - it's where I imagine a grown-up Alice in Wonderland would live.

This was in her bathroom - and I couldn't resist!

What a lovely sentiment to be reminded of when you look in the mirror.

Sometimes when we strive for perfection, we're so busy focusing on what we don't like about ourselves or our current situation, that we lose sight of the good things.

I was reminded of this at the end of last year. I was writing a little "sum up" of 2008, and I felt this incredible heaviness in my chest and tears freezing on my eyelashes as I wrote, because I was writing about the horrible events of last year, all the things that wore me into the ground and destroyed a lot of my confidence and faith, in both others and myself. I didn't really want to share this with anyone - it made me feel terrible writing it. What good was I doing spreading the negativity? So I decided to only write down the good things that had happened in 2008. To my surprise, there were a lot of them. A lot. And I hadn't even realised it. I had spent most of that year very unhappy, always thinking about the things that had gone wrong and upset me, without realising that a lot of good things were going on at the same time. It was an important, humbling lesson for me.

Perfection is a dangerous aspiration, I think. If we go through life expecting perfection, we're always going to end up disappointed on some level. Success, to me, is happiness. If you’re happy, you’re loved and you’re safe, that’s what counts. True friends only care about your happiness and won’t judge you on how you got there.

Somewhere in our lives, if we think hard enough, is at least one person who loves us just the way we are. They don't care what size jeans we wear, what our hair looks like, how many chins we have in photos. They don't care what job we do, how much we earn, or how many letters we have after our name. They don't think we're stupid if our dress gets caught in our backpack on the walk to work (true story! Very embarrassing), or if we get some hot chocolate on our nose (again, true story). They just love us. They see the things that we, in our quest for perfection, often can't.

Try and see yourself through that loving person's eyes. Forgive yourself for your flaws - we all have them. Love yourself as they love you. In their eyes, you already are everything you'll ever need to be.

a space of one's own

This beautiful brooch is by Sophie Isobel Designs. In fact, I love her whole blog - it's gorgeous.

I am in the process of determining where I am likely to get the most writing done. As in physical space. I don't get an awful lot of writing done at home. The only time I did was when I was a child, and when I first moved to London and lived in a share house in Clapham, with a bunch of other Aussies and Kiwis. I had a gorgeous little white room with a mantlepiece, on which I lined up the precious handful of books I'd brought with me. I had 1960's movie posters and posters of art-deco liquor ads on the walls. I had a desk in the corner of the room, where I set up my now battered laptop (it had travelled over three continents with me at that point) and had posters and postcards from my travels everywhere. That room was my sanctuary.

I am trying to create a dedicated space to write at home, but it's tricky, as it is a small flat. I've been delving through my flat scrapbook for ideas, and also The Guardian's Writers Rooms series. Miranda Seymour's room is so luscious, with its four-poster bed and everything! My computer and desk is also set up in the bedroom, so I've been using this for ideas.

I also read something wonderful today - an interview over at dovegreyreader with Helen Garner - an Australian writer whose work I've always enjoyed, if felt a bit divided by at times. Helen was asked about where she writes, and she responded with the following words which evoked nothing but simple pure space in which to truly work:

"I never understand how anyone can work at home. There are so many worthy displacement activities available. You put on a load of washing, which means that in half an hour you have to get up from the desk to hang it on the line. On the way along the hall you see dust and can’t go back to work till you’ve run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet. And there’s that packet of biscuits that will go stale if you don’t finish them today, etc. So I rent an office in an old building two suburbs away. I can pedal over there in about 20 minutes, or take the tram if I’m lazy. I try to get here by 10am. It’s a small, quite shabby room without a view. Table, chair, lamp, bookshelf, sky-blue filing cabinet. Computer, printer. No phone, no internet. Mat, pillow, cotton blanket for a nap after lunch. Jug to make me drink more water. A lot of pencils. A mechanical sharpener. Dictionary. Thesaurus. Scissors. Hand cream. No one else has ever come here and I hope no one ever will. Sometimes I go for months without working, and of course even when I don’t use the space I have to keep forking out the rent; but just thinking that the office exists makes the rest of my life possible."

It makes the rest of my life possible.

I like that.

