Crafting Christmas

So it rained on Christmas Day. My sardonic inner Londoner appreciated the nod to all things internal winter of discontent and/or Christmas 2012. My outer trying-to-be-literally sunny Sydneysider however, was a little concerned the downpour would ruin her decorations.

Someone has been channelling their angst into craft.

Ode to Berlin

So, Berlin.

Berlin was, well, it was wonderful. I love Berlin. I love its history, its architecture, its graffiti doused scrappiness, its people, its wide streets, its bars, its flea markets, its café culture, its energy, its bike friendliness, its green spaces, its ease and in the summer, its beguiling weather. All of it and so much more I just love.

In case you haven’t gleaned, my affair with Berlin is not a recent thing. Really, it goes all the way back to 2006 when it changed my life.

The first of the lasts. And another first.

I should be packing for Berlin (I did mention I was going to Berlin somewhere back there didn’t I? August long weekend? Plane tickets a birthday present from the husband? Pilgrimage to my favourite city One Last Time? Ringing any bells?)

Anyway – we’re off tomorrow after work and I am so looking forward to it. Four days to bike around, eat good food, drink wine in the sunshine and trawl flea markets for treasure. Happiness on a stick.

Sunshine and saints alive

It’s stinky sweaty hot in London right now and its been this way for several weeks. Frankly, if it carries on any longer we might actually have to start calling it a summer. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Only in London could pubs and flower
baskets seem such natural companions

It’s been a strange, busy, exhausting couple of weeks – the heat not helped by the cold I seem to be coming down with – or the fact that Lovely Boy and I have finally called time on London, having made the humongous decision to go back to Sydney at the end of October. I sobbed telling work, absolutely well and truly lost my shit about it. There was not a single toy left in the pram because I love the people I work with and I love my job (case in point: they were amazing and supportive and inspired and wonderful.)

Lido love

I miss swimming. I miss ocean swimming, I miss outdoor, non-chlorinated swimming. I miss having no excuse not to go swimming...

All of which is a whiny roundabout way of telling you I went swimming this morning and I freaking loved it. I've ditched Camberwell Leisure Centre, as clean and relatively convenient as it is because I haven't swum outdoors since Mexico and deep in my bones I need to be back in the water and under an expanse of (blue but grey will do if it must) sky.

The art of Peckham

After all the gallivanting of late I was pretty excited to have a weekend kicking about in London – especially now that summer has announced itself with ferocious good will.

This last weekend has been about two things mostly: Peckham. And Art. And not just because I had to work on Saturday afternoon…

Bold Tendencies, 2013

As all weekends do, this one kicked off on Friday evening. I’d managed to guilt Lovely Boy into joining me for post-work drinks in Peckham. His “but it’s just so…. far….” line didn’t really garner much sympathy. 

Me: “Oh you mean that journey that I make twice a day five days a week? That one? Too far? Really?”

Him: "...I'll meet you there." 

The pleasure that is Paris

“I’m not sure I can be bothered with Paris.”

Said my lovely, lovely husband on the eve of another decadent weekend away. I mean, talk about first world problem, talk about fucking sacrilege, more like.

I'm developing an unhealthy obsession with Paris doors

Last weekend we were in Reykjavik with LB’s parents, several weeks before that we were traipsing through France and Italy with my parents and this weekend just gone we’ve been in Paris, with my aunt and uncle on their virgin European adventure. I get the exhaustion – I myself may have also complained about it in recent weeks – but BUCK UP kiddo, it’s PARIS! And I love Paris, even when it’s nine degrees and raining.

A love letter to Sydney. And to love.

Sunset at The Surin, Phuket

You know you’re on a honeymoon when the falling leaves and washed up bits of coral are shaped like love hearts. The point needn’t have been laboured but what kind of cynical wife would I be if I didn’t appreciate the gesture.

Reader, I married him.

Nine days ago to be precise and for the last four days we’ve been in Phuket doing not very much very, very well. Breakfast, swim, nap, lunch, nap, swim, cocktails at sunset, dinner. It’s been an abrupt full stop, or perhaps necessary ellipses, between the busy, memorable, emotional, perfect three weeks at home (replete with Christmas, Oliver’s 30^th and the wedding) and our inevitable return to London tomorrow.

