Back to the Wheel

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My hand is sufficiently healed now for me to return to throwing on the potters wheel. My finger is still numb at the end, but otherwise I’m all OK and I feel that I can throw again OK. That’s my opinion, others watching me might differ. I’ve never been a ‘power thrower’ or aspired to be a virtuoso on the wheel. I am sufficiently capable and skilled to be able to make the ideas that are in my head come to life. I’ve done my several thousands of hours of practise over the past 48 years, so I’m OK with what I attempt to do.

It’s a funny feeling, starting wedging again after a month off. It’s like a ‘getting to know you’ all over again, kind of feeling.

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I can’t wait to get back into it now that we have done our last wood firing weekend workshop. We can have our kiln back now and start to plan for our own firings. Wedging up the clay and making these first pots is the start. I used to think that I could do both. Run these workshops and make a few pots as well. Last year we managed to sneak a firing of our own in, in-between the set firings with the workshop groups. However, it seems to take all our energy to just clean and maintain the kiln as well as cut, split and stack all the wood required for the firings, plus keeping part of the pottery set up as a kitchen. There isn’t any time left to be able to pack, fire and unpack the kiln with our own work in the 5 days in-between each of the other firings, as well as cutting and splitting our own wood for our firing as well. It all proved too much work for me and I just couldn’t manage to do it all. We have done 11 weekends in 13 weeks. I’m glad that we can have some space to make and fire our own work now.

On a brighter note there was an exhibition review of the ‘Turn, turn, turn’ exhibition at the NAS Gallery in Sydney. One of the six shows that I have work in currently. It is amazing that an exhibition of ceramics has been given any space at all in a major Sydney newspaper. It is even more amazing that the reviewer, Christopher Allen was given almost two pages to do the job. I can’t remember a ceramics show getting any oxygen at all in a major newspaper in Sydney for the past twenty years, so I was particularly thrilled to find that my own work got two paragraphs at the end of the review. I don’t know how this has all come about, but I appreciate it enormously, as it will most likely be the only time in my life that this will happen, as ceramics isn’t highly valued in critical circles in Australia.
It’s amazing to me that when it happened, I was part of it.
I am grateful!
Christopher Allen wrote;
“…Steve Harrison represents the culmination of the art of the potter in the East Asian traditions. His deceptively simple and yet refined and serene vessels are the product of the humble, meditative practice of the potters art and reflect, indeed his own choice of a life in harmony with his aesthetic ideals. 
These are works that ostensibly seek only to serve the craft and subsume them selves to its formal demands, which make no attempt to claim our attention with brash or sensational effects, and yet which silently draw us to them by the force and conviction of their integrity.”
Christopher Allen, ‘Wheels of Creation’, Weekend Australian, Review, Visual Arts, P10/11. July 11/12 2015.
Best wishes
Steve

Six Shows in Six Weeks

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This is going to be a busy week. None of that lazing around that we promise ourselves that we’ll get around to doing one day. I have pots in six different exhibitions this month. One opened two weeks ago, a couple have just opened, two are about to open and there will be one more in the coming weeks.

I was lucky to be included in the National Arts School, 60th anniversary show in Darlinghurst, but blown away to find that I was to be one of the chosen few to be featured and to give an artists talk. I don’t know how this happened, but I have had a very strong association with the place. Going to Art School was great. I went to The East Sydney Tech, Art School in 1971/72. Like so many bright-eyed and bushy-tailed innocents of the sixties and seventies. I went there as a child and left an adult. Painful, challenging, extending, stimulating exciting, but mostly a lot of fun, with so much to learn and so little time – even the ceramics classes were good! 🙂
I was particularly thrilled to find that Patsy Healy also had work in this show and had made two small porcelain installations that referenced her time at East Sydney Tech. One featured all her tutors and the other one is a 3D construction representation of my blog site, composed of 2D images taken from the blog and painted on intersecting porcelain tiles. What an amazing idea!
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I showed 10 pieces at NAS. A range of my locally prospected, ground rock clay bodies and glazes, plus a couple of unglazed pots.
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This is a rough unglazed stoneware bowl, that has picked up a lot of wood ash from the fire. it was packed towards the front of the kiln and the ash deposit has melted and run to form a pool of ash glaze just off centre of the bowl, because I packed it up on wads with a slight lean to encourage this off-centredness.
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This is a guan glaze made from my local native porcelain stone. The bowl is made from a body that I make by washing basaltic gravel in water, and then throwing away the gravel and keeping the dirty water. If I repeat this exercise many, many, times, I eventually get enough thickened slip in the bottom of the barrel to stiffen up to make an intensely black rock dust/clay body. The intensity of the iron in the body breaks through on the rim.
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This is the porcelain guan glaze mixed with wood ash and cow bone ash. The addition of the ashes starts to react in such a way that the glaze starts to become slightly opalescent.
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This is an unglazed porcelain bowl, composed almost entirely of ground local native porcelain stone 97%. The stone powder is bound together with just 3% of bentonite. The surface of the stone body is flashed to a golden lustre with some flame bleaching on the fire front. It has picked up a small amount of carbon inclusion that defines and accentuates the rim.
All my pots are quite small and delicate. Partly that is my aesthetic choice, but mostly it is because of the nature of my home-made, locally prospected, ground stone bodies that lack any real plasticity. So that making large-scale works on the potters wheel is virtually impossible with this floppy paste. I have taken these limitations and challenges and worked with them, such that these pots respond well to the flame in the wood fired kiln to produce little, engaging, tactile, gorgeous gems.
The other shows that I currently have work in are;
Woodfire 2015, Kerrie Lowe Gallery in Newtown, Sydney. NSW. Janine also has work in this show.
Chance and Intelligence: the Captivating Art of Glazed Wood Fired Ceramics, Skepsi at Malvern Artists’ Society Gallery. Malvern, VIC
BeLonging: Embodied Commentaries Inspired by Place, at ANU Foyer Gallery, Canberra. ACT.
Australian Woodfire, Curators Choice. Strathnairn Gallery, Holt, ACT.
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Two views of “A Pot and a Bit” in ‘Chance and Intelligence’, Skepsi at Malvern Artists’ Gallery
Five pieces from ‘Curators Choice’ at Strathnairn.
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Best wishes
Steve