In the meantime, as I try and sort my space out, the library a mere set of footsteps from my front door is proving to be a place of productive solitude. Libraries usually are for me. I remember my first few weeks in London, spending every Saturday in the Victoria library, writing my play. I had no money after three months of travelling, so couldn't go and indulge in red velvet cupcakes and lattes in Ladbroke Grove. A blessing really. It was a wet summer, I remember, and not wanting to lose my space, I would sneak in lunch and hide it in the pocket of my laptop case, breaking off bits of bread when I thought no one was watching. When it was sunny, I would write in Hyde Park. A friend would sometimes meet up with me, and bring beer.

Soon after, once I had money, a job and a place to live (obtained in that order!), I discovered The British Library. All of a sudden, that was the place to be on Saturdays. I remember discovering a book there that I hadn't seen since I was a child in Hobart, in my friend's living room, the chipped bust of Nefertiti on her bookshelf smiling down on me. I remember almost crying with happiness, as it even had her signature in the front.

And of course, a lot of my writing here has been done in cafes. My local apostrophe, Opus when I lived in Clapham, the Poetry Cafe, the Camera Cafe, Nordic Bakery, to name but a few. There are few things that can induce me to write so well as cinnamon buns and good coffee. In my new neighbourhood I've now discovered a few more.

So perhaps I don't need to rush on the space of my own - as there are already so many spaces in this city that I consider mine anyway.

My last thought today - I'd like to thank the gorgeous Lori for my first ever blogging award:

This has truly made my day - thank you Lori! For those of you who don't know Lori and her work, head over and have a look - she's a truly inspiring lady, and writes so eloquently about her passions, the writing life, and more to the point, about living the best life you can. Reading her blog is like having a lovely soothing cup of chamomile tea - it tastes great and makes you feel good!

To share the love, I'd like to pass the award on to Red Bird, whose words make my soul soar. I've been enjoying her immensely and admire her talent greatly. The fact she loves Frida Kahlo as much as me seals the deal!

Now I must see if I can cast a spell for good weather on my birthday next week. I do not fancy having cakes and champagne in the park, in the rain. Birthday fairies, work your magic please.

crumbs!

Here's a recipe I mentioned a few months ago that I made again last week. I yet again turned the leftovers into salad, which was divine! Enjoy!

Cashew crumb-coated Quorn fillets

serves 2 + one lunch the next day

3 Quorn fillets (or small chicken breasts)

1 slightly stale wholemeal pitta bread, torn into small chunks
50g cashew nuts
Fresh herbs of your choice - I used rosemary, basil and oregano

1 egg, lightly beaten and seasoned with salt and pepper

1 unwaxed lemon, to serve

Vegetables of your choice, to serve


1. Preheat the oven to 190 C. Coat a small baking tray with cooking spray.

2. Defrost your Quorn fillets briefly in the microwave to take the edge off, they don't need to be fully defrosted, just little bendier! If you're using meat, make sure it's fully defrosted.

3. In a blender or food processor, place the pitta bread, cashews and herbs and then blitz until well combined and there are no big lumps left. It will be green (or pretty close!). You could add little lemon juice or zest if you like. Place the crumbs in a tray or on a plate, so you can press them on to the fillets easily.

4. Put the beaten egg in a tray, or in a shallow bowl, so you can dip the fillets in easily.

5. Dip the fillets in the beaten egg, and then place them in the tray/plate of crumbs. Press the crumbs evenly on the top and bottom, leaving a reasonably thick crust.

6. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. If you're cooking chicken it might need to be longer, depending on thickness. Test with a skewer if you're not sure.

7. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over the fillets before serving with your choice of fresh vegetables. I served it with Zana's garlic herb roast potatoes and steamed beans and carrots.

8. I said make 3 so you can have one for leftovers the next day! Ha ha. You can heat up the fillet if you like, or serve it cold. You could have it in any salad combination you like, but this was a real winner - toss the strips with baby spinach leaves, strips of red pepper, artichoke hearts, 1/2 a small avocado and a few of the leftover roast potatoes (if you have them). Drizzle with a little more lemon juice or, if you have nothing for which you need to atone, a little kewpie mayonnaise.

the doorbells of florence

Photo from Andrew Losowsky's Amazon Blog

"all stories are true, and some of them actually happened"
- italian proverb

I happen to love the sound of doorbells. That's why I chose that sound for my text message alert on my phone. Every time I get a text, it's like there's someone at my door.

