Wardell

To Pliny the Elder, greetings

Why haven't you replied? Are you offended I told you to go to the shops?

We went to a Pie Shop in Wardell yesterday. It was painted red outside. They make their own pies and you can see them doing it. Their special pie of the day was Eggs Benedict, which Allan liked. You would probably have liked the Lentil Pie. Why? It just seemed like you.

Wendy dropped us off by the river on our way back from Patches Beach, and we walked home from there. On one side of the road was the wide brown choppy River Richmond, and on the other, sugar canefields and grass. The wind was everywhere.

There were a few houses near the road or set back down grass tracks. Some of the houses were large and sprawling, with big sheds, and some were smaller, painted pink or blue. The owners favoured Buddha as a garden ornament, and palm trees and the Australian flag. They did not appear to like throwing anything away.

Closer to home we saw a grey crane. It flew into a glade and sat on a branch above a billabong.
I took a photo, just for you, Pliny. You know I'm not that interested in birds.

Odd Lunch Out

Yesterday I had a strange lunch. I didn't want an egg and bacon roll, or minestrone soup, or a stout and beefsteak pie, or a sausage, or a cheese and tomato toastie. I was looking at the menu of a lunch van on wheels, out of doors.

Why are there no greens? I asked myself. If anything had lettuce in it I would have had that.
It was the Farmers Market. You could obviously go and buy a lettuce, but it wouldn't have been washed, and it would just have been a lettuce.

So I went back to the food hall, and looked again at the stalls. Cheese, honey, chutney, bread, cold pies and tarts, everything was the colour of pastry. and nothing was warmed up. It was a cold day too, I'm telling you, you'll feel sorry for me soon.

The last stall at the northern end sold slices of leek and gruyere tart, cold lentil pie, falafel, vegetable fritters and little pastry triangles the colour of cold feet.

But, at the end of the display, was a row of fluoro yellow pumpkin risotto and sweet chilli muffins with a green swirl through the middle. This was the greenest thing I had seen to eat other than the lettuce, broccoli, chard, cabbage, cauliflower, zucchini and other greens outside. So, tempted by the bright yellow muffin, which was also very cheap, I bought one and took it back to the outside table where my companions were eating.

They were eating egg and bacon rolls and hot minestrone soup. I opened my paper bag. What's that? they asked. Pumpkin risotto and sweet chilli muffin, I replied optimistically.

Now cooked rice loses texture when it's a day old. Pumpkin can be bland. And I never did discover what the green swirl was. It was just a green swirl tasting of nothing in particular, marking the point at which the muffin was to break in half, revealing a blob of cold sweet chilli sauce.

I ate the halves, breaking off each piece as though it would be my last. How was that? asked my companions.

It would have been nicer warm, I said, biting into an unwashed pear.