It's nearly Winter...

....but honestly you wouldn't know it. It was 26 degrees yesterday and Flo and I spent the day on the beach searching for shade. It's been the sort of unseasonable weather that makes our motives for lighting the fire every night hard to justify. We've ordered the wood and we want to enjoy an open fire while we can even if it is warm enough for the cicadas to be chirping outside.

In the meantime, another fairly action-packed weekend. On Saturday we crammed into Prints Charming owned by Cath, one of the mums from school, and an absolutely brilliant shop selling beautiful screen-printed fabrics, quilting, sewing and embroidery project kits. The shop was so busy as Cath was launching her first book and we saw loads of our school friends there drinking Champagne and stuffing smoked salmon sandwiches before the kids saw them. Since wandering in there a couple of months ago I have become hooked on embroidering and have made a brooch, two pillows (the larger heart-shaped one the cause of a fight between the girls), a string of small stuffed love hearts and am about about to start making my way through the book's many sewing and embroidery projects in the hope of eventually being able to attempt a quilt. http://www.printscharming.com.au/ Here's the website. I am officially middle-aged - I like craft!

In the afternoon Flo and I went to Carriageworks to the Finders Keepers market, a collection of amazing craft and jewellery stalls from all over Australia. I bought a beautiful origami ball made from the pages of a 1960s edition of Treasure Island, a brooch and t-shirts for Rob and I.

That night we went to the 40th birthday dinner for my old Herald colleague Cath Keenan. It was a fantastic dinner cooked by Hugh Wennerbom, a chef with no restaurant of his own who as well as making a living supplying his mailing list of foodie fans with great cheeses, meat and fish he finds from suppliers each week, also raises his own beef and pops up every Saturday night at a little cafe in Chippendale. There's no menu - you just turn up, pay a flat fee, bring your own wine and Hugh sends out dish after dish of the best produce he's found at the markets that week. It was great fun catching up with lots of old friends from the paper, the food was really superb and Rob and I got to share one of the bottles of Champagne we have been saving for a special occasion which we now have to drink as we can't ship it back to Britain.

Sunday was Mother's Day and after rubbing my sore head I opened the lovely home-made cards from the girls before we all went to Revolver for breakfast. Then it was off to Darling Point to see Jo and Mark. We have seen very little of them of late as Jo's Dad has been very ill in the UK and they have been jetting back and forth to be with him. They have the coolest most unusual apartment after years living in a beautiful sandstone cottage in Rose Bay which they outgrew last year. While the kids watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the proper version with Gene Wilder), the grown ups chatted and drank tea - for 4 hours. It was brilliant. The girls were beautifully behaved and loving all day.

It's my birthday today...

...I'm older than yesterday. I am now officially middle-aged. I knew this before my birthday. Just the night before I sat in front of the fire doing my sewing and embroidery - yes, you read correctly - with my reading glasses positioned halfway down my nose so I was able to see the close up needlework, whilst also being able to look over the top at the tv.

I spent my 42nd birthday opening presents in front of the fire (loving those Birkenstocks D & A), before a day on the beach at Balmoral with Rob without children. After breakfast at Bathers - a breakfast that did not involve taking children to the toilet, wiping up spills, being constantly interrupted or wishing that the ground would open up and swallow us - we lay on the sand and read and talked. I mean actually, properly, definitely read and talked. Sometimes we didn't read or talk, we just sat there. Quietly.

After a while, I took a long walk to take photos and video, while Rob listened - really listened - to music. The weather was absolutely perfect and Autumnal - lots of sun, not too hot and a light breeze. Despite this, the beach was almost deserted. There was just enough time for a happy half hour at the old barracks site on the hill at Mosman, now redeveloped with fantastic lookouts over the harbour, before picking up Scarlett from school and hitting the pool for 36 rounds of Connect 4, her new favourite game at which she is an arch player and difficult to beat. Excuse me, but weren't we supposed to be here to swim?




After picking up Flo from daycare, flush with excitement from an afternoon with visiting animals from Kindifarm, we were in the shower, wrangling phone calls from Dad, Moira and Fraser and others (thanking you) and then hiking up the hill to Annandale for my birthday dinner. With Mart already calling in sick and Melissa on the phone to say her car wouldn't start, it was a poor first show of guests in the restaurant. Add to that Rob forgetting to arrange a cake and things weren't looking up. Thanks goodness for Melissa's car doing its stuff, for Drew McHugh sitting patiently waiting for us, Punt Road chardonnay, a pannacotta with a candle on top and (mostly) beautifully behaved children aged between 1 and 6. Home to a fire, children asleep and uploading these pics. Here's a little film (made on my new Flip video camera - thank you Rob) of our day at Balmoral, something to treasure during the darker winter months in Britain.