Sunset, Sydney-style. On Lovely Boy's birthday no less.

I’m feeling a dazed sort of ambivalence about it – dizzied by the prospects this year holds in terms of work and learning and travel and great times with special friends, but with my heart still firmly rooted in Sydney and now joined by a quiet, gnawing impatience to get home and get on with life. By this I certainly don’t mean babies (not yet, sorry Mum) but a home that is ours for the painting, decorating, entertaining and a life that involves our families and the option of a swim and a coffee before work.

A bit of Bilgola heaven.

It was so freaking unbelievably good to be home. It did take a week to settle in, thanks to jetlag, a delightful case of gastro-enteritis that I came home with (via a pit-stop at Charing Cross Hospital A&E for necessary drugs to get me through the flight. Now that was an afternoon I could have done without three hours before we had to be at the airport….) and then, the usual readjustment to the pace of life that is Sydney summer and not London winter. You don’t realise how pent up living in London makes you until you spent a couple of days moseying around the northern beaches of Sydney. Whiplash from the brake application.

There are so many things I love about Sydney, about being home, about Summer and about family. Curious king parrots that fly in and park themselves on the pool fence; kookaburras sitting in the old gum tree (yes, really); morning swims with my Mum at Bilgola Beach, watching pods of dolphins chase fish while everyone else chased waves; robust, rude conversation amongst my brothers and sisters choked with snorts of laughter; waking up at 7am and crawling into bed with my mum for a gossip and a cup of tea; eating mangoes that send juice streaming down your arms; boxes of cherries the size of grenades; lunch at North Bondi Italian with the best posse of girlfriends (before swimming in underwear because the car is parked in Rose Bay and your swimmers are on the front seat…), ducking and diving and laughing hilariously and remembering This Was My Life Before London; pink wine and cheese at 3pm; warmth on my back and a pervading sense of peace. All this. 

And then a wedding. Our wedding. In the garden, with the parrots and the cockatoos and 87 of our most special friends and family members. I think every bride thinks her day was perfect. I KNOW mine was. 

The weather was a gift from Nan – bookended by steamy, wet, windy, temperamental days, January 7^th was warm, sunny, gently breezed and in the evening the most divine kind of balmy. Several people commented that the gentle wind that entwined us both with the long white paper garlands that hung behind us was a blessing – literally and metaphorically - from Nan. I like to think so too. We laughed – we managed not to cry – and have been overwhelmed by the number of people who told us, who keep telling us, that it was the perfect mix of romantic, personal, funny, intimate and meaningful. We like to think so too...

Lovely Boy overcame his nerves to deliver the most heartfelt of speeches and we ate and drank and laughed some more as Soph perfected the MC role, LB’s best man did what all best men are supposed to do (read: recall inappropriate anecdotes) and Tori, LB’s Dad and Oliver spoke hilariously and warmly about us both respectively and collectively. It was truly overwhelming to feel so loved and celebrated.

And then we danced. Under the lanterns I have been dreaming about for at least a decade while the garden blinked with a kilometre of fairy lights. As I said the next day – it was just enough of too much. And the music rocked. In fact, it rocked so much that at 11.30 I asked three gatecrashers from the hostel up the road to please leave and at 12.20am the police came and asked us to turn the music down after a grumpy complaint from miserable 94 year old Claude across the street. A rockstar kind of wedding if ever there was….

And for all my anxiety and doubt about The Dress – in the end we wore each other. I felt confident, beautiful, special and yet, still very much me. But the very best version of me. People have to tell the bride she looks beautiful and that they love the dress but even I could tell that people meant it – basically because they all looked kind of stunned. I took that as a compliment too. I felt sad to take it off at the end of the night and sadder still leaving it behind when we left on Thursday.   

We left the house for the hotel at 1.30am – exhausted, elated, dazed and overwhelmed, struggling to make concrete all the memories, sensations and moments of the day – and marvelling at the perfection of it all. And the still-then amazing weather. Several hangers-on remained behind, blithely unaware of the etiquette to leave when the bride does, but getting back to the hotel and crashing into bed, all I wanted was to be back at the house – not in any sort of bridal capacity, but just with my mum and my sister, having a cup of tea and the world’s biggest debrief. Not the most romantic of desires to fall asleep to but make of it what you will.