Lime Pickle

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In these cooler, shorter, winter days. The evenings are long and there is plenty to do. Winter is the season for citrus. I have made 20 jars of marmalade so far, so now its time to make lime pickle. A good lime pickle is a great accompaniment with curry, it needs to be salty, sweet, sour and chilli hot.

We have plenty of limes on the tree, so I slice them up length ways into 1/8 segments, salt then and then leave them covered for a day or two to soften.

A few days later, when I find the time. I’m fasting today, so there will be no dinner, that leaves a bit of time to make up the pickles. The wood fired stove is cranking away in the kitchen, even though we aren’t planning on cooking anything tonight. We light it because it’s frosty outside and going to get a lot colder overnight and we want the room warmed up and the hot water heated as a by-product.
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I start by dry roasting some fenugreek seeds which smell so exotic, but taste of ordinary dried green garden peas unless they are roasted. Roasting brings out a lot of that wonderful aroma and changes the taste to something that is so much more interesting. It also makes them very easy to grind up in the mortar and pestle.
Next I heat a little olive oil in the frypan and add various spices and seeds, like black cumin seeds, mustard seeds and coriander seeds. Once they start to pop, I keep the seeds moving by flipping the pan and add black pepper corns. Once I feel that they are sufficiently heated and softened, without having them popping out of the pan and all over the floor. Not too much heat and keep them moving. I add all the other ingredients. The salted lime segments (de-seeded), some of our roughly chopped chillis, two sprays of our own home-grown curry leaves. Thank you Toni Warburton for the gift of the curry leaf plant some years ago!
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I also add half a dozen roughly chopped cloves of our ageing garlic. A couple of teaspoons full of cumin, coriander, and ginger. I keep this moving for about 10 minutes on a low heat until the lime skins are a little bit softened and can be chopped in half easily by pushing down on them with a wooded spatula. Not such an accurate measure of cooking time, but it works for me. I want them slightly softened and not too leathery. This also give a bit of time for the flavours to meld in together.
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It seems to work. If it is still a little dry, I add a little bit more oil, or the juice of a lemon or two, or lemonades, or limes, or both. If it is still a bit too sour, I add a little bit of the white death sugar. If you add the juice of the lemonade lemons, you don’t need as much sugar. I try and use a little salt as possible, but a small amount is necessary to get it to taste right, otherwise it is just too bland. I’m not very good at making lime pickle yet, as I only get to do it once or twice a year, during this winter season when the citrus is in such profusion. If I were to do it more often, I’d get better at it, but I don’t need so much lime pickle. Two or three jars are enough for a year.
So many of the things that we attempt here are just like this. We never get to be any good at most of the things that we do because we do so much, there just isn’t time. However, the point is not to be the best at doing something, or ever particularly good. The point of our endeavour here is to be as independent and self-reliant as we can be. Getting better at doing something only comes with repeated practice. This just isn’t possible here with most things – apart from weeding!. So I am resigned to being a bumbling amateur at most of the things that I do. Sometimes I daydream of being competent at one or two particular things, but on reflection, I realise that it is more important to keep the big picture in focus and stay horizontally diversified across all my interests. The more things that I do for myself, the less I need to spend. The less that I spend, the less I need to work. The less time I spend working for money, the more time I have to do things for myself. This cash-minimising self-reliance is a vicious circle.
All this thinking is making me hungry! Actually, these cold nights are just right for a warming curry. if only we had some lime pickle!
Cooking something that you don’t know anything about is always a great big experiment. A bit like life really.
Best wishes
Miss curryleaf Murraya King and her curry-wallah

House Concert – New Heath Cullen CD

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We have just been to a local house concert to see Heath Cullen again. He’s particularly good. I like his music a lot. We already had both of his earlier CDs and they get quite a lot of amplification around the house and pottery workshop. Heath has a new CD about to be released. it’s been coming for some time now, like a slow train.

