Brian and bodhrains

Brian McLaughlin is a musician by trade and a teacher by recent profession, and he came to visit from Kuwait this week. Having Brian in town was both gorgeous and bittersweet. Mikko was a huge fan - when he was pissed he used to sing Come out ye Black and Tans and it was only years later I realised it was based on Brian's version with the Celtic City Sons.

He would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for our conversations that first Thursday night - talking about music, our lives at the UN in Rome and as a teacher in Kuwait, and the total impossibility of doing what we were doing ... a single man visiting a married woman and sleeping on the couch. (In Kuwait, the neighbours would be outside waiting for me with rocks to throw at my wanton head. My much more tolerant husband is, by his own folly, trapped in England til tomorrow, and better be appropriately grateful that I wined and dined one of his music mates!!) Actually, it was probably the first time we'd talked as anything like musical peers, and I was all abuzz by it. There was much showing off of new music we have found in the last few years, stuff we've recorded, trading of travel tales and planning our assault on ancient Rome the following day.

Before his visit, I would never have thought to say much to Brian about the Finn, but somewhere into the second bottle of wine, there was a brief comment and shared stories about shock losses and a quiet smile as we acknowledged that some things never quite go away, but that with some long and soulful searching you can find a way to live with the unimaginable. There's a certain peace that comes with the realisation that bitterness - towards them or anyone else who has made the journey more painful along the way - doesn't do anything but twist us in on ourselves and taint our memories of the ones we have loved and lost.

That peace is bolstered by occasional reminders that we have both known and respected a rare human being, who attracted admiration wherever he went.

First Naples, now Reykjavik

McDonalds is being forced out of another European city, although for very different reasons to Naples, where the good folk of the town sent the golden arches packing.

I'm not complaining, and I know someone else who wouldn't be either!

Thank you Helen the Groupie

Okay, confess, I'm writing this one months after the fact, because it's taken many, many retellings, and a whole lot of late night musings to truly understand the gift given me during my first weekend in Florence, in October 2009.

My travelling chum Helen from Oxford had had meetings in Florence for work (some people get all the dud jobs ;-), so Ants and I hopped the train after work one Friday to go catch up. I'd first met Helen through music open nights, which she attends with gusto, earning her nickname because she doesn't play a note herself, but is brilliantly supportive of her friends. She likes a vino too, so catching up in Tuscany was an exciting prospect.

It had been quite a big day - eating, accompanied by drinking, followed by walking around in awe of Florence's marble-faced, magnificent everything. Chattering, more imbibing, indulging and meandering, gobsmacked. I was rapidly becoming engrossed in the notion that the Medici didn't entirely deserve their reputation of "one of Europe's most ruthless families". For a start, anyone who held power in Italy had to develop a ruthless edge - consider, for example, the Visconti with their meticulously documented slow death, which alternated a day of torture with a day of rest, for forty days and nights, for their worst enemies. Machiavelli's The Prince pales by comparison.

By midafternoon I was in awe of Lorenzo 'Il Magnifico', who perceived and fostered such talents as Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo and many more, who so loved his city and was loved by the people he served (not ruled). If the Renaissance had a pater and patron, it was he.

Exploring the wonders of the Duomo facade, the amazing pietro dura landscapes in the Medici chapel and Michaelangelo's amazing marbles - Dusk and Dawn, Night and Day, along with David, and countless others in the Piazza della signoria, I couldn't help thinking of my favourite champion of the Renaissance, and understood with new eyes why he loved this period so.

So as the night wore on, and H and I drained both our bar fridges of prosecco, talking 19 to the dozen in that way you do, perhaps it was inevitable that I hit one of my spectacular downers, full of tears and that all consuming aching that just leaves emotions awash, and me feeling like a bit of a fraud for kidding people that I've 'rebuilt' a 'life after Mikko' that is robust and balanced and healthy. Like fuck I have, when I'm in that space.

And I love H for her response, delivered carefully and lovingly, after we'd already talked for hours about life, the universe and everything both in it, and no longer in it.

By her own admission, she's never understood depression, and why people can't 'just' sort themselves out - except that, having seen people she loves try and fail, she says she respects that for a depressed person, it's just not that easy.

BUt her pearl of wisdom was this:

"I wish I knew what to say, or do, for you to make it hurt less. From the way you talk about him, he was obviously a remarkable man, and you clearly adored him, and loved the years you shared with him. But what I don't understand is why you let him keep hurting you. How long are you going to keep giving him credit for everything you have done over the past five years?"

