The soufflé is good…

The Hindenburg’s menu impressed me. And it was all prepared for passengers in an aluminium galley, 200m off the ground.

For passengers at this altitude, enjoying the flavours of the food wouldn’t be the problem it is in modern pressurised aircraft cabins where taste buds may as well be put in the overhead lockers. Here is a selection from the menu of a three day flight:

Breakfast
Coffee, Tea Milk, Cocoa
Bread, Butter, Honey, Preserves
Eggs, boiled or in cup
Frankfort Sausage
Ham, Salami
Cheese
Fruit

Lunch
Consommé Gutenberg
English Prime Ribs of Beef with Young Turnips
Stuffed Tomato
Plum Potatoes
Richelieu Pudding
Demi-Tasse

Dinner
Tapioca Soup with Julienne Vegetables
Boiled Halibut
Mousseline Sauce
Salted Potatoes
Capon a’la Brussels with Mixed Vegetables
Assorted Cheese Platter
Pumpernickel Crisp Bread
Westfalian Dark Rye Bread

And after the meal, one could peacefully and luxuriously enjoy a cigar or cigarette within the 200 million litre hydrogen balloon.

No mod cons…

A recent commission required making two illustrations of familiar sights in Queensland, Australia. The first was of a traditional wooden house, and the second a more contemporary brick apartment block which one will often find taking the place of one of the older wooden houses.

The older style (referred to as Queenslanders) are Victorian, and were built up until the 1940’s with the style changing over those years. I like the simpler all wooden style, compared to the more sophisticated thirties type with brick and stucco facades.

But they are all usually single story, on stumps, with a corrugated iron roof. They also feature a covered verandah at the front or side, or in some of the grander versions the verandah wraps around three quarters of the house.

The newer style of building was the brick ‘six pack’ apartment block. These are usually multi-residence flats made of charmless brick and aluminium sliding windows with garages at the bottom. I think the common style first appeared in the late fifties, but they were being built in the eighties too.

The old wooden houses were hot in summer and cold in winter. When there was a summer storm – typically every afternoon in Brisbane at about 5pm – it was impossible to have a successful conversation inside a Queenslander thanks to the heavy rain hitting the corrugated iron roof. Every part of the building was a splinter machine and there was often nails protruding from floorboards, making walking around in bare feet risky. And everyone walks around barefoot in Queensland. And forget about being quiet creeping in late at night without disturbing sleeping housemates: from the first step on the front stairs, to shutting the front door, the entire structure shudders and shakes and trembles on its stilts, making a guard dog redundant.

My favourite feature of these houses are the transoms above the interior doors. Sometimes stained glass, I prefer the wooden slatted ones which commonly have a decorative tulip or geometric shape in the central piece. These allow airflow in summer and snoring all year round to circulate the entire house.

transom above door vent tulip

There was plenty of space under the house between the stilts to park a car, put a washing machine, or crack macadamia nuts on the slab of cement laid down for the washing machine to sit on.

As the old wooden houses aged, it became fashionable to close in the verandahs with unsightly glass louvre windows to give more secluded living space. These extra rooms were known as ‘sleep outs’.

I don’t have much to say about the modern apartment blocks. They’re eyesores and unremarkable. But I like drawing them too.

Over the years, I’ve lived in both types of accommodation. It was always desirable to find a ‘nice Queenslander’, to rent and as students you could fit about 6 people in them – or more if there was a sleep out.

Nowadays, these old houses are mostly nicely painted and renovated and the sash windows work so well that the entire house can be airconditioned. An unthinkable mod-con when I was living there..

Hindsight: Working in the sleep-out room in New Farm.

The red tree outside…

I read My Dog, Hen at St Stephen’s School in Shepherd’s Bush. A good time was had by all (I think).

No photographs exist, but I made a drawing of the event. When I looked out the window, I saw this red tree which was remarkable.

Thanks to the students and the teachers for listening.

Not the Shepherd’s Bush.

The Fall Guy…

The spaceman exited this vehicle.

The last of the plaka…

This is what’s left of the best plaka paint colour I have. Thankfully it was a bright sunny day and the sky was as blue as the Pelican paint.

I remember it as though it was yesterday.

Longer than they are short…

Seasonal wood-free offerings from WM Books. Jacketed hardbacks with linen case material.

Cover design and illustration © David Mackintosh.

In view of old cars…

The young characters in a new book are viewing life from the seat in their parents cars. (see pictures).

As a child, I was used to spending a lot of time being driven all over the place, whilst having no control over the destination. Even if I knew where we were going, there was almost definitely other unannounced stops made in between. And they often included visits to a hairdresser, or grocery shopping, or dropping in to chat with someone my parents hadn’t seen for ages “because we’re passing”.

I became interested in the details of the car dashboard, and the backs of the front seats too (although there’s not much interesting about those). And it was in friends’ parent’s cars being taken to sporting events and such things that I discovered the huge variety of car interior designs.

Once, I noticed that my friend’s mother’s car only had two pedals, compared to ours with three. When asked, my dad laboriously explained the difference between automatic and manual transmission, complete with drawings on a piece of paper. For weeks I visualised the clutch plate spinning and the drivetrain engaging and all this happening every time the gears were changed. Automatic transmission seemed to make more sense: two pedals, stop and go. But I was a manual transmission person and always will be – because my dad had a manual.