We spent the afternoon yesterday letting his music wash over us and I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to be able to sit and listen and take it all in at such close quarters in such an intimate location. Now we will have the new CD playing on high rotation for the coming week until we get ‘inside’ the music.

This new CD was recorded with Elvis Costello’s band, The Attractions, when they were in Australia last year.

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I wrote about Heath Cullen on this blog about 18 months ago;
At that time I described his music as;
“He’s like the love child of Nick Cave and Paul Kelly – if that were possible? With the breathiness, but sans the basso profondo, of the gentler side of Tom Waits. That sounds like a very strange description, but I think that it is kind of right”.
I think that this is still as good a description as I can come up with. Words aren’t the best medium to describe music, but it’s all I have. You’ll just have to google him and make up your own mind.
I reviewed one of the songs from his second CD in a post on this blog about a year ago.
‘Silver Wings’ is still my favourite song of his. That hasn’t changed over the year. On his web site you can preview songs from the albums, or even buy just single tracks or the whole album. Check out silver wings.
On the bottom of his web page, I see that he has the tags; alternative avant-garde blues country-alt rock rural Australia
So that is how Heath describes his own music. I still prefer my description.
Best wishes
Steve

More Meat Than I’ve Ever Eaten

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I’ve just come to realise that the whole time that I was in China, I seemed to be eating meat 3 times a day. I usually only eat meat occasionally. However, as I think back, every meal seemed to have some sort of meat involved in some way. Even breakfast. I never eat meat for breakfast! But over in China the wantons in the soup or the steamed buns all seemed to have a little bit of meat in them. I must say that I enjoyed it immensely too. The food was great. I didn’t go out of my way to eat meat at every meal, it just seemed to be the way that it was. I just went along with what was on the table.

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Now I’ve been home for a moth I decide to have a leg of pork for dinner. I get it boned, rolled and tied by the butcher. He also scores the skin for me. It takes a very sharp blade to do this and he is used to it, so I let him do it. I only tried once and was surprised how tough it was. none of my knives in the kitchen are kept in such a sharp condition, especially at the tip.

I make up a paste of garlic, bay leaves, pepper, some coriander seeds and a little salt. I pound all this together in one of our home made , wood fired, hand thrown mortar and pestles and crush it and grind it into a sort of paste. It needs a little bit of olive oil to get it to all flow in together. This paste is used to smear over the surface of the rolled roast before baking. It goes into a slow over for a very long time.

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It stays cooking slowly for a few hours in the wood stove. As we are out working all day in the pottery, kiln shed, wood shed and garden. There are always more jobs to get done than there is time to do them. So we do what we can and let the rest just migrate to the bottom of the list and then fall off the end almost without noticing. But I do notice. I should just let them go, in true Buddhist style, but their ghost just lingers on in the back of my mind, as I sum up the day and try to let it all fade away with my out-breath, I “press the recline buttons down with dreamland coming on”. Of all the various activities that go into making up a life, most are just mundane, some tedious, lots repetitive, but it’s those few moments that are special that give a little sense of satisfaction, an achievement, that I remember. They are the glue that holds it all together. Picking fresh vegetables from the garden for a dinner like this is nothing special, we’ve done it almost everyday for 40 years, but it is always a pleasure and it is part of todays glue.

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We are getting frosts most mornings these days. Only light frost, perhaps -1oC, I don’t know, but it is enough to kill everything that is sensitive, but not not so cold as to make its way down to the ‘Pantry Field’ garden. Down there in that secluded spot, where there is plenty of tree cover, we have a small plot of 60 sq. metres of fenced off garden, where we have found that we can grow a lot of frost sensitive plants , like over-winter potatoes and they are doing well, even the nasturtiums are still blooming. I found some time, just before a wood fired raku workshop, to get down there and do some more weeding, so as to give the plants a chance. The weeds grow so quickly! The peas are flowering now and so are the broad beans. I think that we will soon get a feed of peas from these plants. The garlic is very varied, some plants are surging ahead, while others have stayed quite small. Perhaps this is their individual habits. I have planted seven new varieties of ‘seed’ garlic this year. All down in the pantry field, where we haven’t ever grown garlic previously. fresh varieties in fresh soil. The last two plaits of garlic hanging in the kitchen ceiling are now a bit withered and starting to ‘shoot’ , but still have a good garlic flavour. They aren’t so juicy any more.

I guess that it is because the weather is cold and the days short. I seem to want to eat more meat these few weeks, so I buy a few lamb shanks and make a nice rich sauce for them to simmer in. Brown onions in olive oil, a whole knob of our garlic and lots of herbs from the garden. I brown the shanks and then add a whole bottle of merlot and let it simmer very slowly over a low fire for a couple of hours with half a tub of my marrow bone stock concentrate.

