Tetherd Cow Ahead

This was a Christmas present for me from Viridian. Do you think my stepdaughters know me well?

And with a bumper sticker like that, well, how could you be anything but the coolest dude in town?

An Australian friend of mine who now resides permanently in northern California was bemoaning to me yesterday that Americans don’t really seem to get the concept of the Christmas plum pudding. So for the education of my US readers, and for the nostalgia for my Australian readers, some reminiscences on the subject.

In my family’s celebrations, the plum pudding was an essential finale to the Christmas dinner. Let me set the scene for you so you can imagine the surreal experience of Christmas in Australia:

To begin with, you should understand that, because it is the middle of our summer, it is usually very hot here at Christmas (sometimes VERY hot; I remember one year at my parents’ place where the thermometer was creeping above 38ºC (100ºF) – and that wasn’t the one in the turkey). ((On that particular day, bushfires raged on three sides of us and the air was black with smoke and soot.)) But because of the English & European ancestry of most Australians, at Christmas we still surround ourselves with the icons of a Northern Hemisphere festival: decorated pine trees ((In our case the ubiquitous pinus radiata)), images of snow and snowmen, songs about chestnuts and open fires and big servings of totally inappropriate food, like roast turkey with potatoes and baked ham. Some years we attempt to escape from the shackles of a heritage that has well and truly outlived its welcome. This year it was our turn to host the Christmas lunch and we suggested that a barbecue & salads might be a nice idea but the looks of dismay and betrayal on the faces of relatives was so great that we caved in and did the turkey and potatoes. It’s mighty hard work flying in the face of tradition.

And I have to confess, even though I could forego most of the other stuff, I would really miss the plum pudding.

When I was a kid, the plum pudding was brought to the table aglow with blue brandy-fuelled flames. We were served generous slices smothered in custard and icecream. But the best part by far was that some fortunate person would get the ‘lucky’ sixpence or threepence hidden somewhere inside. Even though the the tradition of the plum pudding probably comes from the early nineteenth century, the notion of ‘lucky coins’ or ‘touch pieces’ probably reaches back as far as medieval times. In our case, the coin was always a pre-war minted sixpence, which was suitable to be cooked in a pudding owing to its high silver content (about 98%). After the war the coins were minted with about 50% copper, and could no longer be used. ((I remember that if we got the sixpence in the pudding, we had to ‘trade’ it with mum & dad, or our grandparents, ‘for luck’. Thinking back on it, the probability is that they kept a pre-war sixpence for the pudding, and traded it with a coin of recent minting that the lucky finder could go and spend))

When decimal currency was introduced in Australia in 1966, the copper content went to above 75% and so they were right out. ((Interesting tidbit from Wikipedi: “In May 2007, owing to the high market value of copper and nickel, the bullion value of the Australian 5c coin was about 6.5 cents, though there were no reported cases of hoarding or melting down of the coins despite the apparent 30% gross profit to be made from doing so.”)) Nevertheless, someone still always got a lucky coin – I later found out that it was slipped into the pudding just before serving, to avoid the probable copper contamination.

The plum pudding in the picture above was made by my mother-in-law and is truly excellent. Very fortunately for me, the rest of the family, completely stuffed from the turkey and roast potatoes, hardly ate any of it at Christmas dinner, so most of it is sitting in our fridge being whittled slowly away by moi.

Over-enthusiastic salesman in shop during Xmas madness:

This is a unisex scent, and both men and women can use it too.

Well then, Merry Acowlytes. It’s the time of year again when visions of sugar plums dance in the heads of dreaming children, little drummer boys go parrum-a-pum-pum, partridges perch in pear trees and countless other similar surreal events unfold.

There’s no way The Cow can begin to compete with the many bizarre spectacles of Christmas, so it remains for me to simply wish you all a Merry Yuletide, and the best of all things as we approach 2010. Thanks for all your wit, wisdom and humour (I use all those words advisedly) in 2009, and make sure you’re here at The Cow to ring in the new on January 1! You know you’ll have to hand in your medals if you’re not. That means you too, Tom.

Hristos se rod!
Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom!
Feliz Natal!
Nollick ghennal as blein vie noa!
Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto!
Gledileg Jol!

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I don’t expect many of you to get the joke in the cartoon above. But for those who remember the tedious long religious carol services of our youth, there should be a laugh. I hope.

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Ah yes, dear Acowlytes, it is true. Our old friends Steorn have emerged once more from their mossy grotto in the depths of leprechaun country with more tales of a wonderful pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow. Quite incredibly, the Irish swindlers (who I expected to have vanished long ago into the annals of failed perpetual motion ventures) are again attempting to get people with money to part with it on the strength of their brainless ‘Orbo’ – a gadget that, to speak technically for a moment, retrieves fairy dust from the Caverns of Tinkerbellius and turns it into electricity.

This time, they have struck on a novel new approach to their answering their critics (no, it’s not scientific evidence – don’t get excited). They have released a video on YouTube that is designed to ridicule all those who have in the past ridiculed them! Brilliant! Instead of merely demonstrating that their machine actually does what they claim (which would have been the definitive answer to pretty much any criticism) they have spent money on an expensive version of ‘Nyah nyah nyah – does SO work!’ ((I am somewhat miffed that Steorn had a go at Engadget and Wired for dissing them, but left out some of my excellent sarcasm…))

‘But surely Reverend,’ I here you exclaim in disbelief, ‘Steorn can’t just keep stringing people along ad infinitum on the whiff of a promise of their magical device delivering the goods?!’

‘Hahahahaha, my keen young Acowlyte,’ I say, patting you on the head, ‘One would think not in this world chock full of rationalism and commonsense! But if you go to this page on the Steorn site, you will see that for a small scattering of coins into their coffers, Steorn will offer to let you in on their magical secret by way of their Steorn Knowledge Development Base, or SKBD!’

Yes, that’s right. Once more, instead of just showing everyone that they have some real science, they are going to eke out (in tiny pay-as-you-go increments over a long period of time, no doubt) tantalising tidbits about how Orbo is really cool, and stuff, and y’know, awesome and gee-whiz and OMG – this is mind-blowing! and wow, can you believe it? and this is going to change the way we think about energy and on and on and on and on and on and on…

Wind some religion into all this and before you know it Steorn will be an Irish version of Scientology.

Just what the world needs.

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*Imagining things doesn’t make them possible. No matter how hard you imagine.

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