I felt like I'd been hit by a thunderbolt. H obviously worried she'd gone too far. But something struck a chord, and made sense, even through the fog of booze and grief. In that moment, though fuzzy intellect barely knew how to process the thought, something in me began to shift, evolve, and see through slightly different eyes... a new way forward.

I don't want losing Mikko to stop hurting. I don't want to forget the bits of him that were brilliant, that shaped me, and I want to keep sharing them with the world because I think the world can continue to be a richer place for him having been in it, even now he is gone.

But I do need to stop him from hurting who I become, my work, my adventures and my marriage to Anthony, which sometimes his self destructiveness and my grief still threaten to do.

If I was quiet the following day, it was easy to blame our hangovers, but in fact I was lost in thought. Much to consider, integrate and grow into. It's been months, and the memory of that moment is fierce and clear, although I haven't always known what to do with this new seed. Fitting really, that I came to this precious spark of knowledge in the city of enlightenment, cradle of the Renaissance...

And to Helen. Bringer of light to my darkest hours.

Thankyou.

Le Chat noir

I keep seeing this poster everywhere I go. In Rome. It's one of the things that keeps reaching out to assault my eyes and remind me that you arent here to share it with me... And yet I keep forcing myself to remember that this is Rome, not Paris, and this thing is as much on foreign soil as I am. I'm laughing at the irony, as these two high cultures collide, and on this soil, La Bella Vita nails bon gout hands down.

L'universite d'Oxford, c'est magnifique

I've spent the last two days studying French at the University of Oxford. Ants doesn't give a rats, cos he doesn't really get linguistics, or just how big a deal this university is amongst academics, but I'm jubilant. Exhausted, but ecstatic.

I always envied you Finn, with your five languages - three of them mastered before you ever left primary school. It's definitely the time to learn, when you're a kiddie.

I've worked hard these last two days, putting myself in a class that was probably a touch above where I was when I started, but one where I could more or less keep up by the end. I've filled in the gaps in my grammar and tested my vocab and found it better than expected.

My new job considers 'a second UN language to at least intermediate level' a distinct advantage, and after this weekend, I'm confident that my French is indeed intermediate. I reckon now you'd be envious, because you always struggled with this one tongue, though everything else came so naturally to you.

I know it's dreadfully daggy to be so happy about studying, but I'm rather chuffed, and I think you'd be proud of me too. I will always remember your encouraging smile and deep belly laughs when I ventured into the realms of Finnish. Especially when I improvised and didn't quite get it right. "Lenseni ovat rikki omdat minulle on oikein iso puulu'.

So far as I know, I've never got French quite as wrong as that night in Lapland when I asked the barman for a dick and milk, instead of kahlua (you pronounce the 'h' in Kahhh-lu-a, apparently, to avoid this booboo). But i press on undaunted.

Now all I need is to get my mouth around some Italian...

Romeward bound

I resigned today, and it felt great. I think sometimes the moments I feel most excited about my new job are the ones where I imagine the look on your face - the look that would be there if only I could really tell you. Your understated 'well done!' was always the highest praise, and made me glow from core to crown.

I'm frankly terrified, sometimes. Holy crap Finn- the UN.! Carbon Footprinting. Please tell me you'd be proud - I want someone to be proud of me who gets just how big this is for me. I'm scared silly of stuffing it up.

I'm even a wee bit terrified by the dream that's coming true - to live in a country where I just have to learn the language 'from scratches'. Be careful what you wish for, indeed.

But Finn- its Rome. Roma. Land of la dolce vita, home of trasteveres and vecchios, real pizzas and all the words that were part of our repertoire around the Colquhoun dinner table. I know I'm gonna wonder, when I go, if you ever made it there - something tells me you went with D?

And I'm doing this wholly and soully for me, but a part of me wishes you could see it, this latest face of European Gigi. I know you'd understand, in a way that no-one else would.

Anzac Day

I never knew if you went to a dawn service. I remember the first one I went to, up in Canberra, and I wished and wondered whether you had ever seen this rare and solemn ceremony. It was Anzac Day, and I had a whole new perspective on why we have a public holiday for it in Australia.

The English don't really get Anzac day - after all, they've fought dozens of wars - but my first year here, I joined all the other expats at Hyde Park Corner (damn, but I wish I'd done more of London with you sometimes). I stood in the dark underneath Boudiccea on the Marble Arch, with Ants in full police dress uniform (operating on the premise that its easier to ask forgiveness than permission, an approach I know you would have appreciated) reciting "For the Fallen", anticipating every note of the Last Post and Reveille. There were wreaths, and later a meal at a pub.

