Bikes and wandering minds...

I have a degree in procrastination. Actually a double degree and I graduated with honours. It took five years at university and a small fortune in fees and cheap wine.

Every now and then I hear a term like 'unconscionability' or mention of Lord Denning and some of my legal knowledge floats back... but what I have never forgotten is how to put off work until the last possible moment. 15 years ago it was essays on international law and exams on the rules of evidence, now it's freelance writing and radio work.

I am procrastinating right now and I have been doing it all week. I mean honestly, yesterday I randomly posted about Wendy houses. Wendy houses????

Kids help too... I spent a good hour searching for my two year old's shoe this week and when I'd stopped looking I found it  - stashed in the seat compartment of his ride-on Thomas train.

The upside of procrastination is that I clean things so this week I have sparkling (ish) floors and a much nicer smelling rubbish bin.

I also tackle little jobs that can clearly wait - you know the pics that have waited years for new frames. Which is why there is a rather large picture of a bike in black and white at the top of this page...scroll up and have another look. It's finally going back on our wall - a memory of great weekends away in Amsterdam with friends.

This will go next to it. My other half went down on bended knee in a snow covered Venice.

And of course there's London, not an iconic London shot but Richmond Bridge a stone's throw from our old house and a lovely place to stroll in the sunshine.

They're going in frames today, the Ikea frames I have stacked under our spare bed that are almost as well travelled as my procrastinating mind.

I may need to take a week off from My Villa Life and do some work. On the other hand I might be back on Monday. Hell, it's not due tomorrow...

Chapel chairs...

I just never see these chairs in the hundreds dozens of magazine pages I flick through each month  so I was very excited to find this room while flicking online recently.

These are MY chairs. Wooden chapel chairs I bought in London -  the church authorities there have been replacing them with a more practical (and much less charming) plastic option. 

I found a couple at a Chiswick antique store and then tracked down more at a tumble down barn in Surrey that housed all manner of church antiquities - altars, candle sticks, robes and of course church pews. An old wooden chapel bench came back to Australia with us too and has sat in quite a few hallways since.

The chairs are sturdy, made from elm with a slight curve in the seat and a ledge for your song book or bible - or toy car, fork or sandwich crust in our house!

I love my chapel chairs  but so too did the borer that hitched a ride back to Australia. I know, I know, criminal. But how was I to know?

Luckily they were well wrapped in the container and didn't munch through all my other furniture. For some reason the quarantine officials didn't find them either.

Only four chairs were infected - when I found the sawdust  I panicked, banished them outside and liberally doused them in borer killer and again twice more for luck.

Then I painted them. Now don't YOU panic. They look quite good or they will when I paint them for the final time and find just the right shade. But that's another story for another sunnier day. When I get a break in the weather I'll get them outside and tell you all about it.

Pictures from here... these chairs live in a rather grand house - well worth a look.


AND a footnote - I have just popped over to Marie Nichols' blog and she has them in her London home and has posted pictures of her house today. Odd how life works like that...

Now here's a map obsession...

I may have a thing for maps but nothing like the woman behind the iconic A-Z London Maps. Iconic is a word is abused and overused by journalists but in this case I feel justified using it.

Phyllis Pearsall was pretty amazing. An artist, she decided in 1935 that the Ordnance Survey map she was using to find her way around London was totally inadequate so she'd make one herself. Working long, long days she catalogued the city's 23,000 streets - on foot, mind you - and then devised the alphabetical index to go with her guide.

The woman was unstoppable. When no one would publish her new atlas she started her own company, the Geographers' Map Company which she ran until she died.

I've read this book twice (once would have done but I quite often read books again. There are Agatha Christie mysteries I've read half a dozen times and still can't remember 'who done it.' What will I be like when I'm eighty?!)

The story of Phyllis Pearsall's work is amazing enough but her childhood and family shenanigans also makes for an incredible life. Of course the author has taken a liberal dose of creative licence but that makes for a much better read - I'm not one for a stack of dry facts as bedtime reading. If you prefer the bare facts, her own book might be good too.

Thank you Miss Pearsall for providing me with the bible for all those lovely jaunts on foot, bus and tube across London.

Thank you too for all those times we got lost together - my dog-eared A-Z sliding off the passenger seat and gout of reach as I drove around a corner distracted and lost in a new London suburb. Good times indeed - who needs a GPS?

