For a while now, I’ve been struck by how people refer to their possessions as stuff - a collective noun (?) to describe the amorphous, unarticulated collection of objects they own. Not important enough to be able to name, too large in quantity to be able to catalogue and account for or is it that there no connection to warrant the naming? The stuff may be loosely defined by some use, purpose or other object - car stuff, house stuff, work stuff but it is still not really articulated. Odd, considering the hours of work, striving and debt that is represented by stuff.
The word stuffed is used to denote when we’ve had enough or are sated (think festive, celebratory lunch) and colloquially in Australia we use it to say we have reached the limit; we are really tired - with some regularity I say after gardening and limping back to the house, “God, I’m stuffed” - or that something has reached a point of no return - “That motor is stuffed” - but a “stuff up’ also says, that a mistake has been made.
So what I’m wondering is, if we’ve reached the limit, does that mean we’ve had enough?
Well, for a real treat, this home-made bread tastes even better with olive oil. Bread and butter is lovely but if I had to choose one fat, above all others, it would have to olive oil. Olive oil has the advantage, excellent for Australia’s climate, of not needing refrigeration. It’s amazing that it’s taken so long for olives to become popular-ish here.
Last Sunday, I drove down to a local olive grove to help them pick their olives. Leccino and a small quantity of Frantoio - Tuscan varieties of oil olives. It was a great learning experience and just a fantastic thing to do in the autumn sunshine. Silvery green leaves, just beautiful - yes I’m obsessed with olives. Lots to learn but isn’t that always the way.
As a child I really disliked olives and olive oil. The imported oils were often heavy tasting and I suspect, not altogether fresh but that wasn’t it. Olives marked you out as non -Anglo….of course, being called Nada did that too; so although I couldn’t avoid my name, I could avoid olives. To add to the olive issue, on Palm Sunday, my observant Catholic mother would take olive branches (that someone had given her) to church, not palm branches, to be blessed. This is how they did it in the home country and in the home country, the only palm trees were on the Split foreshore and who was going to climb those!!! Now the olive branches were only a real problem, if we were going to our local parish church; at the Croatian church most people had them so it wasn’t an issue but all the kids cringed - “It’s PALM Sunday not OLIVE Sunday”. Over the years, people planted palm trees in their yards and so began to take those leaves in for the occasion instead. Olive branches are symbols of peace, as are palms in Judaism. Palms also symbolise triumph, victory and the tropical paradise thing too.
How this has come full circle - my mother is removing her palm trees to plant olives…..with some prodding from my sister and me. I’m on a planting mission. (I think I’m too angry to be on a peace mission!!! but maybe that’s what this is.) To fulfill my altogether selfish dream, however, I may need to find a nice piece of north facing slope somewhere and plant a small grove. Would that be a sufficient mea culpa for my prejudice?