It was a defining moment in Australia's history. A terrible episode that brought our nation dramatically into adulthood from blissful adolescence. Its a transition Mikko never made himself - but that can never diminish his admiration for those who did.

La Reine Margot

I will always think of this as a 'Mikko movie' - not least because you and Maggie and a bunch of old Varangians were avowed fans long before you showed it to me.

I remember feeling thick and stupid as I watched it with you that first time: the wars of religion in England were barely touched on in my history classes in school; and the European blood feuds between Catholic and Hugenot were absent entirely. You tried to teach me, patient but so full of knowledge that you intimidated me (I never told you that, did I?), and I'd just crack the shits and retreat to some book that you'd helpfully offered, or to try to find some potted history on the internet that would help it all make sense. You'd giggle and call me a goose and eventually I'd come back to the doona on the couch and you, and we'd demolish all the popcorn (made 'from scratches' of course!)

But you persevered and we watched it again, and yet again, and each time I understood a little more and grew to love it too. You never tired of replaying it either - eyes glued to every scene, from gruesome naked violence to most artful court intrigue, this visual feast underpinned in vital subtitles, for neither of us spoke enough French to understand it otherways.

I own a copy now - and you'd be proud of how my French has developed, although given your stubborn refusal to tackle the language (your temper and reactions so like my own on topics where it was me that knew more - you goose!) you mightn't have been able to share my giggles over scenes where the polite words on screen bear no resemblance to the bawdy dialogue.

Ants has watched it with me, and mostly just bugged his eyes out at the shots of genitals - there are more than a few! I'm not sure he listened to my tentative explanations of the story behind the massacre that St Bartholemew's night, or if I even made sense, so tentative was I, wanting to explain but wrapped up in memories of my own sense of thick stupidity and hoping I wasn't being too intimidating...

It's still a cracking film. I think I'm going to have to collect them all...

Risotto

I made risotto today. With chicken, and venison sausage, parsnip and green beans. Nutmeg and pepper. Too many ingredients, I know, but we always did put too much stuff in...

I did all the things I used to watch you do - browning the meat and onion first, a bottle of red open on the table: strictly for the chef, of course. Hot stock, for the best texture. But I didn't consciously think of you until I chucked in the fromage frais, right at the end. You always used sour cream - that dairy hit does amazing things to the way it feels in your mouth.

I remember watching spellbound as you made my first risotto (not long after the amazing mussels pasta), in that house in Sydney road beside the Anarchist bookshop, where you always had a window open, the trams would rattle past at all hours and the floorboards were always dusty and gritty beneath my bare feet. There were beaten up couches and crazy housemates, but you always had good plates and fat, fabulous, colourful wine glasses. You made me dozens more risottos in the years that came after, always ordering me 'outta my kitchen. Mine. Out' - so that when I lived in Carlton I was actually trembling as I tried that first time to make it for myself.Since I've lived in the UK, I've made several people's 'first risotto'. Kim. Brenda. Zoe took notes so she could replicate it. I like the idea that my friends of today don't have to have met you, to carry a piece of you with them too.

Whether they know it or not.

On grief, and a path to healing

You went away to foreign peoples,
and I stayed behind, the prey of that fire
which, without you, made my days black and sad;
but as the hours progressed, little by little,
I resolved to make a virtue of my need,
and to make room in myself for other concerns.
This was the true solution to my pain:
in this way my mind discovered at last
a cure for its deep and serious wounds;
your departure for foreign lands
mended the blow, although the scar
could not be completely erased.
Perhaps I would have been happy and glad
if I could have enjoyed you to my heart’s content,
and perhaps I’d have been unhappy instead.
The great excess of happiness
might have transformed the highest joy
into cruel, burdensome pain;
and if you’d gone, leaving me behind
at a time so full of such delight,
my distress would have had no end.
So heaven refused to make my hours
joyful and serene, to avoid reducing me
soon after to the worst, most bitter pain.
And I, freed by heaven to such a degree,
must remain content; and yet I’m not able
to hope that the opposite had not occurred.

Source:Veronica Franco, excerpt from Capitolo 19

Lest THEY forget...

Remembrance day is, of course, always a poignant day for all who love Mikko. Lest we forget, and all that.

It seems the French at Villers-Bretonneux have even longer memories. At the end of World War I, according to The Age, Victorian schoolchildren donated money to rebuild the school of the town, taken from the Germans by Australian soldiers on 24 April 1918, at the cost of 1200 Australian lives.

Now the French have returned the favour: after hearing about Black Saturday, the mayor and city are donating money to rebuild a school somewhere in Australia.

