welcome
Welcome to a new issue of shipping news, my occasional newsletter of things of interest. Typical headings include analog, apple, cool tools, film and TV, in the garden, history, localism, nature, pen and paper, reading and writing, software and technology. And the interplay between them all.
Thanks to everyone’s who been reading, and liking and making comments and suggestions. I hope you enjoy something in this issue. I’ve also stared a little summary blog of the main things I’ve mentioned here, for easy reference or in case you want to check if you missed anything. You can find that archive on its own little site HERE.
cool tools: surfears 4.0
Anyone who’s surfed for any length of time in cold water climates like Victoria will know about surfer’s ear, where the ear get blocked over time. The most important prevention is to wear earplugs. The trouble with most earplugs is that they stop water, but also stop sound from getting in. So, if you’re out in the surf sitting around with friends, or swimming with friends, it’s hard to communicate with each other.
surfears are earplugs I’ve been using for about five years now. Their key feature is that they let sound in, but keep water out. They come on a handy loop that goes around your neck so you can’t lose them and are durable and easy to clean with fresh water.
They say:
SurfEars are high-performance earplugs designed to keep water out while allowing sound in, perfect for surfers, swimmers, divers, kayakers and anyone who loves the ocean. Crafted from recycled ocean plastics and built for long-lasting performance, it’s designed to handle whatever the water throws your way. Stay connected, stay protected, and leave nothing behind but good vibes.
family history - the Proust questionnaire
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve become the un-elected, unpaid, unrewarded guardian of our family history. Over the years I’ve done several short interviews with senior family members and was prescient enough to record a couple of these, including some interviews with my grandmother, born in 1905 who told me about the zeppelin raids over London in World War I and the kids running out into the street after the raids and picking up the hot shrapnel.
Still, I wish I’d heard earlier about the Proust Questionnaire. The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust and often used by modern interviewers.
Wikipedia says: ‘Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album—a form of parlour game popular among Victorians. The album belonged to his friend Antoinette, daughter of future French President Félix Faure, and was titled “An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc.”’
Here are the questions Proust answered, at 13, and then again 20. I wish I’d asked my grandmother some of these.
Proust Questionnaire (Age 13)
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Proust: To be separated from Mama
Where would you like to live?
Proust: In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Proust: To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Proust: To a life deprived of the works of genius
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Proust: Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real
Who are your favorite characters in history?
Proust: A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Proust: A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Proust: Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
Your favorite painter?
Proust: Meissonier
Your favorite musician?
Proust: Mozart
The quality you most admire in a man?
Proust: Intelligence, moral sense
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Proust: Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
Your favorite virtue?
Proust: All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
Your favorite occupation?
Proust: Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
Who would you have liked to be?
Proust: Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.
⸻
Proust Questionnaire (Age 20)
(Only new or significantly different questions)
Your most marked characteristic?
Proust: A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired
What do you most value in your friends?
Proust: Tenderness – provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having
What is your principle defect?
Proust: Lack of understanding; weakness of will
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
Proust: Never to have known my mother or my grandmother
What would you like to be?
Proust: Myself – as those whom I admire would like me to be
What is your favorite color?
Proust: Beauty lies not in colors but in their harmony
What is your favorite flower?
Proust: Hers – but apart from that, all
What is your favorite bird?
Proust: The swallow
Who are your favorite prose writers?
Proust: At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti
Who are your favorite poets?
Proust: Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny
Who are your heroes in real life?
Proust: Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)
Who are your favorite heroines of history?
Proust: Cleopatra
What are your favorite names?
Proust: I only have one at a time
What is it you most dislike?
Proust: My own worst qualities
What historical figures do you most despise?
Proust: I am not sufficiently educated to say
What event in military history do you most admire?
Proust: My own enlistment as a volunteer!
What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Proust: Will power and irresistible charm
How would you like to die?
Proust: A better man than I am, and much beloved
What is your present state of mind?
Proust: Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions
What is your motto?
Proust: I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.
in the garden: fun with olives
If I’d known then what I know now, twenty years ago I might have planted coastal banksias around the edge of our deck and along the fence, rather than olives. Mind you, they’d be pretty big by now.
But olives it was, and they’ve been good shade and privacy screening trees; hardy and water-friendly. The good thing/the trouble is they grow olives. And, in some seasons, there are lots of rich, dark, black olives that I can’t bear seeing go to waste. I’ve tried quite a few times to turn them into those olives like the ones you get in the deli, with different methods, usually with a lot of salt and water and time. I’ve got close a couple of times too. In 2022 I managed to get them to the stage where two or three out of four were edible. Trouble is, one wasn’t, and you couldn’t tell until you tasted it!
Well, it’s olive picking time and this year I’m trying a different approach, using a dry salt cured recipe. Essentially, the olives are washed, dried and packed with salt to pucker and cure over a couple of weeks then stored in a water/vinegar mixture.
This is the video I used to teach me how. I started with a kilogram of ripe olives and have packed them into the mix. What could go wrong? I’ll update the results in a future issue and let you know
reading: kobo and ditching Amazon
When I was looking to buy a book recently and found the hard copy too expensive (I usually go for a physical book if I can), I started looking at alternatives to buying it from Amazon to read on the Kindle app. I haven’t got an actual Kindle but generally use the app on my iPad if I’m reading ebooks. It works well enough, great for taking books on trips when weight is an issue.
However, apart from a natural reticence about Amazon, I heard recently that they have decided to enshitify the experience a little more: Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books
So, in this case, I bought the ebook from Booktopia (Australia’s biggest online only bookstore) who recommend reading it using the Kobo app (or a Kobo reader). It’s pretty simple to link your Booktopia account and the books suddenly appear in Kobo. The experience is very similar to the Kindle; you can highlight and annotate etc, although getting the highlights OUT of the app and into your own notes is trickier than it should be.
In these times I think it’s worth looking at what you’re spending your money on, and who and where it’s going to, and makes those decisions a little more consciously!
By the way, the book I read most recently was the fantastically named; A Natural History of Empty Lots, by Christopher Brown, which had some wonderful moments before it got a bit preachy and repetitive towards the end.
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it.
Having my Facebook account hacked recently has made me very wary about all things online…..however, I would be very happy to try an alternative to my Kindle app. I’m letting DB taste test it for me first and we’ll let you know what we think. Thanks for the suggestion!
There was a push towards ebooks for independent bookstores when Amazon first launched kind,e here about a decade ago. It didn’t last long unfortunately. (Rip bookish!)