I still feel a bit stunned when I think about the day – the love, the colour, the flowers – god the flowers! – the marquee full of everyone we love. And then I feel flat and a bit sad that I didn’t grasp harder still to take it all in.  

It’s not a blur but trying to remember the day in its completeness is like hearding butterflies – scattershot, delicate, beautiful, impossible. I remember crying in the shower in the morning feeling totally overwhelmed, I remember walking up the drive with Oliver, Sophie and Edward listening for the music we’d chosen 12 months earlier, I remember Loris mouthing “breathe” to me during the ceremony, my dad’s impassive face, my mum’s happy tears, the clench of Lovely Boy’s hand on my waist, the slight sense of the ridiculous as we posed for photos, the swaying lanterns, the exquisite flowers, the impossible lightness of fabric against my skin, taking my shoes off so my knees wouldn’t knock when I gave my speech, the garden like a fairy wonderland, Jill careening across the lawn looking for Rob when “Dancing Queen” came on – the song she gave us when we asked for favourite dancing numbers, I remember Tor feeding me mango sorbet while the grass caught my toes, I remember feeling honoured and delighted that so many of my friends were all in the one room, for me no less, and feeling so very loved – and so very in love – with my freshly minted husband.

In many respects this post feels like a love letter – to Sydney, to my Mum, to my Lovely Boy, to the most perfect of married moments. A letter that doesn’t, for now, need a post-script about London.

We’ll get to that – indeed, tomorrow. 

Turkish delights

Lovely Boy's and my trip to Turkey was The Best Holiday. Undoubtedly this was aided by the fact that before we left things for both of us were collectively pretty shite so anywhere with alcohol and sunshine would have seemed heaven-sent. But even sans context, especially sans Luton Airport departure, LB's and my trip to Turkey was The BEST Holiday. I'd even go so far as to say ever.

There's something to be said for a sudden change in environment and the relocation from hectic, chilly, misery-inducing London to hot, sunny, breezy Kalkan was a slap in the face in the form of a warm, embracing hug.

Turkey charmed the pants off us. The hotel we were staying at had guests who'd been returning for a decade and it wasn't hard to see why, with fabulous staff and jaw-dropping views of Kalkan old town, and the hospitality we encountered everywhere made us feel like new best friends or long lost old ones with everyone we met. The fact that every restauranteur addressed us collectively and repeatedly as "Lovely couple" also didn't hurt.

We had seven days of hand-in-hand wandering, gourmet food, cocktails and swimming at some of the most beautiful beaches and it was resolutely a relaxing holiday. Even before I decided that I hated art and history and culture and everything intellectually stimulating we had agreed that this would be a holiday on a holiday. I even had LB in the habit of afternoon naps by the time the end of the week rolled around...

Our days were spent swimming, dozing and reading. Our evenings were spent at rooftop restaurants with warm breezes, pink wines and views over the harbour. Even the excessive Celine Dion soundtracks couldn't dint the ambience, try though it might.

There were some exquisite highlights. We had one day at Caretta Beach Club, a totally fabulous little place cut into the cliffs out along the bay from our hotel. Think sun beds, sun bed service, large pillows and a floating pontoon out in the ocean. We had another day at Kaputas Beach, down in a big gorge that just spat out into the sea. Now I have swum in some breath-taking places before - Spiaggia della Pelosa in Sardinia certainly comes to mind - but even with the hardarse pebbles at Kaputas I've never swum in water so blue that even when you're in it the colour remains so vibrant. It was honestly like swimming in bright blue paint - but arguably more refreshing. It was just gleeful.

And then there was our last full day. LB, in a bid to find one swimming hole not wracked with pebbles, insisted on a trip to Patara Beach - 18km of assured white sand. And so we went. Me, LB, my freckles and enough factor 50+ to slather the entire navy. We had a guy one evening say that he could tell it was our first night in Kalkan by the colour of our skin. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was our fourth, or that I would be going home this colour. But I digress.

