A spoonful of sugar...

It was the Cadbury creme egg that did it. An icky sugary Easter creation that sealed my resolve to walk away from the love of my life - at least for a while.

I'm talking about chocolate and more broadly sugar. Like so many others I have phased it out and two months in I'm finding life is just fine without it.

In typically dramatic fashion I decided to start suddenly on Easter Monday. I  sent all the left over Lindt goodies from the house and set about reworking my home-made muesli - toasting flaked almonds, pepitas and sunflower seeds with coconut and sesame seed without the apple juice, honey and dried fruit.

I then downloaded Sarah Wilson's e-book, read through her her blog and sifted back to find these pages from Townmouse and My Pear Tree House. Honestly when I read these at the time I paid scant attention but they stayed in the back of my mind. I then found David Gillespie's latest book buried in a pile of new releases on my desk at work.

It was the way I was feeling that spurred me into action. I was feeling rubbish in the afternoons - close to death at three o'clock with an overwhelming need to lie down. I would eat something sweet to pep me up which in turn would make me feel a little shaky.

I'm not one for diets, self-help books or advice I hear on the radio - heavens I'm the cynical one putting it on the radio...   but eventually all the 'sugar is poison' talk made it through my cynical filter.

I still don't think it is poison but I do think we eat an enormous amount of sugar without realising it.

It dawned on me that giving up sugar in most forms wouldn't trouble me too much and it hasn't. Juice, dried fruit, dessert, cakes, ice cream are not things I crave and we don't eat much processed food like bottled sauces.

Breakfast has been the hardest meal but I've adapted well to my homemade muesli mix with natural yoghurt. I also buy this fruit free muesli when I'm sick of mine.  The muffins and biscuits I bake for the kids go in their lunch boxes and not in mine.  I take cheese and almonds and grapes to snack on at work. I still eat whole fruit - it sounded mad to me to give that up.

I dropped the sugar from my tea and haven't missed it and even chocolate hasn't been too hard - although of course there's been the odd lapse!

I am still me after all - but a much less sweet version and I feel a whole lot better. I'm definitely more mindful of what I eat and how it makes me feel.

Goodness I sound almost sensible. I'm turning forty in less than a year. That could explain it.

Check mate...

Sometimes I get a little distracted in the house search and spend more time pinning all sorts of beautiful spaces instead of nailing the perfect trifecta of price, location and potential.

We're getting a feel for the areas of Melbourne we'd like to settle in. Actually it's all going to be determined by just how far I'm prepared to drive to my son's school. He and I have made friends and we're not moving far.

In fact ending 2012 without some sort of house move would be just fine, thanks.

And definitely not to an undersized and probably overpriced terrace house with a chess board in the garden - no matter how beautiful it looks. I'll just visit it on pinterest occasionally.

Image from here - while it lasts.

Farewell to summer...

Summer is well and truly done. Melbourne has been blessed by a lingering Indian summer which left us this week. The boys were swimming last weekend, now we're in winter mode.

Funny how weather dominates our conversations in all corners of the world.  I find the obsession a little tiring sometimes particularly the competitive conversations - 'hot, you don't know hot' or 'freezing? I used to walk five miles to school in the snow.' Yet here I am talking about it too.

I'm always surprised by people who don't love summer. How can you not? I want to shake them and shout a little but I know that's frowned upon in modern times. Particularly when the summer-hater is the check out chick at K-Mart. I think they'd probably call security.

I can't revel in Autumn. All that orange and brown... not my best colours.

I like Autumn when the weather's still warm. Crisp mornings and 27 degree days. And when I say crisp I mean T-shirts for school drop off at a quarter to nine.

I like Autumn when I see it in pictures on blogs from the northern hemisphere - far far from me.

Melbourne may well be the wrong place for me. But hell, I'm not moving again.

I think I might just have to stock up on the funereal Melbourne uniform of black and more black, don myself head to toe in mourning gear,  keep my head down and the heater on until the worst of it has passed.

Bring on Spring.

Late summer blast... of colour.

Colour that's courageous. Loud, clashing primary shades, neon green, orange, classic blue and yellow beachey stripes. 

It's loud, it shouts and it's happy. So happy.

Many of Melbourne's bayside beaches are lined with beach boxes. They're sought after and expensive.

I think they're fabulous.  Just like summer.  

In the pink...

A chill wind is blowing through my garden and the leaves on the silver birches are starting to turn. Oddly enough in the garden across the road the birches have completely turned already and one tree is already showing its silvery bare branches. Perhaps there is such a thing as the right side of the road.

The roses have given me so much pleasure in the past few months. The bushes in this garden are old, gnarled and woody. Our house has been rented out for fifteen years or so which probably means 15  years of neglect from tenants. Or more fairly, mistreatment by well-meaning but brown-fingered tenants like me.

I wasn't expecting much from the old dears but have been given a lot. A little dead-heading, not a lot of water and a lot of lovely soft pink blooms. Thank you summer.

Friday door.... and a little bit of politics...

Something a little different in the villa door world to end another busy week. Not so hip and cool this one but a beautiful shade of blue to match that stained glass.

I'm distracting myself from the 'open warfare' and 'blood letting' of the week... overused cliches but they actually do best describe Australian federal politics this week.

In my real job I do not gaze at lovely interiors and critique front doors, I dabble in the political world in as a journalist. Part of me usually loves the thrill of a political story like the Gillard and Rudd #respill.  (That's the twitter hashtag that's caught on - I like #kevenge).

As a political yarn it's a belter but I'm sick of it.  I was sick of it before it became more than just a rumour in a few weekend newspapers.

I want Labor to sort themselves out. I want the Opposition to stop sniping. I want to feel inspired, even just a little, and led by our leaders.

Anyway this is not work and I am not at work today so back to that door.

I don't want to be critical but (don't you dread sentences that begin with 'I don't want to be cruel/rude/racist?).... it needs a bigger doormat. I guess if they'd known I planned to take a picture they'd have rushed out and bought one.
If some local blogger is planning a walk-by to snap my door, please wait.

You can barely see my doormat for the  leaves, acorns and stones collected on the way home from school and discarded and webs from the army of arachnids settling in on the verandah.

I've been waiting weeks for the broom fairy to visit but I may just have to don the tutu myself. Or bribe the husband.

Now that's a nicer picture to leave you with than Kaptain Kruddy, Juliar and the Mad Monk.**

Happy weekend. x


*My apologies to those overseas who didn't even know people would bother fighting to be in charge of a far off land like Australia. We do have more money than Greece and a mining magnate richer than the Queen of England.

**Not my terms I'd hasten to add. Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard and Mr Abott is what I would call them - if they'd agree to come on my program.

Reading? I recommend....

Just before I left Auckland a fellow book clubber recommended I read some William Boyd. 'William who?' was my reply. Now I know. Thank you very much Ange.

William Boyd is my new favourite author and I don't quite know how I missed him. I remember seeing many copies of his best seller Armadillo being read on the tube back at the turn of the century (1999).

Better than any best seller list was seeing what the London commuters were reading - when I first moved there it was The Beach, a few years later Harry Potter, now they're probably reading their iThings. Boo.

Anyway back to Boyd. He writes brilliantly, his characters are intriguing and (unusually for good writers) likeable.  Each of his books is also quite different so I easily read five back to back.

My favourite? Any Human Heart. Followed closely by Restless...

The best of the rest... Ordinary Thunderstorms, Brazzaville Beach, A Good Man in Africa. Oddly enough it was Armadillo I liked the least. But it was pretty good too.

Go forth and read.
Run, don't walk - as the hip young things say.