On my soapbox

Veronica and Evelyn have been granted gate leave which means they are both home for the weekend. Evelyn’s seizures are not registering on the EEG machines which is a worry and as far as I know her MRI results were clear. The Doctors have eliminated all the easy reasons why my tiny little grand daughter is having these seizures. Ev is not having multiple strokes, there is not a brain tumour, her liver isn’t failing, her bile ducts are not blocked and it isn’t Epilepsy.

One of the advantages of living in the 21st century and having a broad social media network, is that Veronica accidentally found another Mother whose little baby is doing almost exactly the same things as Evelyn. It is terribly isolating when your child is unwell with some rare condition as I know only too well and so I am pleased that these two women have connected. The potential for their respective medical teams to connect up as well is also a possibility that keeps me level.

Such is my ability to detach myself from reality that I will now spend the weekend very determinedly not worrying about Evelyn and I will drown my brain in the specifics of my ceramics instead.

The upside of using up my weeks allotment of petrol driving to and fro from the hospital, is that I am stuck here at home and I have no way to avoid doing any work.

So I will be glazing pots all weekend ready to take a suitcase full of my work to Adelaide to sell at the Triennale’s Sunday Suitcase Sale.

These pots are the ones I will be working on, they will have an iron oxide wash on the outside of them to bring out the texture. Texture that was made with a rock my friend Meegan brought me back from Corfu. The inside will be a deep glossy blue or green.

They should have a final glaze that looks the same as these cups.

Now for the Chicken update. Natasha who owns the delightfully quirky Three Windows Gallery at Oatlands gave me two hens to keep my Rooster happy. As it stands at the moment I have two roosters left out of the original three I rescued and some time this weekend I will only have one rooster.

I told a friend that I was going to eat two of the abandoned roosters and she was appalled, her Mother even went as far as to tell me that it was disgusting that I should be killing the roosters to eat. I was in a hurry to get down to the hospital to See Veronica and Evelyn so I didn’t hang around to ask if they were meat eaters or not and if they were, where it was exactly they sourced their meat. That will be a conversation for another day and of course if mother and daughter turn out to be committed Vegans, well then I will happily wear the label of disgusting rooster murderer and go quietly about my carnivorous ways.

What I find appalling  is that we have become so far removed from the food that we eat that it is perfectly acceptable to buy  meat from a shiny clean supermarket but it is dreadfully cruel to kill your own food.

The roosters that were abandoned down in the gully would have starved to death, been run over or killed by a quoll, a dog or a feral cat. Their options were limited and their outlook was pretty grim. I walked down a giant hill shaking a bucket of wheat calling “chook chook chook” and the roosters followed me home. In the time they lived with me they were well fed,totally free range and repeatedly told how handsome they were (Roosters like flattery)

The oldest and naughtiest rooster was killed quickly as he was eating his breakfast and he will be delicious. The second naughtiest rooster is still out in the paddock crowing his head off and shagging his new sheilas. He will be killed equally as quickly and he will also be delicious.

The third and luckiest rooster will then have sole shagging rights to the two hens Natasha gave me. Providing he doesn’t irritate The Spouse too much by crowing underneath the bedroom window at the crack of dawn, he will live a happy life  until his daughters grow up and then I will eat him as well. If he produces only roosters, he will live long and prosper and I will eat his sons instead of him.

As a carnivore I like to know where my meat comes from. I refuse to buy any meat from factory farmed animals. David nagged and nagged me for bacon every time I went to the supermarket and I steadfastly refused to buy him bacon because I could not find any that was from free range pigs. Guy and Eliza from Mt Gnomon Farm have since come to David’s rescue and he now treats bacon like the luxury item it is.

What I don’t mention about the throw away roosters is how much I had to beg The Spouse to be allowed to keep them. How I had to faithfully promise to keep the destructo creatures out of the garden and how at first light when I hear the roosters crowing I dive out of bed  to shut them up with food so that Jeff’s insomniac head doesn’t explode.

Life is full of compromises and difficulties and it seems to The Spouse that every compromise I propose poses difficulties for him, but he loves me and now I have chickens again.

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