Packing it in

We are packing in many many social events between now and our departure date. On Thursday I hosted my last book club and as it was a special one we all went out for dinner instead of meeting at our house. It was a great night of conversation about Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Whether we loved or hated the content, everyone was moved by the writing and had a very strong emotional response to it. On Saturday Melissa and Larry invited us over for lunch with Martin and Drew. It was great fun and ended up turning into dinner when Larry produced plate after plate of fish and chips for everyone. Yesterday a group of dads from school hit Petersham bowling club for an afternoon of barefoot bowls and beers, so the mums met at Jillian's for lunch in the garden. With so much going on, I have taken up running again in an effort to combat all the eating and drinking, plus it gives me time to think about the next list I need to make. The cooler weather makes it much more pleasant to run and I am really 'enjoying' it. We are selling lots of our furniture now and are planning a garage sale for everything else that's left. We met the couple who have bought our house on Saturday. Cindy is Australian and her husband David is English. I was absolutely gobsmacked when she told me she is a breast cancer surgeon at the RPA. She took over from my surgeon when he left last year and works with my oncologist and all the team who have taken care of me over the years. It seemed like fate playing a hand in a very appropriate end to our life here.

Magic beach

Here's a little film Flo and I made of our day at Balmoral with Jacqui and Oscar.

Making the most of it

We have had an action-packed weekend that started with Jillian's 40th birthday ladies lunch at Susie's house. 8 of us sat down to prawns, oysters and champagne over several hours. As school pick up time approached various husbands were called to ferry children and themselves to the lunch. We left at 5pm as Rob had to go to work, but I understand the lunch continued until 10pm when a fleet of taxis delivered everyone home.
On Saturday we had James and Amelia and Susie and Damien for dinner, an event so funny and entertianing I forgot to take any pictures. Sunday was Anzac Day and as the weather had turned cold and wet we wrapped ourselves up and had a slow walk from our house to Revolver for lunch stopping at 2 parks there and back for a long play for the girls and a chance for Rob and I to chat. Now that we have made our decision to move back to the UK, we keep second guessing ourselves. We seem to be having a much more wonderful than usual time with our friends and have also seen a house we really like the look of in Leichhardt. One minute we are sure, the next we are not. I won't be sorry to see the back of my job but it's the great school and school community that is hard to leave. Monday was a bank holiday so after a party for Charlie next door we had Christian and Emma and their kids plus Nic and Yoko for lunch. It ended at about 7.30pm when there was no more wine or champagne left to drink. In the space of a whole afternoon the kids had been offered the same bowl of pasta for lunch and dinner, bribed with sweets to sit quietly in front of a DVD, had been bathed and then finally they went potty jumping about the place while the grown ups danced and sang. The picture below is the before shot, the one above, the after shot.

Roar and Snore!

Scarlett and I spent Friday night at Taronga Zoo at Roar and Snore, where we got to experience the zoo at night and early in the morning with only a few others. It's a brilliant campsite set up in a spot offering amazing views of the city and harbour, you sleep in great tents on proper beds with duvets and get dinner and tours of the zoo too. On Friday night after drinks and nibbles the zoo keepers brought snakes and lizards for us to meet, then after dinner we set off on a 2 hour torchlit walk around the zoo in the dark. It was great fun having the place to ourselves and hearing the lions roaring in the dark. We got to bed at about 11pm and then woke at 6am for breakfast and some fantastic behind the scenes action.


We went into the giraffe exhibit to hand feed the giraffes their breakfast, and saw the seals up close too, then we got to pat a koala, ringtail possum and echidna. It was great fun and I think I might have enjoyed it slightly more than Scarlett whose favourite part of any trip to the zoo is the ride on the gondola.

Scarlett loses her first tooth!

Scarlett started complaining this week that her front tooth hurt. We assumed some collateral damage after the Easter Bunny's generous chocolate deposit, but closer inspection revealed a wobbly tooth. After placing bets on whether it would fall out before or after Liz and Charlie's departure, it finally came out last night after a great deal of wibbling and wobbling by Scarlett. Here she is as pleased as punch with her new gap, unaware of her resemblance to the late Queen Mother (God bless 'er). A short note to the tooth fairy placed under the pillow alongwith the tooth resulted in a shiny gold $2, an increase on what we were given as kids, allowing for inflation.