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When we come back into the kitchen in the evening dusk. I open the door into the kitchen and the room immerses me, seduces me, envelops me, in a blanket of warmth and flavoursome aromas. Such a wonderful, warm, welcoming greeting. the light is fading. the wind is picking up, the temperature is falling, but we are warm and secure in here, in our own self-reliant environment. I add the fresh picked vegetables that we have brought in from the garden and let them mellow in to the stock, while we discuss the day and plan for tomorrow. I open a nice bottle of red wine and serve. Fantastic!
Cold weather outside? Who cares! Roll on, the winter.
Best wishes
from the EOFY stock maker and his stock-take girl

Nothing is Ever Finished

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We have just finished another firing with a group of enthusiastic potters. The weather is glorious and warm in the sun, with no wind, so a good night for a frost. The firing went very well, even a little bit quick, so we will wait to see what the results are next week.

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The night before the firing and just after I had written that Nothing lasts, nothing is ever finished and nothing is perfect. The heat shield on the door of the wood fired kitchen stove fell off at the end of dinner. The bolts holding it on had rusted away. I was stuck for just one second with a 2kg piece of red hot steel plate coming free and having to deal with it unexpectedly. Trying to stop it landing on the wooden floor of the kitchen. Fortunately, I installed a piece of thick copper sheet onto the floor in front of the stove, just in case any red hot embers might cascade out of the fire box on some occasion. This has hardly ever happened, but does occasionally. I’m glad that I saved up and did it when I did, thirty years ago, because I probably couldn’t afford to buy such a sheet of copper now. The copper looks great, has lasted well and on this occasion, might just have saved the house from burning down. I man-handle the glowing lump of red hot metal outside and into the ash bucket using the ember shovel.

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IMG_0778In the morning, before everyone arrives for the next workshop. I’m up early and down in the workshop drilling out the corroded screws and re-tapping the threads to suit the stainless steel bolts that I keep in stock for kiln building purposes. It takes me about 45 mins to clean it up, dissemble it and then figure out what I should do to cobble it all back together again. The old bolt holes are well corroded and packed with swollen, rusted bolty remains. I find that it is next to impossible to reconstruct it as it was, without moving up from 3/8 whitworth  to 10 mm. metric bolts, which I don’t have in stock. I decide to drill right through and use a longer, but thinner bolt. this works well and should last another 20 years. Probably longer than the remaining life of the rest of the stove. I get the door back on the stove just as the first of our guests arrive.

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Small progress, problem solved for the time being. It isn’t perfect, it won’t last, it isn’t finished.

Next!

Fond regards from the imperfect Steve the stove bodger

Delivering a Kiln, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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A Kiln Delivery, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
I have just finished another kiln for a customer. It’s a beautiful thing. There isn’t anyone capable of making anything like this in Australia any more. All the skills are gone. We are a country of importers of cheap junk these days. Everyone wants something for next to nothing, or even cheaper. This may sound rather jaundiced, but how else do you explain the rampant rise of Bunnings and Ikea, and all the other Chinese import companies. Power tools for $12 each, of course they are not going to last more than 10 minutes.
Note to self – don’t buy cheap plastic junk! I try and buy only things that I really need, and if I really do need it. I try to buy something of quality, that will last a very long time. I don’t throw things out until they are really worn out, and then I try to recycle them into something else if I can. Finally, if it is really organic and wholesome. There is always the compost heap or the metal recyclers if it isn’t?
This kiln is not just beautiful. It’s solid and gorgeous. I’m very proud of it. I spent a lot of time on it. It will last its owner for all of her life and then someone else’s as well.
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I do a lot of organising before I set out to deliver a kiln. If the site is close enough, I go there and check out the site myself, but if it is a long way off. I usually do all the organising by email. Images sent back and forth of driveways nd other access points. Measurements of gates and shed doors height and widths etc. I try to think of everything, but there is always some sort of surprise in store for me. You never know who will turn up to “help”! See ‘The Best Laid Plans’ posted on this blog on the 18th of March this year.
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We get started early. I use my friend Dave who has a big truck with a ‘Palfinger’ crane. He is a real gentleman and takes such a lot of care with everything that he does. I really trust him completely in matters of lifting heavy things. I shrink-wrap and load the kiln onto my truck the day before and then drive it up to the drive way near the road, where Dave’s big truck can get to, to lift it off my little truck and onto his, for the long trip to its new home.
Because we are so efficient, we arrive at the site a bit early and manage to reverse in through the narrow gates, then down to a spot quite close to the garden shed, where the kiln will be housed. The clients are there to greet us, as is the local tradesman who they have engaged to help us. The kiln comes off the truck and across the lawn and into the doorway of the shed without a hitch. Dave can manoeuvre the crane with a tonne hanging from it at a 13 metre distance to within 1 cm! It’s always astonishing tot me how much accuracy he has developed with this machine over the 30 years that he has been doing it. This is how it is all supposed to be. everything considered. However, you can never really know what the local drunk and the crazy neighbour will do when push come to shove. On this occasion, they are nowhere to be seen and everything goes as it should. Dave lowers the kiln across the lawn and down onto the kiln shed slab. He is so professional, carefull and accurate with that crane. The kiln is lowered down directly onto the pallet lifter in the shed, so that I can wheel the kiln into position without a hitch.
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We install the flue kit and seal the roof and we are all done. Everything sweet and precise, all done without a hitch. This is how it is supposed to be. What could possibly have gone wrong?
I’m home early and have time to do a bit of weeding in the garden, then a clean-up in the kiln shed ready for the next wood firing workshop.
Everything as it should be.
I’m gratefull!
So completely different from the last time.
Best wishes
Steve