Easy living...

I've been thinking more about the cities on the liveable list.  When you look at the criteria I think what they're talking about is ease. And for me the older I get the more I want that easy life.

I'm not really an expat... how can you be when you live so close to home in a country about as similar to home as it gets?

So is Auckland liveable?? 

Yes, absolutely. We live in a lovely street in a lovely area with great cafes, shops and people. The schooling is excellent and free and if we wanted to pay for good schooling we would have had no trouble getting our son in. Work is down the road, the gym is round the corner. The health care is good. It's is easier than Sydney or Melbourne or London.

Kiwis seem more reserved than Australians - more like the English -  and are a little harder to get to know but they are really nice. People in banks bend the rules. I like that.

The climate's mild but if rain, damp and humidity were taken into account it would be in the bottom ten. It's really wet. Apart from this summer, thank goodness.

Transport too is useless. but we've mostly avoided that by living our life locally - the motorway is as bad as those in cities five times the size.

The shopping is okay but the Great Outdoors is truly Great.  And my kids love it.

How about Melbourne?

Melbourne is easy.  It's a real city but not too big. Good transport too.

It's not stunningly beautiful but it has nice pockets with their own distinct flavour and tribes. You find your own little space there and feel like you're the first to find it. You have great conversations about art, music, food and sport if that's what floats your boat. (I liked the food, the sport I ignored!)

People wear a fair bit of black and they are hip and cool.  Melbourne can be a bit up itself. In Melbourne they talk a bit too much about how good it is. My husband disagrees with me on this but he talks it up too.

It can be way too hot in summer and cold and drizzly in winter but overall I like it a lot. I didn't want to leave and I want to live there again.

So, Sydney?

A lot is written about how brash it is. That didn't worry me, I didn't notice it.  People don't wear a lot of clothes which can be a bit disturbing at first - eventually you too will wear thongs everywhere.

It's a bit rundown and despite the staggering wealth some of the street fronts and shops need a good scrub and a coat of paint - even in the wealthiest areas.  It's expensive.  The house prices make you want to gouge your eye out with a spoon and so does the constant discussion about it. 

They don't really have a cafe culture or great shopping strips but they don't seem to need it. Sydney has the beach. Coogee, Bronte, Bondi, Avalon, Manly and Palm Beach and even Balmoral. All stunning. Really stunning. And with the climate to match.

I like Sydney even more now that I don't live there.

London? 


London is fabulous but not easy. It's exhilarating but exhausting. I love a crowd and I loved feeling that I lived in the centre of everything.  I loved the work there and the Sunday papers. I liked the politics and the popular culture. A lot of great thinkers and writers and then people like Katie Price aka Jordan. Don't ask me why but I loved that. 


But when I think about the day to day of shopping, driving to work, dealing with bank tellers or anyone in the service industry, long winters and sick children, I think it probably deserves its place low on the list for expats.


It's still pretty close to the top on MY list.  I just want it to be a little closer to the grandparents.


(By the way, all complaints about gross generalisations will be published!)

All mapped out

God bless google and its online street maps but they are simply not up to the real thing... an antique map, a creased city guide on a weekend trip or the thick bound atlas on the newsroom's foreign desk.

That creamy paper in your hands, those gorgeous faded colours and lightly drawn contour lines. Endlessly fascinating. Full of places you'd love to go back to, those you'd forgotten existed and the ones you can't quite place. To the right of Afghanistan or below?

A little while ago on the covetable Velvet and Linen blog I found this beautiful room that California designers Brooke and Steve Gianetti put together for a client.

They created a map room complete with room for lounging and planning the family's next trip. The maps have been framed without glass so the client's children can use pins and mark where they'd been. Love it.

Love too the thought of a house with an office, playroom, garden room, television room AND map room. Cancel the en suite I want one of these.

We've collected a few maps over the years - the favourite is the London A-Z. We lived in London in the pre-iPhone age (the five year old calls it the Olden Days which is enough to give me another wrinkle). A tatty A-Z lived in the handbag, another in the car and a few littered the house. When I shared a house there was a poster version on the kitchen wall - it was always a conversation starter.

You can buy your own poster on the A-Z website, have one custom made or get an A-Z application for your iPhone.

Ours has waited five years for a wall. Now it's going in a frame and I can stroll the streets of my favourite city.