So we went to Patara. We had our sun beds, we had our umbrellas and I had my complex about being hideously ugly in such brutal natural light with its neon-esque effect on my freckles. Basically, I was nothing less than a joy to be with.

LB wanted to go for a walk along the beach. I really didn't. LB said he thought it would be fun and that we could get away from all the people. I said I didn't mind the people. LB said, I would really like to go for a walk and it would mean a lot to me if you came too. So me, my guilt, my freckles and LB went for a walk. And yes, it was beautiful and the scenery - natural and not so natural...

... was highly memorable. Once we were away from all the people and the matching leopard print we stopped and LB turned to me and I honestly thought, uh-oh here comes my talking to. And this was what he said: "You need to stop being so mean about yourself because I think you're beautiful." And then this is what he did: he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

If it was a diversionary tactic to stop me thinking about my freckles it sure as hell worked because I sure as hell said yes. And so LB has been promoted. To LBB. Lovely Betrothed Boy.

The rest of the day was a blur of giggles and perma-smiles and funny looks and a feeling of contented exhilaration unlike anything I've ever felt before. Being betrothed is, frankly, awesome.

And after an afternoon of phone calls and text messages, LBB and I took to the old town for our last dinner and, in a serendipitous sign, had the best meal of the entire trip. Delicious food, fabulous view, jaw-dropping old building. It was truly special.

Getting back to London the next night was something of a mission and we finally got in the door close to 3am, startling our house guests who were expecting us at the same time the following night. Exhaustion (and current possible throat infection) aside, being back in London feels ok, great even if I think about two of my dearest friends now living here (said startled house guests) but it has been so heart-warming to experience the joy of all our family and friends at the Big News.

And as for the utterly beautiful antique ring on my finger, that we found at Gray's Antique Market, well words can't do it justice - but my much improved touch typing skills are certainly testament to its distracting, eye-catching ability.

Love is indeed in the air and on my finger and sitting next to me on the sofa. All that's missing is some baklava. Screw the job.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

Apparently ten days of sunshine DOES a summer make. We've gone from hot and sunny to hot and cloudy to cloudy and muggy to cloudy and muggy with a dash, not a hint, of rain. I'm not sure where this is going but it isn't to the beach.

A pint of Pimms and a bout of Bondi longing

So I am officially wilting. As temperatures "soar" towards 30 (in honour of moi no doubt) I am flagging/melting/sweating/sooking - take your pick.

It is nearly 7pm, the sun is still hot and high in the sky and I have just reached the bottom of what will speculatively be the first of at least three pints of Pimms - strawberry heavy and oh so delicious.

I shouldn't complain but when the weather is this beautiful - and beautiful it is - all I ache for is the cold embracing slap of a Bondi wave. If I close my eyes I can feel it now. Tepid showers just aren't the same somehow, even with my swimmers on.

T-minus 18 days

Until I turn 30. And in a not-so-promising sign we have gone from this....

To this.....

Tears and sunshine

I'm beginning to understand why people rhapsodise about London summers. The last couple of weeks here (notwithstanding two days of rain and misery....) have been increasingly delightful. Balmy low to mid-20s, blue skies, light until 10pm. Green grass and the smell of jasmine. Sigh. Last weekend had the bonus of a Bank Holiday Monday and LB and I spent the afternoon lying on the grass by the Thames in Hammersmith - with several hundred other people and it was So lovely. And this weekend gone was one of bbqs and further sunny meanders. It's been gorgeous - but already I am fretting that if it can be JUNE tomorrow (fuuuuuuck!) then it will be October and arse-freezingly cold again before I know it. So I am *trying* to live in the moment.


Slightly amusing story. Last Thursday it was warm and particularly muggy and being Australian and freckled and thus somewhat allergic to unadulterated sunshine, I had my hat on. Late in the afternoon I walked into a convenience store on Bethnal Green Rd to buy a bottle of water and the guy behind the counter just looked at me said "Australian." I was a tad incredulous and asked him how he could have possibly known that, given I'd had yet to utter a single syllable and he just pointed at my hat. Seems slip, slop, slap is more of a Saturday night check-list than a paean to sun safety in this country but whatever, there are worse ways to be identified as Antipodean...


