And now, the end is near...

Scarlett had her last day of the school year yesterday. There was a present for Scarlett's beloved teacher Miss Ward and for a few of the mums who had gone above and beyond and then there was a general scrum for chocolates, festive cookies and a pile of other stuff all the kids bring in on the last day. The year 6 kids, who are away to high school next year, as well as a couple of teachers who are leaving, had to run the gauntlet of a students archway before saying goodbye to Annandale Public for the last time.

We finished off an emotional day with a family Christmas dinner with our next door neighbours before we all head off on holidays.

Today Scarlett and I spent an active day racing between air-conditioned buildings and the car, dropping off presents, buying sunhats, getting my hair cut, and hanging out at the pool - 39 degrees again and the whole state is under a fire ban and yet the fires rage. As I type, the girls are struggling to slep despite ceiling fans and wet flannels and Rob is in the garden in his speedos (It's 8.40pm) hosing himself down. Ridiculous.

Premieres and promises

In more pre-Christmas cheer, the girls and I glammed up this morning for the red carpet premiere of the new Disney film The Princess and The Frog. The first Disney princess film in 10 years, it caused quite a stir among the audience of mainly 6 year-old girls dressed as princesses. Our free tickets came with ice creams on entry and princess tiaras and frog hats on the way out. The girls sat well through the whole film, despite quite a bit of scary voodoo stuff.

Afterwards we stopped by Broadway to get a photo taken with Santa. The girls promised they would be good and do everything mummy asked (ha!) in exchange for a scooter and a kite.

Here he is

Here's Ethan, all 10lb, 4oz of him.

Christmas time mistletoe and wine

As well as being Christmas time, December also marks the end of Scarlett's first year at school. It's hard to believe 12 months has passed since she started at Annandale Public and she has had a great first year. We got her school report, which came complete with a Principal's Award. In reading, writing and counting Scarlett achieved ticks in the 'Above expected level' column and at the end of the report her lovely teacher Miss Ward wrote the following: "Scarlett has been an absolute joy to teach. She is very creative in her writing, ideas and art work and has continued to maintain a high standard of work in all academic areas. She has strong literacy skills with reading and writing. Scarlett has been so helpful in class, settling into routines quickly and demonstrating a sensible and mature attitude to classroom organisation. I have enjoyed the interesting conversations and bubbly personality that she has brought to the class." PROUD.While Scarlett has been behaving brilliantly, all the mums from her class and I did not behave well on Thursday night when we went out for a boozy Christmas dinner. We had a right laugh in a local restaurant owned by one of the mums and drank a lot of wine.
Didn't feel too chipper this morning, but had to muddle through at work before picking up Scarlett and taking her to Flo's daycare Christmas party. Santa made a fleeting appearance and handed out books to all the kids. Flo gave him a big kiss before having a face pulling contest with her best friend Sienna. (Geddit? Florence and Sienna).

It's the baby Ethan

The newest member of the family burst into the world yesterday, while I was at book club*. Maria delivered a baby boy, Ethan (name to be advised) Sparey on Wednesday morning at 9.30. Maria and Lol might consider using Goliath as his middle name since he weighed in at 10 pounds 4 oz. Yes, you read correctly. Despite having the birth weight of a young hippo, I am assured he is a healthy human baby, although Lol did add that he 'looks like a two-year-old'. Rob warned him not to take the baby home on the bus in case he was forced to pay his fare too.

No pictures yet, but we are reliably informed he has thick dark hair and resembles a young Lol with Maria's squirrel cheeks - both very useful for a British winter. Congratulations to all and cream buns all round.

* A very successful book club last night discussing the page turner The Help by Kathryn Stockett. A great long discussion that went off in all directions ensued during a spectacular Thai meal at Naomi's. Next up, Sophie's Choice.

I honestly thought I was going to wet myself

http://www.santame.com.au/index.php?uid=118093

The totally excellent Dawn Fraser baths

Amazingly after 12 years in Sydney, 11 of them in the inner west, I have only just discovered the iconic Dawn Fraser baths in nearby Balmain. This tidal flow salt water harbour pool was built in the 1880s and is like a sort of quadrangle of decking built out over the harbour with swimming lanes and plenty of open water for splashing about. There are noodles, inflatables, boogie boards and kickboards on hand for the kids and as ships sail by and the tide ebbs and flows, you get to swim about with lots of fish and this morning, even a couple of sting rays. The lifeguard made Simon and I coffee, as we wrangled our combined brood of 4, and even brought it out to us at the water's edge. It's places like this that make you fall in love with Sydney all over again. Here are a couple of shots of this special new find.
In other news, we are all 'waiting patiently' as Flo would say, for the arrival of our new niece or nephew due any second in Hastings, East Sussex. Maria does make very comfortable des res for her offspring, as was the case with our nephew Jack who was 10 days late. My trip to San Francisco for his birth, back in 2002, was supposed to be to help Maria with the new baby. As he stubbornly refused to come out until two days before my departure, it was Maria I was taking care of rather than him. There wasn't a shop, nail bar, or beach in the Bay area that we didn't visit on that trip. So come on baby - we're waiting.......