Nothing is Perfect!

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We have just had our latest wood firing and all went well, as usual, thank goodness. We do our best, but we can make no guarantees, only mistakes!. We found that only a few pots made from an imported Japanese porcelain clay dunted. Glazed only on the inside too. Maybe that was the problem? Apart from this it was a very good firing!

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After the firing we get out and about and get stuck into some timber cutting and splitting. I’m up and out early with the chain saws, long before any one comes to help. Chain saws are dangerous enough without anyone else being around to watch out for and keep at a safe distance. We split about half of the 40 or so lengths that I have cut and prepared, but then the throttle lever on the splitter motor comes off in my hand. Cheap Chinese made splitter! So work has to come to a halt for the day while I fix it. We spend the rest of the time stacking and moving all that we have split over to the kiln shed. When everyone is gone. I take the splitter motor to bits looking for where the bolt or screw has fallen out. How could the throttle lever just come off in my hands? I can’t see where it has come from. Where it ought to be, but there ought to be an obvious spot with tell-tale wear marks, to indicate where it belongs. A place with a missing bolt! Just like in an Agatha Christie novel. there ought to be some clues, but the more I look, the less I know. I can’t believe it. Surely I’m not this inadequate and simple that I can’t see a missing bolts hole. I have removed half the engine, the air cleaner, and part of the carbie!

All the mechanism is installed under the air filter on one side and the muffler on the other. All the linkages are under the petrol tank. Everything is hard to get to and nothing is clear. There are metal wire linkages and tiny little, fine wire, return springs. I can’t see where any of it really belongs and to make it harder, the days are so short and it is starting to get dark.

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Then, finally, it dawns on me. It hasn’t fallen off because of a missing bolt or nut. It has simply shattered in half from metal fatigue and the rest of it is still all attached. It has cracked in half. I need to remove more of the engine to get all of it off, so that I can weld it back together again. I can’t do it on the machine, next to the carburetor, and all that fuel! I take a couple of photos as I go to remind me later on when I’m re-assembling it. So that I can get it all back together again in the right order.

Years ago, I used to write all of this kind of thing down in my day book – sort of diary thing, but now I just take photos. Because I can! When I was young, my first car was an old, classic, red, MG sports car. When I had to pull the engine down the first time. I wrote everything down, step by step and recorded all the detail that I thought was going to be necessary to re-assemble it. I numbered and bagged all the parts in sequence. I had never had to do anything like this before and my father wasn’t much interested or even around to give any guidance, so I just muddled through with the help of my older brother, who also had absolutely no experience of this kind of motor mechanics, but make encouraging noises and was supportive, especially when it came to lifting the donk out. We were completely incompetent and naive, but we managed to get it all back together again and it worked! it was quite a triumph for us. Especially for me.

When it was all done and back together. I had one nut left over, and to this day I still don’t know where it belonged. but the car still worked! Nothing is perfect!

Today, I get this small engine all stripped down and then set about welding the shattered pieces back together again. I think about making a new one, but the thing is so complex and folded in so many different places with so many holes and little tags and bits sticking out, that I decide to just repair it. Nothing is perfect! I don’t know how long it will last. Nothing lasts! It is only very thin pressed metal material. I can’t give it too many amps. I don’t want to burn a hole through it, and I can only weld one side too, because it has to have a flush face on the other side, so that it will swivel properly on it’s seating.  I weld it as best that I can, after testing the amperage on a test piece, so as to get the best result. I get good penetration! What more could a man want! But there is a little burn-through in one spot on the weld, so I have to grind it back a little to get it flush and smooth.

I manage to get it all back together before dark and back into the shed. It’s a bit of a rush, but there are no medals for giving up! I give it a trial run and it works OK. Time will tell if it continues to work for the long term. I go up to the house in the dark and the key snaps off in the lock. This is just what I need! One of the joys of living in a 122 year old house is doing the maintenance. I leave it till morning to take the lock off and fix it in daylight. I can’t see well enough in the dark and fixing locks, with all the fine moving parts is something that needs to be done in a clear frame of mind and good daylight. Fortunately it isn’t too difficult and it turns out to be something that I have had to do before, so it is relatively simple and straight forward and it is all back into working order pretty quickly and before lunch time. Nothing is perfect and nothing is ever finished.