One place I'm definately not going to be needing my hat in the coming weeks is in the library. On Friday I began the somewhat overwhelming step of organising my research plans, which began with joining the British and National Art Libraries. With my fancy new reading cards (because of course you can't borrow anything and god don't get me started on the fact you're not even allowed to browse the shelves....) I am now a fully credentialed geek. I do have to say though, it was rather thrilling walking through the sculpture hall at the V&A to get to the National Art Library and there is something quite romantic about the thought of spending my summer sitting in old wood-panelled rooms with grand leather desks, the air heavy with grave intellectualism and the beautiful sun streaming in the windows.

First though I have to finish my proposal (and here's where we get to the tears part). God this task is obtuse. And difficult. And stressful. And perplexing. And headache-inducing. How am I meant to write a proposal based on research I haven't yet done and ideas I haven't finished forming? Nevermind come up with some sort of coherent way to talk about and defend it all on Thursday. I feel a bit vomitous thinking about it to be honest - and after my tutor told me this week in the wake of returned essays that, "for a brilliant writer this latest effort is really rather disappointing," well, confidence is not at an all-time high.

I just have to remind myself that once these next few days are done with there is plenty to look forward to - the Venice Biennale next week, my birthday the week after that and parentals in town the week after that. Hur-rah.

There's no place like home

How in god's name has the last month gone as quickly as it has? Fucking hell - that's all I have to say. And please, don't make me go...

Am back to London tomorrow and feel a curious mix of excitement and utter desperation at having to say goodbye. It's truly a case of, well, I would be excited to go if it didn't mean leaving.

In the interests though of 2009, hopefully The Optimistic Year, and of making it somewhat easier to walk through the departure gate tomorrow (Mum's Crying Is Only Permitted Between the Hours of 2pm and 3pm rule will no doubt also help) I think a list is essential. A list of Things I like about London. So here goes...

1. It is highly unlikely that the temperature will ever soar high enough to make my eyeliner smudge to the point of two black eyes
2. A non-existent UV rating means less vigilante-like behaviour when it comes to the factor 50+ sunscreen and vampiric-like hunting for shade
3. There are good museums and art and "stuff"
4. It is close to Europe - Greece for Easter, school trip to Venice, weekend in Barcelona - it does have a certain poetry to it
5. No screeching psychotic cockatoos in the backyard


There are probably others if I really thought about it but five seems like a solid kind of number so I might just leave it there. The point was in the exercise surely and not the outcome?

In truth I am looking forward to seeing the girls at home again, and my school chums and to school generally though I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed at the prospect of how busy the next nine months are going to be, especially in light of the last month - which has been glorious in its nothingness.

Days on the boat....


Nights on the harbour....


Early evenings on the beach...


And the lovely weddings of lovely friends in the lovely sunshine...


And all while in the bosom of the family. I can't tell you how I've missed the boisterous madness that is my nearest and dearest. Juvenile dinner table conversation, serious discussions about how to spend a hypothetical $30 million lottery win, laughter, swims, cheese and wine and a front verandah with sit-in-me-forever chairs under a starry Sydney night. It's been so, SO good.

What I've realised most about being home, and what I love so dearly about Sydney is the space - the geographical space, the airspace, the head space, not so much the parking space, but just the general sense of freedom and ease that comes with living here. Something desperately absent from Encroach Upon Me London. How to remedy this when I'm back I'm not entirely sure - yoga perhaps or an amble through Hampstead Heath once a week. I don't know. But I do know it's something I'm going to have to work out because I don't think I can justify a fornightly weekend in Portugal. Though goodness I'd like to try...

Strangely I haven't spent as much time as I imagined I might at Bondi while I've been home. I think in some small part because when it looks like this - drowned in people....


Well, it reminds me of London. And not just because most of those thousands of people are themselves English.

It's late here so I should probably go and finish packing. My frigging suitcase looks like one of those ridiculous sandwiches you get at trendy gourmet cafes - splayed open and piled high with too much shit to actually be able to close, thus sending the goats cheese and baby spinach straight down the front. It's a good look. Right up there with the public re-pack at the check-in desk when said sandwiched suitcase hovers 5-10kg above the weight restriction. Something to look forward to tomorrow.