The return of Pam

Pam is back. When we moved in January, Pam the cat decided the move to leafy Ashfield was not for her, preferring the gritty back laneways of Leichhardt. No matter how many times we went back to the old house and called for her she never appeared. We assumed she was hanging out with other alley cats, listening to smooth jazz, smoking slim Panatellas, eating spaghetti from bins and generally being cool. While I felt a tad guilty to leave Pam behind, Rob couldn't have cared less as he and Pam had never seen eye to eye - Rob is a trad jazz man while Pam enjoyed the cool stylings of Miles Davis. Six months on, this week we got a phone call from the Cat Protection Society saying they had Pam. It seems she had been looked after by a new family - who renamed her Gina - but she had one too many punch ups with their other cat so Pam had to go. So Pam is back. She seems to know who we are and all the furniture is familiar if not the house. There has been one unfortunate incident involving number twos but other than that, now she has found the cat flap in the laundry, all is well. She has a big garden to play in and lots of really annoying loud cockatoos and other birds to chase off our deck for fun. Welcome home Pam.

Open wide, come inside.....

...it's Play School.

Scarlett is quite the Play School groupie and on Saturday I took her for a special Mummy and Scarlett outing to the Play School concert. It was brilliant, with lots of singing and dancing along with Big Ted, Jemima, Humpty et al. Scarlett amazed me by knowing the words and actions to songs I had never even heard of and her smile was so big when the Play School song began that I confess I got right choked up. We are having such a great time with Scarlett these days after a couple of difficult months with her after Flo was born. The things we have had to say 1000 million times - like 'wash your hands after you go to the loo', 'sit down when you eat', put down that flick knife' - finally seem to have gone in and she does things now without being asked. 3 is a really fun age - long conversations about bonkers things, a real interest in things like the words in books, talking on the phone, riding her bike and swimming. She loves any kind of 'special treat' like being allowed to stand on the front of Rob's scooter. Flo continues to be an absolute joy, full of smiles which have so far elluded any camera. As soon as one appears she frowns and just stares at it. After carefully concealing the camera behind a book, I finally managed to capture one.

Tall Paul

Paul "please leave with the minimum of fuss' Chinnery came back to Sydney this week after two weeks tripping around Oz, taking in the rock and the reef and came for dinner last night with Melissa, Larry and Paul D. Jamie Oliver's pea and mint soup and fantastic fish pie made an appearance at the table alongwith Larry's rhubarb and strawberry crumbles. All top winter fare. As ever the night was all about laughing our pants off, with Paul bearing the brunt of a volley of personal questions about his love life and different coloured eyes. Paul and I were such great mates in London and it was brilliant to see him. Unfortunately, as is the way with two children who rise early and with Rob due at work at 7am this morning, it was not a late night and Paul flies back to London today. Seeing him made me incredibly homesick and especially nostalgic for the summer of 1990 when Paul, Oliver and I lived near each other in Notting Hill, with my sister just up the Portobello Road. Happy days.