It's the Jayzee Beebus

We spent a festive morning in Burwood on Saturday attending a re-enactment of the nativity. We had a prime spot under a tree in the grounds of the church, right opposite the 'stable'. While Mary and Joseph got comfy, Mary looking surprisingly fresh despite her recent delivery, the police closed the roads so the 3 wise men could arrive on camels. (Scarlett immediately recognised the camel driver from her mate's birthday party a few weeks ago.) They were amazingly in character with exquisite beards and robes, and wearing expressions of awe and wonder. Great stuff.

Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree

Huzzah! It's my favourite time of year and, as always, I'm getting slightly more overexcited than I should about what is essentially a special time for children. I love the baby Jesus as much as the next person, but you can't go passed an inflatable Santa for festive fun. Growing up, Maria and I enjoyed a loving yet platonic relationship, with a pair of inflatable Mr Cs, that we danced with to Christmas tunes each year. Maria famously reported a burglar in the garden one year when Dad put one up the treehouse at the end of the garden.We put our Christmas tree up on Wednesday and by 'we' I mean me. While I tried to encourage the girls to hang ornaments on the tree, they had to be the right ornaments and they had to put them where I wanted or else I'd move them there. Is this wrong? Rob (occasionally the more grown up of the two of us) said mature things like "Why don't you just let the girls put them where they want and then you can move them later?" Aaaanyway, we put up and decorated the tree, got out the new advent train, hand delivered by Nanny and Grandad in February, strung fairy lights about the place and now all is quite festive. Scarlett said she wanted to dress like "people in England do at Christmas" and so she and Flo disappeared to their rooms, returning momentarily wearing woolly hats, scarves and gloves, perfect for our current mid 20 degree weather.

I also had marathon late-night present wrapping bonanza this week, and now a large pile of gifts, bound for Santa's sleigh, is teetering in the wardrobe in the studio, which I have now locked.

Best of all was the arrival of a gift I got for myself (and Rob). Driving any distance over about an hour with the girls can be somewhat challenging. No matter how many books, colouring things and games of Simon Says and I Spy we play, the whole thing soon degenerates into some type of fisticuffs in the back seat. I like to avoid following my mum's example which was to lean an arm into the back seat and thrash it widely about until it made contact with one or other, or both, children. At the end of our camping trip a couple of weeks ago, I caught sight of Jules and Lenka's portable dvd players, strapped to their headrests. Lenka reported excellent results, almost complete silence on all journeys over an hour and an ability to hold a conversation with Jules or listen to a radio station or music of her choice. She also warned it was to be used with caution and only on long trips. Thank the lord for ebay. A few bids later I won a brand new set worth nearly $700 for the bargain price of $134. Rob and I tested it out and it works like a dream. It might be lazy parenting, but I imagine it will be a blessing when I am driving the 1,000 kilometres on the 3-day road trip to Brisbane the girls and I have planned the week of Christmas. Thanks to my ethics-free job at marie claire, I have also been able to organise free accommodation in some very nice hotels on the way up the coast in exchange for a small amount of editorial in a future issue of MC, something I could never have done at the Herald. Subsequently it is now a trip I am looking forward to rather than dreading. It's starting to look a lot like Christmas. Huzzah!

