Pegging it out

The G had me up and about at the crack of dawn this morning. Well, not quite the crack of dawn but I suppose that against the backdrop of a holiday, breakfast at 0830 is indeed early. I breakfasted on a couple of poached eggs and bacon. This is probably no longer good for me because until last week bacon was OK to eat but now, it seems, it has been determined as injurious to one’s health. Worse, perhaps, it has been placed into a category of harmful substances that includes tobacco.

It is the World Health Organisation (delightfully abbreviated to WHO, for that is the question most people ask when confronted with this doubtless august body) that has determined this latest piece of gibberish. The BBC reported that according to WHO 50g of processed meat a day (less than two slices of bacon) increases the chance of developing colorectal cancer by 18%”. Furthermore we learn that red meats are "probably carcinogenic" but that there is limited evidence. The BBC’s report then goes on to say that WHO did stress that meat also had health benefits.

This is really silly. Firstly we have been eating bacon for years. It is a useful and tasty meat (especially done with maple syrup and served with pancakes à la Canadienne). How can Father bring home the bacon now without endangering the lives of his little ones? And, worse, when I look at the BBC’s report I will be worried sick that I will be sick from this morning’s breakfast. How can I balance the risks of eating read meat with the apparent health benefits? What does this mean? How can I cope?

I shall continue to enjoy the occasional bacon butty!

Well I coped perfectly easily by ignoring this utter drivel and enjoying a couple of poached eggs and a couple of rashers of bacon and revelling in the fact that there were no carbs there. I also took comfort from the comments of a man called John Berardi, Ph.D who wrote in the Huffington Post (so it must be true) about eggs. He said that “Egg paranoia has been based on the old assumption that eating the yolks will raise blood cholesterol (and increase your risk for artery and heart disease)”. I didn’t read to end of the article as I got bored but the tenor and tone leads me to suppose that he concludes that eggs are OK. I will keep eating them as well as bacon.

I did not mean to get onto a health kick today; it’s just the way it turned out. My apologies, Imaginary Reader.

We set off to find coffee. The G has the highest possible standards for coffee and has an eye for spotting and a nose for sniffing out likely coffee places. She had espied such a place on our last trip to Nowra and we found it again. This place is called Hyper Hyper Coffee. There were several reasons why this place appealed to us. They roast their own coffee and some was roasting as we watched. It was a little on the mild side for us (The G always has a double shot in a cup not a mug) but was good nonetheless. They also had a record player which was playing real records: we listed to Robert Johnson and a few other blues greats as we drank our coffee sitting in an unusual seating area (see the picture). And, frankly, Gentle and possibly Imaginary Reader, I do not give a shit if coffee is bad for me.

Hyper Hyper coffee: the picture on the right shows that you could choose to sit in a rock (like the proverbial shag) or on a milk crate covered with artificial turf. We were shags.

A horse from the Flying Pig Precinct

We went to Berry. I am unable to divulge all the results of our Berry experience for otherwise the anticipation of Christmas for some possible readers of this epistle will be dulled. But I did invest in a bottle of 12yo Hellyers Road to add to the collection. I say “invest” because there will be a return. I pay good money for a bottle of Scotch and I become a better man through the drinking of it. And that is a fact. Pure and simple.

We also visited a gallery called Thinkpig which had been closed every time we had been there before. We acquired a horse as pictured.

We resisted the lure of the pie shop (I cannot recall its name) as we are to lunch today with friends. But I have to say that this pie shop makes a very fine lentil and mushroom pie. I will need to work out how to make one of these myself.

A peg. A very large peg.

Those who know the The G and me will know how it is when we holiday. There is no peace. I have remarked elsewhere that The G plans all. There is no downtime. One is hustled from one sight to the next. This is not leisure: this is vacation with purpose. There is nothing I can do about this and, therefore, I was directed to Unreal Rocks. Unreal Rocks, the brainchild of one Grant, invites you to “stroll through the grounds and experience the craftsmanship of [its] artworks situated throughout the gardens”.  We are told that they “offer a diverse range of statues to suit all tastes”.

We took them up on their invitation and proceeded to stroll. I was a little uncertain about this but then we saw The Peg. There is picture here of the peg. It is a magnificent thing that appeals completely to our whacky sense of things. It stands almost 3 metres high and looks like an aged and weathered Australian hardwood. We bought it. Of course we did. Grant told us that House and Garden were coming to do a feature on him and his statues and that The Peg was big on the list for a photograph. It will come early in 2016 and will be a graceful addition to the statuary collection.

It was pretty bloody hot and humid so we took the roof off Ted and drove topless. You get a much better sense of the exhaust noise. One of the benefits of a noisy car is that you cannot easily carry on a conversation. This suits me but not The G who likes a bit of a chat (she claims not to be good a small talk but if she’s not good at it then heaven forbid I should ever meet someone who is good at it). We lunched with friends then back to The Pines.

A fine looking beast.

We decided that we would have an evening of filmic entertainment. We are not great movie goers but we went to see Burnt. I see from IMDb that this movie has a 6.8 rating (out of 10 before you ask). That’s probably about right. We enjoyed it but two things occurred to me. The first was that no two Michelin star chef would fiddle with every plate that was going out. The G made the not unreasonable point that he (Adam Jones played by Bradley Cooper) was a perfectionist. That’s true but that would have got in the way before the first Michelin star. The second quibble I have was the “love interest”. Sure, Sienna Miller is easy on the eye but at the point of the inevitable kiss I thought “here we go, same old tired shit”. It would have been so much more interesting if his love interest was Tony the maître d’ (Daniel Brühl). Nonetheless we ambled back in a light drizzle and, as Samuel Pepys would have said, so to bed.