I can hear jubilance in Mikko's laugh even as I type this. It's gestures like these that gave him hope for the world: hope for humanity, hope for romance, hope for his vision of a life in which it might be truly possible to be a 'citizen of the world'.

My hope springs eternal. This is why I continue to honour him - this is what he taught me - this life of hope is the life I choose.

The World's Fastest Indian

Friend of mine reminded me recently of this film, which I saw at its opening night IN Invercargill. I cant see the film without crying... the wide roads and 50s suburban streetscapes... wow. Anthony Hopkins. And Burt Munro. My father in law's grandfather used to race with him - this crazy old guy who lived in a shed on a suburban block and just loved to ride bikes really fast and to flirt with the ladies, even when he was long past pensionable age. So there's two blokes Mikko would have wanted to be, if he'd made it to 68, and "evil uncle Mikko" status...

World's best hangover brekkie

Once upon a time, back in the days when it wasn't really Saturday unless it started with a hangover, Mikko and Georgi hauled their suffering bodies onto a flight to Canberra. We were flying with the matriarch and patriarch of 'Clan Colquhoun', and John and Jude were frankly horrified by our seediness. (Can't think why. Specially when I'm sure it was their wine the night before...)

Everything changed when we found the delightful 'Cafe Essen' in Civic, which served sweetcorn fritters with bacon and maple syrup. Sounds disgusting, you might think. I did. But the more I thought about it the better it sounded, and by the time I'd kept down a large glass of 'fat Coke' I was ready to try it.

To this day, it's the world's best brekkie for a hangover. Or any other Saturday, come to that. For years I despaired of ever being able to replicate it, until last year I found a recipe in a book in the Oxford library. And it works!

Far more than just my drinking habits have changed since those days, but today, apropos of nothing, I made the 'worlds best hangover brekkie' again, It was magnificent.
It put me in mind of hundreds of weekend breakfasts in Seymour and Abbotsford, Luxembourg, Finland, England and Austria, France and Belgium. I don't know anyone who does breakfast with as much aplomb as the Mikko did.

From sprawled on the floor devouring the weekend papers, to bottomless coffees with eggs benedict in some groovy cafe in Fitzroy, Collingwood or South Melbourne, breakfast was a Mikko morning ritual, an institution. Fry ups after a feast. Pancakes.

And that most memorable one of all, where he asked what I wanted for my birthday brekkie at his parents' house. Smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, please, I replied. My morning started with a glass of champagne, and an invitation to laze around under the doona until brekkie was ready.

Brekkie took quite some time.

After about an hour, a slightly flustered Mikko came up the stairs, apologising profusely cos he'd never actually made 'scrumbled' eggs before and he hadn't a clue where to start and did 'this' look vaguely right.

They were perfect, as was the salmon, the other glass of champagne, and our long wintry walk around the old Luxembourg Ville. Smoked Salmon and scrambled eggs is still my favourite brekkie for birthdays - although only once has the delivery ever even come close to that magical day when I turned 28.

Forever 32

I was 35 yesterday Finn.

Celebrated it in a style that I think you would have appreciated, with eaty-drinkie goodness at a proper 'free house' (independent pub) in the village where I work. Lunch was cooked by the landlord hisself, and his fresh food fetish gives the lie to English food being dodgy and stodgy (then again, Ollie the landlord is Irish). In between foodstuffs and conversations we played trivial pursuit, and soccer (I still can't call it football), and Aunt Sally (it's an oxfordshire thing - I'll explain another time), and there were guitars and singing. Ollie's other rare distinction is that he sells decent ciders and great wine, so we weren't all stuck with 'jars all round'.

It was a lot like the good old days at the Dan, where the pub felt 'just like your loungeroom. only bigger, to fit more of my friends in', or a bit like being away for a weekend in the country - but just for an afternoon. (Remember Puzz-3D in that amazing B&B we all stayed in after Ky and Paul's wedding? Like that.)

Afterwards got a bit messy, with second pub followed by whisky at a friend's place, then back to the pub. Hangover wasn't as bad as I deserved, but I was still relieved to have booked the day off work... So I reckon for 35 I'm doin' okay, well on track to ageing disgracefully.

I can't help thinking that you were always two years older than me, but today you're still 32.

I'm sorry you're not going to grow old with the rest of us. Liam sent me a text a while back that says 'even though you're not here, I can still share good times with you' (i suspect he's probably sent that message to your phone too, even though you don't answer it anymore)... You're missing out on a helluva lot - including another crackajack birthday.

Quote of the week

"A man drink like that and he don't eat - he is going to die"
- Blazing Saddles