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Because crap things always seem to come in threes, at least that is how it appears today. The water tank springs a leak. It has been leaking with a slow drip for a year or more now, but today, it springs a proper leak and The Lovely comes in to tell me that as she walked past the tank stand just now, and it felt like it was raining. This happened a couple of days ago too and she thought that she might have been imagining it. But today she is sure. We go and have a look. The timber tank stand deck is all wet underneath, just as it has been for a few years now, where the slow drip is, but now there is a little fountain pissing from the far side. It’s only very tiny, but it is surely a leak in the side of the tank now. I get the ladder and check it out at close quarters. The water has corroded through the zink coated corrugated steel sheeting. My highly imaginative and creative thinker thought that she was imagining it a few weeks ago when she felt a little fine water spray on her as she walked past the wood shed near by the tank stand. At that time, she imagined that it might be a cicada pissing from high up in a tree, or some other explanation. But now we know that it is real and not imagined. It’s a very tiny, fine spray of water from the pin prick sized hole, but once these things start. It’s always terminal.

I order a new tank, it’s all so specific these days. The height, the diameter, the colour, the inlet, the outlet side etc. It all goes on and on. This is not a current or popular size and configuration however. We will have to go on the waiting list. He rings me back the next day, They have one of those in stock it seems and so I can drive in and pick it up. Amazing! It has to be pretty much the same, because I don’t want to have to change over all the plumbing into a new configuration. When working up a 6 metre ladder. right at the top, it’s scarry enough.

I ring my friend Dave with the crane truck. he can come very late today on his way home. I drain all the water out of the tank and strip it of all its fittings and connectors. I swap all of these onto the new tank. Now we have no water in the house to cook, wash or flush with until it is all put back to rights. I hope that Dave doesn’t forget. He rings to say that he will be a little late, but he is here before dark. Which is good, if you are working on a narrow ladder rung, right at the top of a 6 metre ladder, up from the ground, you don’t want to be doing it in the dark.

It all goes smoothly and all the fittings that I swap over are all in the correct place and in the right direction, or orientation for further use.

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The old tank comes down and the new one goes into its place without a hitch. I only have to reconnect the inlet and outlet pipes.

Once it is back in place, Dave leaves for another job, I have to start the pump to refill it with water again, so that we can get on with our normal life.

The Wet One thinks that this tank is only a few years old. I think that it is probably a bit more than that, but not too old. Not more than ten years!  Nothing lasts. However, when I check out the paperwork, it turns out that it is actually 20 years since we put it up on the tank stand. The earlier tank had lasted 21 years and would have lasted longer, but the tank stand rusted out first and fell, crashing to the ground with the water tank still on it. Needless to say, neither survived, nor did the wood shed that it landed on.

I’m just a bit concerned that this new water tank is made of plastic and not galvanised steel like all the others have been. I wasn’t ever happy with the first tank that was made of galvanised steel and sealed with lead solder! But it did last for over 20 years and our first storage tank lasted for over 30 years, but the zink finally corrodes and they start to leak, so we replaced them with new ones. These newer tanks were made from zincalume coated steel, so couldn’t be soldered, that’s good, but they had to be sealed with silicon rubber glue. Not too happy about that either. Nothing is perfect! The last metal tank that we bought was lined with a plastic membrane heat sealed on to the inside of the zincalume sheets. It was called aquaplate, but didn’t last any longer and it was silicone sealed as well. Nothing is perfect!

Plastic is in everything. It’s OK while it lasts, but what will happen to this plastic tank when it finally gets eaten away by the sunlight or what ever is its fate? Can it be recycled? Al least the steel ones can be. I still have and use my parents old galvanised steel water tank. They bought it second-hand in the fifties, so it’s been in constant use in this family for over 60 years and is clearly a lot older, it shows no signs of corrosion yet. It was made out of thick steel plate and hot dipped in molten zinc. That was a product made to last. I have been told that it was a ships tank, but I don’t know. In future I may have to weld up my own tank and get it hot dipped galvanised, just like I do with my kilns. I like things that are made to last as long as possible.

However, I’m also aware that nothing is ever finished, nothing lasts and nothing is perfect.

You live and learn!

