Pumpkin Eater

It's funny how your tastes change, isn't it? I mean, quite literally change in relation to certain flavours.

As a child, I can remember tea-time battles over pumpkin. I can still see it squatting malevolently on my plate, part covered by the other two veg and one meat that was required eating in the 50s. My mum tried every trick in the book -- baking it, mashing it, boiling it, mixing it with other vegetables, but I could always manage to eat around it, in much the same way a cat will eat all the meat you've cunningly wrapped around its pill and then spit out the soggy remnants while giving you a withering glance as it stalks away.

Dad would sit patiently with me as I pushed it this way and that, hoping a little would adhere to the plate each time I moved it and it would, somehow, miraculously disappear. But alas, it never did.

Then they'd go through the entire parental repertoire of coping with fussy eaters, from the conciliatory "Go on, just try a little bit," to the guilt-inspiring, "What about all the poor starving children in China?" (to which my unspoken retort was always, "They can have it! I'll post it to them...") to the exasperated, "You're not leaving the table until it's all gone!"

That memory is the only blot on what I recall as being an idyllic childhood ... We didn't have much in the way of "stuff." In the immediate post-war years, as I think I've mentioned, lots of materials were in short supply, so we had to make do. While my dad built our house, we stayed with my grandparents, and the three of us used to travel to the house by train each weekend to spend the day there (no motor cars for us in those years). Dad would go each night during the week after he finished his day job and work into the wee, small hours.

While Mum and Dad hammered and sawed and did all the things necessary to build their first home, I pottered around the site, and one day I salvaged what was to become my favourite plaything for the duration of the build. It was an off-cut of hardwood from the floor boards that had been tossed onto a dying fire, so it hadn't been completely burnt. In fact, the top part actually resembled a person's profile, so this became my "dolly."

After taking one look at my blackened face, hands and clothes the first day, Dad took the "doll" away and cleaned it up for me, sanding off all the charcoal and splinters until I was able to safely play with it. It entertained me happily from then on, and I'd carry it in my arms, like a baby, on the mile+ walk to and from the railway station each time we went to the house.

Mum drew the line at me carrying it on the train, so I found a spot in the bushes next to the station, where we three fashioned a comfy bed and little shelter for the "doll," and there she stayed (for "she" it was) until the next visit. I'd be nervous each time as the train got closer to the station, worrying lest someone had found and taken her. (I know ... who would? But I was a preschooler at this stage, and who knows how little minds work!)

It was always such a relief to peek in and find her still there. I can't remember what happened to her, but in the months I had her, she was as precious to me as any porcelain doll.

How differently I regarded them once I married and was responsible for putting meals on the table! Then it was that I discovered the deliciousness of the humble pumpkin. I suppose it had something to do with the fact that the Love of My Life loved a baked dinner, and no baked dinner is complete without at least three baked veggies ... You have potatoes as a given, then sweet potato (of course) and unless you want to do the baked carrot/onion/parsnip thing, pumpkins are the only choice for number three.

However, I'm sure it wasn't just the love factor that made pumpkins taste so much better, they really had changed in themselves. Gone was the bitter, slippery flesh of the old Queensland Blue (more of a grey, than a blue) that haunted my childhood, and in its place were the delightfully sweet and nutty varieties.

My favourite for many years was the Butternut -- those cute little peanut-shaped pumpkins you could cook and stuff with all sorts of other foods and serve with a flourish at 60s dinner parties!

I often wondered how we'd come to get a pumpkin from Japan, until I read an article about the growers who came across this new variety. They tasted it and realised they were on a winner ... but what to call it?

And lo, we have the divine Jap! (Well, that's my story, and it's a good one, don't you think?)

It not only tastes wonderful, but its callipygian rondure is also a delight for the eyes ... See what I mean here.

Callipygian means having beautifully proportioned buttocks and comes from the Greek words kalli (beautiful) and puge (buttocks), while rondure means a graceful curving or roundness and comes from the Old French ronde meaning 'round' (which, in turn, comes from the Latin, rota 'wheel').

There you go ... two for the price of one. You'll have fun working these into a conversation this weekend!

And what do you get when you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?

We chatted last week about names, and Jack (from Perth in Western Australia) wondered about the weeks ...

The generations have names - "X", "Y", "Baby Boomer",
and so forth. But what about the poor old weeks? All they have are
numbers - "Week 1", "Week 2" up to the infrequent "Week 5".

Well, since no-one else has done anything about it, I've decided it's
time to give them their names.

They are to be - "Wonery", "Yurie", "Yickery" and "Yam", and in the case
of the fifth week, it will be just have to be "Fillacy".

Of course, you'll remember where these names came from? Well, you would
have, if you had grown up in outback Queensland, as I did. The
"counting out" jingles, such as "Eeenie, Meenie, Miiny, Mo", the very
last shouted word or syllable counted out the person to be dismissed.