You never know who that someone is. It might be someone selling something, a neighbour asking to borrow an egg or for you to turn your music down, a friend who's come by to surprise you. Whoever they are, every one of those people has a story to tell. Inside all everyday interactions there is something else, something deeper.

I have always been fascinated by the details in the everyday. When I see interesting looking people on the street, in cars that pass me, in restaurants, on the tube, I wonder about them. Who are they? What do they do? What do they believe? What secrets do they have? What might have happened to them yesterday, last year, or age three, to make them who they are now?

Everyone and everything has a story, I believe. I've written many stories and poems about this, attempting to peel back the layers.

Andrew Losowsky did this with a series of photographs he took in Florence in 2003 of various doorbells he found dotted throughout the city. For each photograph, he wrote a short story, detailing the lives of the imagined residents. He self-published this collection of stories a few years later, and it is now being brought out in hardback by Chronicle Books in June.

Now this series of short stories has been adapted for the theatre. The Doorbells of Florence debuted this week at the Rosemary Branch Theatre in London, a dark and intimate space just perfect for telling tales. Tales of secrets, chance encounters, debt collection, undelivered parcels and burglary (among many other things!).

The stories themselves are exquisite, and I could have quite happily listened to them all night (and now want to get the book!). The cadences and rhythms of the language were mesmerising, made all the more so by the physical animation of the performers, Samuel Collings and Jennifer Jackson. Director Tom Wright has created a somewhat mystic playworld for these two unnamed characters who narrate the stories. Wright said that in producing Doorbells he wanted to "put a bit of wonder back into an increasingly bleak world", and I think this is exactly what has been achieved. It's a strange sensation when you get caught up in this little world where doorbells aren't just doorbells - they are portals to loss, failure, love, surprise -which strike chords in us all.

The duo operate hypnotically in the space, with their opening scenes reminiscent of Chaplin's silent films - their gestures exaggerated, comic and loaded with meaning. Eventually, the characters discover the slide projector, holding the photos of the doorbells that inspired each story, and so the show begins. Each story is punctuated by a physical gesture by the performers - a dive, a sidestep, a start as though the floorboard had live wires on it - signifying a beginning or an end. We do not know who they are, or what they are, but it doesn't seem important - the real characters are in the stories.

Interspersed with dancing and rich, throaty Italian music, the stories are a pleasing combination of short and long - some unravel like rolls of ribbon, others are only a sentence. A slide of an ornate lions head doorknocker, rather than an electronic bell, for example - "Luigi likes it old school," is the narrator's description, nothing more. My favourite photo was of a doorbell for several flats, with a bandaid over one of the nameplates. "No one knows what happened here," is the taut, simple truth.

Some stories were more compellingly interpreted than others, but the ones that really work do stand out with their precision of delivery, gentle humour and immediacy. You can almost smell the dust in the hidden apartment story.

The space itself is very interesting too. Liam Shea has created a set which at first appears to be stark and unadulterated, a simplicity that you assume is deliberate so as not to overwhelm and detract from the stories. But as the tales are told, one begins to recognise elements of the story that is being narrated in the physical space. Perhaps I didn't interpret it correctly, but eventually I got the sense that these two performers were under the floorboards in the dust-smothered secret flat they were describing. And by encasing the stories in this space, there is this sense of both restriction and freedom. The two performers are quite outstanding, particularly Collings, who is playful yet intense throughout.

The play is both intensely text-driven (as you would expect) but at the same time as it is a really physical piece of work - there is enough action on stage to keep your attention from wandering. The dream-like yet somewhat claustrophobic space the characters inhabit as they tell the stories is the perfect showcase for the exquisite text. It showed me that literature and theatre can happily coexist, as both are founded on the same premise - storytelling. Often when writing plays myself, I have struggled to take off my novelists cap and think of the play as a living, breathing thing that isn't designed to sit on a shelf. This performance made me rethink all that.