Best wishes

Steve

Fruits of the Solstice

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We have been keeping up the citrus experiments. Each evening we try something new. The Lovely has been trying out some more ideas with citrus jelly. She uses oranges, limes, lemon, lemonade and tangelos. Whatever is ripe and plentiful on the day.
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Citrus Jelly
recipe;
375 mls. of Juice
125g of sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons of gelatine.
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method;
Squeeze 375 mls. of Juice from the above fruit. Use whatever mix of citrus fruit that you have.
Take 125g of sugar and dissolve it in 100 g of hot water. Stir to dissolve.
Zest some of the skins into the sugar/water mix.
Dissolve 1 1/2 tablespoons of gelatine powder in 8 tablespoons of cold water. Sit the small bowl of gelatine and cold water in a bigger bowl of hot water to encourage the gelatine to dissolve.
Once the gelatine is dissolved, mix it into the sugar water and both into the fruit juice.
Stir well as it cools down. Once cooled, place in fridge to set into jelly. It may need to be stirred a few more times during the time in the fridge to stop the gelatine settling out.
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It’s very easy to make and to eat. It goes very well with either ice cream for desert or yoghurt for breakfast.
Candy for grown-ups
I was recently given a bag of old fashioned citrons by a lovely friend. She tells me that her husband makes marmalade from them. I try them for marmalade, but I think that the flavour is rather too strong. So I decided to try my hand at making candied, citron peel from them. I use candied peel for adding in with other dried fruits when baking some cakes. particularly for panforte or sometimes in muesli.
Candying fruit is an easy thing to do in the background while you do other things in the kitchen at night.
This is a pretty standard recipe and technique. You can use any thick skinned citrus.
Candied Citron Peel
Method
Cut the citron fruit lengthways into quarters and again in half into eighths, cut out the centre of the fruit to leave the white pith and peel.
Place in a saucepan and cover with water, then bring to the boil for a few minutes, maybe 10 or so. Discard the water and refresh. this removes a lot of the bitterness. Bring back to the boil and simmer for half an hour or so, or until softened.
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Drain off the water and weigh it. Add 1kg of sugar for every litre of water or part thereof proportionally. Return to the stove and bring back to the boil and let it simmer for another half hour or so. Leave to cool in the liquid over night.
In the morning drain and leave on a drying rack to dry, or place in stove on rack and dry for an hour or so on very low, with the fan on, if you have one?
The strips should be dry enough now to ‘keep’ in a jar in the fridge without going off.
You can roll them in caster sugar if you want to. I don’t.
Don’t dry them too much or they will become rock hard.
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Winter is not just the time time for citrus. The avocados are in full crop just now too.
They don’t really ripen on the tree. It’s best if you pick them a week or so before you need them. So The Lovely picks a few each week, so that there is an ongoing supply available.
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It’s an easy and quick lunch to slice over toast with a squeeze of lemon and some freshly ground pepper. Our good friend Toni Warburton comes for the weekend firing workshop and leaves us some smoked trout to put on top.
Yum! Thank you Toni.
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Best wishes
from The Candy Man and his Sweetie

What a Privilege it is to be a Tax Payer!