The version handed down by our parents went thus:

Wonery, Yurie, Yickey, Yam.
Fillacy, Follicy Nicholish Jam
Queevy Quarvy Irish Man,
Ticklem, Tackelum, BUCK!

And out went Buck, ay?

You can still drop by and add your comments to our interesting names post on the blog (and read what some other people have posted while you're there).

If you enjoy writing, you'll find this week's Little Something Extra has something just for you!

And speaking of enjoying writing ... I have great fun with this newsletter (and have done so since I started it in 1998) and you can join in the fun by starting your own. If you have a hobby, a passion or a business in any field you can think of, you can bet your boots there'll be other people out there who'd love to read about it!

Plus, you can basically turn any hobby or interest into a newsletter business. Single-handed if you want. This past couple of weeks, I've been engrossed in a new course that shows you exactly how to start a commercial newsletter. "Secrets of Successful Newsletters" is an in-depth but easy-to-follow course offering you all you need to know and more about writing a very successful and profitable newsletter. Nothing is left out!

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We've spent a bit of time contemplating plants and vegetables this week -- how much do you know about our leafy cousins?

annual, tuber, mulch, bolting, leaching, offset, perennial, bracts, hybrid, node

1. small, complete plant produced by many bulbous plants; easily removed from the original bulb and planted on to for another plant

2. running to seed' or flowering before you want; often will ruin the vegetable you are trying to grow

6. a plant or variety that has been developed by interbreeding two or more varieties, species or genera

8. layer of material placed over the ground, for the purposes of feeding the soil, conserving moisture, stopping weeds germinating, keeping the soil warm or protecting from heavy rain

9. plants that live for more than two years; vegetables that are left the same spot for many years

10. process whereby a substance, such as fertiliser, dissolves and is carried away by rain water

Deep in the back woods, a hillbilly's wife went into labour in the middle of the night, and the doctor was called out to assist in the delivery. Since there was no electricity, the doctor handed the father-to-be a lantern and said, 'Here. You hold this high so I can see what I am doing!'

Soon, a baby boy was brought into the world.

'Whoa there', said the doctor, 'don't be in such a rush to put that lantern down. I think there's another one coming.'

Sure enough, within minutes he had delivered a baby girl. 'Hold that lantern up, don't set it down ,there's another one!' said the doctor.

Within a few minutes he had delivered a third baby. 'No, don't be in a hurry to put down that lantern, it seems there's yet another one coming!' cried the doctor.

The father-to-be scratched his head in bewilderment and said to the doctor, 'You reckon it might be the light that's attractin' 'em?'

Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK. For all the flash new browsers, you'll have to do a search on my mate google to find what to do. There's a search box on the archives page!)

If you've received this little missive from a friend, you can get your very own issue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every Friday morning by clicking here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogrups.com And I'm even prepared to offer a shameless bribe.

quiescent, misanthrope, recreancy, epitome, erudite, saturnine, misogynist, abeyance, squalid, diaphanous

And a short story contest for those of you who enjoy sci-fi, fantasy and horror ... from a reputable and real magazine. (Some of you may have entered this last year when I mentioned it. Give it a go again and let me know how you do! It's a very spiffy looking print magazine with some fabulous art work, as well as great stories, each issue.)

Albedo One, Ireland’s magazine of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, is proud to announce the fifth International Aeon Award short fiction contest. Grand prize is 1000 euro and publication in Albedo One. Second and third place stories win 200 and 100 euro respectively, alongside publication in Albedo One.

This year we have an added bonus prize for the winning story courtesy of the highly respected Authorlink.com. The winning story will have the option of a free one-year publication in their Storywire section where authors earn royalties from online readers of their work. Authorlink.com is a news, information and marketing site for editors, agents, writers, and readers with more than 50,000 unique visitors a month and a social network of 6,000+ friends.

The contest is open to stories of up to 8000 words in any speculative genre, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, or anything in between or unclassifiable. The judges have a very broad definition of what constitutes a genre story. The contest is also open to writers of all nationalities. The winning stories will be chosen by highly respected genre author Ian Watson, who will again act as Grand Judge for this year’s contest.

The contest is open from 1st of January 2010 until November 30th 2010, and runs in four rounds, at the end of which the judges will announce on the Albedo One website www.albedo1.com a shortlist of those entries they feel worthy of further consideration. The 1st round ends March 31st, the second round, June 30th, the third round September 30th and the final round November 30th. Full details may be found at the following link here.

Word of the week: Aegrotat (n) a medical certificate of illness excusing student's sickness; was used primarily in the United Kingdom and formerly in the British Empire, and then only in the context of degrees and courses considered as passed by a student too ill to finish the appropriate material. Aegrotat is the only surviving remnant in English of the Latin verb aegrotare (to fall ill, make ill).

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