The Queen's Birthday

Despite being a nation of avowed republicans, Australians have no trouble celebrating the 3-day Queen's birthday weekend and making the most of the Monday off work by heading away for a few days. We joined the throng by heading back down to Gerroa with our mates Chris and Steph and their children Genevieve and Harrison. Steph rented the same house we rented with Martin and Drew last September when apalling storms lashed the coast for our entire stay, keeping us inside. As the house had a fireplace and spectacular views of the spectacular storm, we didn't mind. On this visit we couldn't believe that the same violent weather pattern turned up again, affecting most of the NSW coast causing havoc and more. Although we stayed safe and warm inside, attempting a couple of walks on the beach, by the time the storm had finished, 8 people were dead, roads were washed away, a tanker was blown aground near Newcastle, 2 hours north of Sydney, and in the city one of the harbour ferry wharves was washed away and sank. After all that, being trapped inside with 4 children under 4 didn't seem so bad. There was much book reading, watching of DVDs and playing with dolls to keep all amused. Finally, come Monday morning, the sun came out and we got to play on the beach all morning before heading back to Sydney to check on the state of our house which has been known to leak a bit. Top fun. With the winter nights drawing in, we have taken to popping on the heating and in lieu of anything any good to watch on the box, have been perusing old home movies. Tonight we watched all the stuff from 1999 - Thailand with Fraser and Moira, my sister's wedding in Connecticut with Sarah and Scott, Ruth and Hom and Ol, the Whitsundays sailing trip with Moira and Fraser, Harriet's and Scott and Anne's visit to Australia where Scott got so sunburnt we had to call the fire brigade, and our Christmas on the Hawkesbury river with Phillipa and Paul and baby Finn, Moira, Fraser, Neil, Dad, Alexandra and Zoe and Paul, smoking fags and looking like a right couple of publicans. It is so much fun looking back at these tapes we haven't looked at probably since we made them and calculating how many children we now all have between us. Will we ever show them these tapes I wonder.

Courses and horses

Winter is well and truly here. Bizarrely although it is very chilly in the mornings and evenings hardly any houses here have heating and any fireplaces in old houses have become 'feature' spaces for presenting piles of logs rather than burning them. So we were thrilled when we moved into this house to find it not only has ducted air con but also heating. As I type the girls are playing and cooing in the family room in a balmy 20 degree heat while outside it is dewy and nippy. Weren't they two of Snow White's dwarves? We went out to dinner on Friday night en famille, meeting up with our friends Melissa and Larry and their baby. Our babies slept silently throughout, Scarlett was well behaved thanks to a Margarita pizza and and a small serve of hazlenut ice cream as a reward for getting 3 stars on her chart for being good. On Saturday we headed to Orange Grove for the organic markets and after a Honey cured bacon and egg sandwich and a latte, for us, and a babycino for Scarlett, she lept astride one of the ponies available for rides, with her kilt-laden father at her side. With a loaf of spelt bread under one arm and a baked sour cherry cheesecake under the other we headed home to make dinner for Martin and Drew. Mart had just returned from 6 months working for Amex in Manhattan and was full of stories shared over bowls of moules washed down with a few too many wines. We also found time to crack open an old box of home movies and watched one of the four of us on a weekend away in the cotswolds in 1996, presenting our own drunken version of Through The Keyhole. Embarassing isn't the word. On Sunday we headed up to our local church to see the vicar Andrew about organising Florence's christening in late July. Rob's family missed Scarlett's as it was in England but this time his Mum is travelling from NZ. We then enjoyed a well needed two-hour lunchtime sleep as a family. Bliss. Paul Chinnery and his 'friend' Nyree came for dinner on Monday night. It was brilliant to catch up with him. He hasn't changed a bit and it was an evening filled with laughs and reminiscing. They've headed off to Uluru and Cairns and Paul is coming back to stay in two weeks. Can't wait.

Viva Italia - unless they're playing England

We got a surprise parcel in the post last week from Mario, our Italian friend. In 2004 we stayed in one of Mario's properties in the grounds of his family's castle near Todi in Umbria. Once we had got over the shock of discovering that Mario was only in his 30s yet ran a thriving castle, farmhouse renovation business, lectured at the university in Rome and still found time to have his contemporary art exhibited in galleries in Manhattan, we liked him. Plus he had a way of saying Scarlett's name, rolling the r's in a way only Italians can. I digress. Last week he sent a full football strip from Italy's Fiorentina club for our Florence. Scarlett nabbed the football top at once and now won't take it off, oblivious to the gorgeous dresses that hang, unworn in her wardrobe. Here she is looking, like a mental, but clearly happy in her top. plus another shot of her in Rob's scooter gear. Florence continues to become a mini me of her Dad, so much so that when they were both in bed the other day, it was only Rob talking that alerted me to the fact that he was Rob. Other than that, there was no way of telling them apart.