A different beach every day

As Liz and Charlie's visit draws to an end I realised, as I lay awake in bed in the early hours of this morning after too much food and wine (again), that we have packed plenty into their visit. As well as their trips to the zoo and aquarium, we've taken them to Redleaf, Balmoral (including kayaking), Nielsen Park, Freshwater had dinners out at La Scala and Vicini, breakfast at Revolver, to our 3 local parks and two local pools and had lunch with the neighbours, Simon showing off the spit we bought him for his 40th. So active have we been that even Scarlett (who's allowed to stay up later during school holidays) has been fast asleep at 7.30pm. Tonight is their last night and we're tossing up between pizza or fish and chips for their final Aussie meal.

Happy easter 2010

Easter started for us with a wonderful house warming party at Brett's on Good Friday. The best part for the kids? Not the lively company, great food and morning at Balmoral beach, but the chance to ride, not once but twice in a Maxi Taxi to Brett's place in Paddington.
After a suitable amount of house trashing, screaming in fear at Brett's tiny dog Lola and cuddles with Brett's NZ mum Lynne (pronounced Lun), we returned home to prepare for the arrival of the Easter Bunny.

Easter Sunday dawned and the EB had left a generous deposit of chocolate which, against our better judgement, we allowed the kids to start eating at breakfast time. Thus fed, we caught the tram to the fish market for breakfast of coffee and hot pastries and to buy a 4kg salmon to stuff with lemons, fennel seeds and herbs.

By 2pm the house was full with the Flemings, the Langs, the Dodds and Luke Atkinson and we sat down to a long relaxed lunch. Numerous Easter egg hunts kept the kids entertained for the entire day which meant they ate little but chocolate.

The evening ended in tears for Scarlett who woke hours after bedtime with a terrible tummy ache that could only be fixed with pain killers.

Liz et Charlie sont arrive

Liz and Charlie arrived from the UK on Saturday night to perfect balmy Autumn weather. It was brilliant to see them looking so well and refreshed having enjoyed a great flight with Charlie behaving perfectly the whole way. They were, of course, as perky as pixies having slept most of our day and so we felt compelled to join Liz in late-night champagne consumption which led to what I like to term "early peaking". Hungover on Sunday and after only 4 hours sleep, I drove Rob to North Sydney to take part in a sponsored kayak on the harbour organised by one of the dads at school. Rob was lucky enough to get the first leg of this relay event, from McMahon's Point around under the bridge to Mosman. That done, we managed to struggle through and prepare lunch for the McHughs, enjoying pork fillets with crushed fennel seeds wrapped in proscuitto.
Knowing what a beach bunny Liz is, on Monday we dropped Scarlett at school before heading to our beloved Redleaf harbour pool. Alas not only did it cloud over - it rained! Zut alors! Tuesday and Wednesday the rain continued to fall and we dropped Liz and Charlie at the Australian Museum to check out the dinosaur exhibit one day and to the ferry wharf the next so they could explore Taronga Zoo, all beach plans cancelled. I had expected both those days to be glorious and sunny so today, thinking we would be all beached out, had arranged a grown up lunch with Brett at the restaurant at the newly renovated Manly Pavilion, built in the 1930s as a changing facility for swimmers at the harbour beach. We even organized for Charlie to spend the day with Flo at daycare. But upon waking to a bright sunny day Liz explained that she'd really rather go to the beach than have lunch. I realised my idea of her trip was to show her a snippet of our lives here, whereas hers, quite rightly, was to relax on the beach and forget the troubles and stresses of a busy working life at home. So after dropping off the younger kids at daycare we headed first to school for Scarlett's last day of term and the Easter hat parade. We had to cut it short however as poor Charlie was not a happy bunny at Wattle Lane and Liz was anxious to be reunited with him. After picking him up, we drove them to Manly beach and Rob and I had a lovely walk alog the walkway to Fairlight before joining Brett at the restaurant.


It was an amazing lunch with the full trappings of being a journalist and lunching with Brett who also happens to be the restaurant's PR. After champagne, the chef and owners came out to introduce themselves at the table and we took up their offer to wine match the 8 course tasting menu. It was a pretty spectacular food experience and the view straight down the harbour towards the city and the heads is unique and unforgettable. We were sorry Liz missed it. Here is Rob in the spectacularly appointed dining room.