Each year, we invite a few friends up to the farm at Gingin to celebrate the winter solstice. After spending the day pruning the fruit trees and tending to the orchard, we fire up the pizza oven and serve a nearly endless stream of delicious homemade pizzas. We follow up by lighting a huge bonfire to brighten things up through the long night. It’s heaps of fun (despite things often going awry because of rainy weather).
Citrus is in season at the moment, and the trees are totally loaded with fruit. LR gets to work picking some mandarins. Delicious!
RJ: Just grab a potato, then you slice it nice and thin…
Dad: (pointing to loaf of sliced bread) How about this instead?
Now in front of me is a very rare Brazilian Potato. I carefully open the wrapping, and then large chips just peel away. Amazing stuff! Greatest invention since…
RJ: (sternly) That’s not a Brazilian potato. That’s impossible.
Dad: What do you mean?
RJ: Don’t you remember the song? The Brazil song?
RJ: (singing) No tea…. Or tomato juice…
You’ll see… No potato juice…
RJ: No potato juice means no potatoes. Sorry.
Dad: You’re right… My mistake — wrong South American country. Now in front of me is a very rare Bolivian Potato…
RJ is on the hunt for the greatest songs of all time.
RJ has fairly eclectic taste in music and knows in a second whether or not he likes a song.
This week, he was looking for a new song to sing for singing lessons. After running through our fairly small list of Beatles songs, he found only one acceptable: Eleanor Rigby.
(while eating breakfast… LR is playing computer chess, while RJ sings us some of his original hits)
RJ: (singing)
The worst germ,
That you can have,
Gives you a kind of vomit.
And diarrhoea, that is so bad,
That you can’t ever drink enough water. And… So… You… Die…
LR: Good one RJ!
Dad: Yeah. Did you learn that one at school?
RJ: Nah. I just made it up now. That’s my cholera song.
RJ: (singing) Chikka-chakka-chikka-chukka cho… (continues for a minute) RJ: Do you like my song? Dad: Sure, but I don’t understand the words or what it’s about. RJ: You don’t know the Chikka-chakka language? Dad: Nope. It’s a bit sad really. RJ: Ugh.. That’s terrible… RJ: (a few moments later) (singing) Waa-waa-wee-ooo. Waaa… (continues for a minute) RJ: How about that song? Dad: Great one, but bad news… I didn’t understand that one either. RJ: What!? You don’t understand Waa-wee language? That is ridiculous! What did they teach you in school?! Dad: I guess it wasn’t a very good school. RJ: Okay. One more try… RJ: (singing) Mikka-mak, mikka-mak mooo! Mikka-mak, mikka-mak mooo-ooo-ooo! Mikka-mikka… (continues for ages) Dad: That’s the best one yet, but you’ll have to explain it to me. RJ: It’s a song about falling in love… with a beautiful girl. Dad: It’s awesome. I’ll have to sing it to mum.
You’ll often hear LR wandering around humming tunes or singing songs to herself. She’s obviously got her own personal soundtrack going on.
For the past two weeks, however, her soundtrack has switched over completely to the Imperial March (from Star Wars). It’s the piece of music that plays whenever Darth Vader enters a scene: dark, ominous, foreboding.