Storytelling, in whatever form, will work if it is seductive enough. And as challenging as the everyday world is, as we are drawn into the layers beneath in Doorbells we know that it is safe, for both the characters and for us. The final story, where all the threads are pulled together and we finally learn the origins of the two euro coin (a motif dotted througout the stories), reminded me why I love literature, and why I go to see theatre: I enter a space where the world no longer makes sense, but it doesn't frighten me. And I emerge from it with a different perspective.

Even stories have stories, I discovered last night. I don't know if I'll ever look at doorbells quite the same way again!

If you're in London and like theatre, do go and see it - I hope you'll come away as inspired as I was. And to sweeten the deal, there's a pub downstairs, with plants on the window sills, that does killer chips.

~~~

See the show:

The Doorbells Of Florence
Until Sat May 30
Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Rd, N1 3DT
7.30pm, tickets £10

Website for the show: http://losowsky.com/doorbells/play/

Buy the book:

The Doorbells of Florence by Andrew Losowsky at amazon.co.uk

Andrew Losowsky's Amazon blog is also worth a read too - the story about self publishing is very inspiring!

chocolate wasabi fudge cake

Take this:

and this:

and a bunch of other usual cake ingredients, and you get this:

TS and I shared a chocolate wasabi cake on our very first date, nearly two years ago. It has always reminded me of that sweet time of getting to know each other, gazing at each other shyly across the table, reaching for the same part of the cake at the same time and having our forks clink together.

I made it in honour of Lulu and Shun, who were married today. And for baby Madeleine, who came home from hospital yesterday. What a happy day today has been!

~~

Wasabi Chocolate Cake
Originally sourced from AboutMyArea but I have modified slightly for my own tastes

Ingredients

For the cake

400g plain flour

250g caster sugar

100g brown sugar

75g cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

3 eggs

1 150g tub Total 0% Greek Yoghurt

1 tbsp vanilla extract

175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

300ml ice water

For the Wasabi fudge icing

100g dark chocolate

250g unsalted butter

275g icing sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1-2 tsp Wasabi paste,(to taste)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/gas 4. Butter and line with grease proof paper the bottom of two 20 com sandwich tins.

2. In a large bowl mix together the flour, cocoa, sugars, baking powder, salt and bicarbonate of soda.

3. In a large jug whisk together the eggs, sour cream and vanilla until blended. Add melted butter and ice water.

5 Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and beat in well.

6. Divide the batter between the two prepared tins and bake the cake for 50 - 55 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake.

7. Allow the cake to cool on a wire rack for 15-20 minutes, if you try to ice it before it's cool your icing will melt and become greasy.

8. To make the icing, melt the chocolate and let it cool slightly.

9. In another bowl beat the butter until soft and creamy and combine the sifted icing sugar. Beat until smooth and then add the cooled chocolate, vanilla and Wasabi. Beat until smooth and glossy, check the strength of the Wasabi and add more if necessary. I liked it to have a distinct heat!

10. Using about ¼ of the icing sandwich the cake together and place of a serving dish the ice the top and sides of the cake.

Note: this cake improves on keeping, so if you can make it advance, ice it, wrap in foil and leave in the fridge for two days before eating. The crumb gets more moist and the icing gets thick and creamy. So good!

from joy to joy

From smut-to-go tumblr, via weheartit.com

Thank you to a lovely reader who sent this to me.

~~

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, to adore it .

There are days we live
from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

ralph waldo emerson rocks!

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are so many Emerson quotes I love, but I think this one is my favourite.

look what i got

And I've also received an email from Topshop, asking me why I haven't used my new card yet :P It will be my birthday dress, I think.

Well, I've moved and am loving my new pad. Everything I adore in London is at my fingertips, which has made me very happy. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll take some photos on my walk to work, so you can see some of the things I get to see every day!

I've also started swimming again, as there is an amazing pool and leisure centre five minutes walk from the new flat. TS and I checked it out today. He did six laps, I did ten! We came back feeling very refreshed and relaxed. It felt great to wear my triathlon bathers and cap again! I hadn't been swimming (not properly anyway!) for well over a year, and have missed it! Now that we're more settled I can get into a good routine with my exercise again.

Otherwise, it's full steam ahead for me - I'm planning to put those new runners to excellent use :) More soon!