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