Childless in Melbourne

I got back yesterday afternoon from a fantastic weekend in Melbourne with Kendall. Rob booked it all up for me a few weeks ago and couldn't get me out the door fast enough on Friday morning. Rob felt greatly revived after his ski trip to NZ earlier in the year and was keen for me to also benefit from time away from family and responsibilities. (At least I think that's why he was so keen to see the back of me.) I flew to Melbourne on Friday morning, marvelling at how easy it is to get on and off and actually sit on a plane without children. Who knew it was possible to hold a drink and a conversation at the same time? Although it's only a 90-minute flight, I enjoyed every minute of it.  I met Kendall at his gorgeous new home, an apartment in building converted from an old chocolate factory, in the fabulously hip suburb of Fitzroy. After a cuppa and a quick catch up we were out the door for a long walk perusing the many  shops, bars and restaurants. The nearest I can come to describing Fitzroy is like a cross between Portobello Road (of the late '80s/early '90s at least) with NY's East village.  There are no chain restaurants or shops here, instead one-off vintage  clothes and furniture shops, beautiful stationers, unusual bookshops, tiny galleries, craft and art shops and fantastic places to eat are the order of the day. It didn't feel at all like we were in Australia. We had lunch on the roof (another Melbourne anomaly - why doesn't Sydney have more rooftop bars?) of a huge old building, with paint peeling off the walls and a huge cupie doll on the outside, dining on $4 pizzas and wine. Kendall had told me to bring a cardi, due to Melbourne's notoriously unpredictable weather,but instead we were drenched with sun, making a sunscreen application before lunch. In the afternoon, we napped at home for an hour before getting dressed up and heading into the city on the tram. We started at Coda, a Melbourne 'it' place, a fantastic subterranean bar & restaurant serving small share plates and great wine. We met up with Peter Gotting, an old journalist friend from the Herald, who I hadn't seen for years. We carried on to Movida, one of Melbourne's best places for tapas, located in a laneway famous for graffti and street art, followed by two more roof bars. The first, Madame Brussels, features staff wearing tennis gear in a room decorated with fake grass and cocktails served in huge jugs. The last bar was on the roof next to the theatre and offered a whole different perspective of the city.We jumped on the tram just as the heavens opened, arriving home for another glass of wine and a fairly reasonable bedtime of midnight.


On Saturday morning Kendall whipped up a superb breakfast of avocado, tomato and bacon on crusty bread and then we headed out first to an artist's market and then in and out of more shops and galleries before settling for an hour or two in a little French bar eating fresh terrine, gravalax and bread with a couple of glasses of wine. Kendall made it so easy for me to relax, always happy to stop when I wanted to look at something, carrying on when I wanted to and, like me, he's fond of a disco nap, which is what we had on Saturday afternoon to be ready for our next night out.  By the time we came to leave for the Christmas drinks party Kendall had arranged in a bar, it was absolutely chucking it down, so we jumped in the car to drive the short distance to a local Vietnamese place for a quick bowl of noodles and laksa. Onwards then to a great little bar, Kendall and his friends had taken over for the night for an annual catch up. Lots of drinking and laughing ended at 1.30am with Kendall and I jumping in a cab home for a debrief. We awoke on Sunday morning, surprisingly free of hangovers, and headed around the corner, in much cooler weather (hooray for that cardi) to a cafe serving baked eggs and bacon with cauliflower puree - God it was good. Coffee, newspapers. Bliss. I flew back to Sydney yesterday afternoon to weather 10 degrees warmer than Melbourne and to the beautiful smiling faces of my girls and Rob, before an afternoon dip in the paddling pool. 

Camping by the coast

Apart from sitting around a table groaning with food and wine, with family and friends, camping at the beach IS MY FAVOURITE THING TO DO. With temperatures in Sydney due to hit the high 30s this weekend, we couldn't have picked a better weekend to choose to head south to Gerroa. We normally rent houses in this lovely village, but decided to check out the campground for the first time on this trip with the McPhersons. Although the campsite itself was fairly uninspiring, with tiny pitches, it did have a few things to recommend it. First, it had a pool, secondly it had a jumping pillow- more on this later - and third it was right behind Seven Mile Beach, one of our favourite Australian beaches. Here it is below - count those seven empty miles.
Lenka and I headed up the camping planning committee and agreed early on we weren't interested in lots of campsite cooking and clearing up. To that end, the two families arrived within an hour of each other on Friday night and, after tent pitching was completed, feasted on take away fish and chips. The gin was opened, the children slept and the weekend began.
On Saturday we awoke to an overcast but hot day and a bacon and egg roll fry up was the order of the day. I fell in love with Jules and Lenka's super efficient but compact camping stove. The swimming pool was immediately used to cool off and as the day unrolled, we were in the welcoming chilly surf, in and out of the pool and on the Jumping Pillow. The latter is a sort of permanent bouncy castle but without walls and surrounded by sand. We all had a hoot jumping about on it with the kids, but it was hot work.

We spent the afternoon in the Crooked River than runs down from the hills to the coast, paddling and being carried out towards the sea by the current.

Scarlett had her first go boogoe boarding - here's a short film clip of her.

On Saturday night we frocked up and walked along the beach to the Seahaven Cafe, the only place to eat in Gerroa, for a lovely family dinner. The kids were angelic and while we finished eating, we let them all go across the road to a small playground by the river. We had a lovely moonlit walk back along the beach to the campground and once the kids ( and Jules) fell asleep at 8.30pm, Rob, Lenka and I put the world to rights with a few glasses of champagne.