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We are smack in the middle of our winter, wood firing program, we have done 9 weekends in a row and still have quite a few to go. I am spending a lot of time cutting, splitting and stacking wood for each firing. It takes about a tonne of wood to fire the kiln for the 20 or so hours for the kind of quick firing that we do here for these workshops.
I get out early and spend a few hours cutting the logs to length to suit the firebox length that I need for this kiln. I spend the next 4 or 5 hours splitting the logs that I have cut. I was busy in the morning with other jobs, so I am a bit late getting started into this job. Still, it has to be done, so I get stuck in. It’s a bit foggy and misty/rainy, but once I get into it and warm up. I don’t notice the rain at all.
Splitting wood is a bit mind numbingly repetitive and ever so dull, but what can you do?. After a few hours, I’m a bit over it. But there isn’t enough split yet, so on I go. It’s getting late and a bit dark now, but I push on when I shouldn’t, but I think that I need to do more. Its stupid, but on I go into the dark. The pile of logs is getting smaller on the fire-wood pile of split pieces is getting wider and taller.
Suddenly it happens. I’m way too tired and should have stopped an hour ago. I catch my finger under a piece of wood in the splitter.
Immediately, I stop the downward motion of the blade, but its too late. The pain explodes like a cracker in my mind. There is a flash-light like burst, but not towards me, it’s from the inside my head outward. My vision isn’t affected like it would be with a camera flash. There is no burnt-out hole in my vision. Instead, there is a ringing, although strangely silent sound, with a flashing stab of pain.
Somehow, a piece of wood, that I had in a tight grip in my hand, has somehow slipped, or been wrenched, from my grip. It flips around and over, twisting my wrist and then comes down hard on my other hand that was supposed to be holding the log secure!
How could this happen? I can’t even imagine that this is possible. The pain is blinding and a little nauseous. I can’t even understand what has happened, I’m stunned, but I know that it is serious. I am sufficiently aware to know that I should shut down the motor of the splitter before heading to the house to wash my hand and have a good look at my finger in the bright-light of the kitchen.  Luckily, on this occasion, here is no broken skin, no blood, but my finger is still numb to this day. Some sort of damage that I hope will eventually repair itself and grow out.
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I remember an earlier event of a few years ago, when I really did do myself some serious damage with the splitter. That time I caught my finger under the edge of the blade and it was dragged in and under by the protective glove. I try to pull back on my hand, but the machine is stronger and the glove is caught in the blade. The pain is so intense that I can’t describe it. I’m blank. There is no real memory of it at all. It’s all gone into the file marked ‘don’t go there’. I can remember that it all happened so slowly. I could see it all happening in slow-mo. It all took seconds to happen in replay, but over so quickly.
I’ve crushed my finger. There is no doubt. I gasp it in a vice-like grip with my other hand. I am suddenly in shock, but I can still remember that I had the presence of mind to stop the machine, kill the motor, and take the keys out of the tractor, before heading for the house. I usually wrap everything up in a tarp to keep it all dry in case of heavy dew or rain, but this is different and I just walk away. I know that it is too serious to be bothered with the trivialities.
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I can’t get my glove off. It’s wet through and stuck to me. I can’t bear the thought of shaking it off or pulling it off. A piece of my finger might comer with it!. Is it wet with blood or sweat? I don’t remember it being wet beforehand. I’m gripping my hand so tightly, that I’m cauterising it. I don’t mean too. I can’t help myself. It’s instinctive. I head for the house. I walk in and Janine knows straight away. She grasps her mouth. “What have you done now”!
I often come up to the house with some sort of blood stained head or hand that isn’t any sort of real problem. When you are focussed, and want to get the job done, you just push on and get it finished and don’t let any little nick or scratch deter you.
I say “What blood?” and we go from there. It’s always so superficial. Boring even!
But this is different. I know, that she knows, that I know, that I’m hurt. I haven’t cried since I was a child, but this makes my eyes water a little. I’m far too quiet too. She knows. She goes to get the car keys. We’re off to the hospital.
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, but it’s a bad one this time. I thInk that I might need stitches”
I ease the glove off over the sink. It isn’t blood that is sticking it on, but sweat. It’s crushed out of shape a bit and the numbness is starting to wear off now and it’s hurting like hell.
She drives and I sit and shiver. I’m feeling quite cold now, while only a few minutes ago, I was hot and sweaty and very busy. I want a drink of water, I’m parched, but The Lovely say no!
“You’re in shock and it’s not good to drink anything, just in case you need surgery and anaesthetic. So I sit and shiver it out for the 25 minutes it takes to get us to Bowral Hospital Emergency.
The triage nurse see us coming through the outer doors and comes out from behind her desk to meet us. She ushers us straight through a side door and into some sort of cubicle. So much for all those poor people queued up in the rows of seats in the waiting room! She says to sit here and someone will come. They do. I must look bad, to get this Ryan-Air style priority seating. The nurse comes and asks me some questions that I don’t remember. Janine isn’t here now, she’s back outside. I’m cold and alone. Eventually the Doctor comes. He looks at it and asks how I did it. He flinches! He tells me that I’m stupid! I already know that.
You’ve spent 10 years becoming a doctor. Tell me something that I don’t know!
He responds. “I’ve seem fingers come off in accidents like this. You are very lucky!”
I am lucky. I know it, and I am very stupid with it. I know that too! I should have stopped an hour earlier. But didn’t. I am so fortunate.
However, I’m also aware that if I had lived my life, stopping when I should, and not working extra time, doing over-time and more! Doing too much. working into the dark. Not stopping for beak times and working to rule, then I wouldn’t own my own home by now. You have to put your arse into gear and work hard if you want to get ahead in this Brave New World of part-time, unregulated, contract work and self employment.
The doctor starts to clean the wound and gives me a series of injections around the site. A local anaesthetic. But it doesn’t work very well and I can still feel the needle go in and out, and be pulled through, with each stitch. It hurts! I ask if this is normal and he answers that there are some places that are very hard to anaesthetise fully and this is one of them. He gives me a few more shots and it is a bit better, but still quite sensitive to the needle and thread. More of a sort of prickly sting, than a real pain. I’m not about to complain. I’ve seen the third world, I consider myself so lucky that this has happened here.
Eventually, it is all cobbled back together. X-rays reveal that no bones are broken, but a lot of damage has been done to the knuckle. He warns me that it will take a while to heal and that I should go and see my regular doctor on Monday.  I get a script for antibiotics and pain-killers. It doesn’t look quite normal any more, but at least I still have it. It ends up taking over a year to loose sensitivity and another year to get back to normal function. To this day, if I bump it during the winter when it is cold. It stings and aches for ages.
I’m a very lucky man and I know it. But this is the price of independence in the Brave New Deregulated World.
At least the hospital is clean, the service is fast, excellent and sterile. I’m not in the third world now!. It’s also completely free. I’m amazed. I should pay something. If I went to a doctor, if one was available on a Saturday night. I’d have to pay him or her.  I am so very grateful that such an amazing service is available. I want to pay someone for this incredible service. But No, I can’t, it’s totally free to citizens. This mind blowingly complex and efficient service is apparently covered by my meagre taxes.
What a privilege it is to be a Tax payer!
I am so grateful!
fond regards from ‘Lefty’ Harrison