Aye, I love me scrumpy, me

Team Benry made a quick trip to the market this morning (encouraged by a pregnant, grumpy and hungry Jennifer, and an equally grumpy, always hungry, not at all pregnant Henry), and managed to bag myself a big jug of authentic scrumpy. I’d seen it there before but balked at the idea of lugging around the huge flagon and looking like a severely misplaced wurzel, but today we were on our way to the car and I thought now is the time to strike!

Now, I love my cider, all kinds of cider. I love the really fizzy stuff that makes you warm and stupid, and I like the fizzy stuffy that just tastes nice on a hot day. So Mercury Cider, very nice! Cascade ‘Sparkling Apple Juice’, yummy. But do you know what, I love my scrumpy, only it’s always been a bit of a struggle to get.

I know that “scrumpy" can be used in many senses and means different things to different people, but to me, ‘Scrumpy’ means real cider. By that, I mean that it has to be made more or less entirely from apples, it has to have a kick, and it has to be made using something akin to ‘traditional methods’.

In essence, THIS means that the juice is pressed from the apples and then fermented naturally, without anything else much being added. The scrumpy is then left to mature and after a while will be ready to drink.

I guess that this means that scrumpy is a fair bit different to the ‘cider’ that most people will be familiar with (and cider that I like now and again). That stuff is mostly made from concentrated apple juice, sugar and water, then pasteurised and carbonated.

Here is scrumpy in its natural habitat
Now, I am happy to report that the highly scientific Krispy taste test has given the scrumpy that I got today the big thumbs up. To anyone in Tassie, I couldn’t recommend it more highly. As is the way in this ultra-modern, post-industrial economy, this little traditional independent operation has their own website too, South Country Cyder. Please support them, I hope to be buying this stuff off these guys for another fifty years!

As with all things on teh internets, there are many internets scrumpy-related, two of the better ones that I have found are The Scrumpy User Guide; and the very useful UKcider wiki. So if you're not already a scrumpy freak out guy or girl, give it a burl, you'll never look back!

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Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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