This morning we swam and jumped again while the boys packed up and after the McPs headed back to Sydney, we spent the rest of the morning at the beach. Rob smoked a fag, extinguished it and then put it on the sand near our things, so he could pop it in the bin when we left the beach. There was quite a strong seabreeze and, with the high temperatures, the entire state was observing a strict 'no fire' ban. We were messing about in the water, glancing back at our things now and again and I noted how the strong wind was sending sand flying over Rob's (new beach Twister) towel. I said "it almost looks like your towel is on fire." We looked again and it was - on fire, embers flying everywhere. Somehow the wind has reignited, Rob's fag and the towel hadblown on top of it. Here is the after shot of the towel, burnt beyond repair.

We drove back to Sydney this afternoon to 40 degrees. It is unbearable. We have filled the bath with cold water, are wearing wet clothes to keep cool and have plonked the kids in front of the tv in just their underwear and with wet flannels and water bottles to keep themselves cool. I am not looking forward to the disrupted night's sleep ahead.

Meet Jane Beith

This is Jane Beith. I first met her 11 years ago when she came to chat with me when I was in hospital recovering from a mastectomy. She sat beside my bed and made me laugh, not an easy task when the jovial conversation is being punctuated with the names of chemotherapy drugs. Jane Beith was, and remains, my oncologist. She is (as we say in Australia) a bloody legend and Rob and I think the world of her. I have no doubt that Jane Beith is the reason I am the fit (despite having the running stance of a retiree) and healthy (despite particular fondness for white wine and Maynards wine gums) person I am today. Yesterday I met with Jane Beith for my 11th (count 'em) annual appointment and once again we embraced each other like old friends and remarked on how far we have both come. I realise that in all the years Jane has been in our lives, no one else has ever seen her, so here she is. She usually looks like this, all smiley and happy despite her grim occupation. She's about to take a couple of well-deserved months off away as she works 6 days a week in two hospitals, including the RPA's Sydney Cancer Centre, which is where we met. Jane told me she is now 48 and asked me if it freaked me out that I was treated by a 37-year-old back in 1998. I said it didn't. But then she said " I would have given you a good standard of care, but I'm a better doctor now." She's always been open and honest like this about my treatment and gives great advice. Like I said, she's a bloody legend.

happy birthday Rob

In spite of his ability to not look a day over 35, Rob turned 46 yesterday. We celebrated with a two-day Festival of Rob which began on Sunday.  Rob was curious about his main gift which he knew I had hidden in the studio, as it was too big to wrap or conceal anywhere in the house. We agreed he could have this one gift in advance of his drinks party on Sunday afternoon. I presented him with his custom-made bus scroll with excellent effect - he burst into tears. I assumed these were happy tears. I'd wanted a bus scroll for ages, I love the sharp graphic contrast of the white type on the matt black fabric, and had looked for original ones of the number 19 and 38 buses in London that we used to get to our flat in Islington without success.  I found a website that custom made them in exchange for a large sack of coins, so instead got my graphic designer friend Luke to create it for me, using most of the places Rob has ever lived as the destinations. Then I had it printed at a sign shop and finally had it stretched. There were all sorts of shenanigans involved in getting it home as it wouldn't fit in my car. The picture framer had to deliver in  with us operating in a pincer movement outside the house just in case Rob came home at the moment it came out of the framer's car.  Anyway, Rob loved it which I'm thrilled about. 
In the afternoon, we had about 30 people over  for drinks and nibbles. I outdid myself on the food, even if I do say so myself, having spent 7 hours preparing a range of canapes. The coconut milk chicken skewers and smoked salmon frittatas were stand outs but the turquoise iced cupcakes were also crowd pleasers.




It was a brilliant afternoon and after some gift opening, a few rounds of beach Twister - the traditional plastic mat replaced by a towel  - we retired to bed full of good food and wine, not before spotting this massive spider on the window. 

Yesterday was the 16th, Rob's actual birthday, and as the forecast was for 39 degrees, Rob opened his presents and cards (thank you everyone) and then we packed the car early and were at the beach by 9am. We had a birthday breakfast at Bathers' Pavilion before a smashing morning on the beach of hole digging and  rock pooling and a bit of a swim - Rob now brave enough to return to the scene of his watery attack. We spent the afternoon cooling off under the hose  and in the paddling pool before dinner out with the girls, Lara and Adam and their son Toby.  The authentic Italian atmosphere couldn't have been more pronounced as seated at the next table were 4 priests and 2 nuns.  Happy Birthday Rob.