Time...

It's four years since I logged into blogger. Google panicked... there's something strange going on with your account, it warned. Yes, strange indeed.

Five years ago I wrote every other day. There was a long pause tonight as I gazed at the flashing cursor, fingers hovering over the keys.

I spent some time scrolling down through old posts and thinking about what's changed.

We still holiday at the same beach each summer. After years of moving we wanted to anchor our holidays to build family memories and share our love of home with the boys. Tick.

I finally really garden. In our now not so new house we tore out two thirds of our very old front beds - the enormous agapanthus, the violets for which I have an irrational dislike and even a couple of trees severely damaged by years of drought.  There were tears and sheer blind panic when I realised what we'd done. It was desolate. But I replanted, made lots of mistakes and now love standing among the roses with a hose in hand. I think that qualifies as really gardening.

An adventure helping to run the school fete's preserves stall means I can now churn out jam and lemon curd and chutney. I certainly don't do it every week but am about to tackle a strawberry and watermelon hopefully before the melon goes to mush in the fridge.

Despite my luddite tendencies I bought an overly expensive appliance to cook my risotto and thrash veggies into green smoothies. I also gave in and bought a kindle and love it.   

I declared 2014, then 2015, and again 2016 the 'year of entertaining' and failed miserably each time. 2017 is un-named.

I still eat chocolate, so unfashionable. I don't drink kefir water or shop enough for clothes, I still find leafing through clothes racks so dull.

Antique shops are much more interesting. I'm spending 2017 scouring auction rooms and warehouses - without much success yet. I'm still trying to buy a rug for my sitting room and our pictures are stacked against the wall in that room. Who are those people in magazines with finished homes and pillows that match their paintings?

One son is in now in high school and starting to look almost into my eyes - the other is old enough to take skin off my toes off when he bowls at me on the beach. Yes 'at', not 'to' and he does it with focused aggression. It's very disconcerting.

I can't quite remember what toddlers are like. Occasionally my kids throw a ratty heat or hunger prompted tantrum to remind me. We had a belter this morning. Sometimes my almost teen talks to me like an adult or an equal. I try not to show him how surprised I feel when he does. Of course there are long periods of silence or stroppiness too. The hormones are descending. I need a new 'how to parent' book. Or ten.

I don't do playgrounds anymore. I don't kill time until 5pm when I can feed babies and rush them to bed. Instead I circle Melbourne in increasingly heavy traffic with Siri directing me to various football and cricket grounds, feeding kids on the go and swapping lifts and favours with other jugglers. I'm thinking about buying a caravan with a hob to make tea and a cupboard to hang the kids' travelling wardrobes. It would be very popular with the cricket crowd. 

I have struggled on and off with the work life balance. Mostly it's been out of whack but I comfort myself with the fact that I've yet to meet a mother who's got her chi sorted whether she works full time, part time or not at all. We're all in that together.

It alarms me that my friends' lives are littered with complex issues - divorce, sickness, work, money and life. Was it like this four years ago? Or were we all too busy surviving to notice? 

We've had scads of Prime Ministers since I last wrote. My real job is rather too focused on that so I won't say much here except that we live in exciting times -  'exciting' is admittedly not the best way to describe waking each day to a Trump tweet. 

It's odd sitting down to reflect on four years. It's odd to write again.

Hopefully not too odd to read.

A little news from NZ...

Channel calm. Look at the lovely picture. Breathe. And again.

I have some news and despite the breathing lesson above it is not a new baby.  I have no intention of starting over - no matter how sweet those babies look.

It's time for another move.

Remember this blog belongs to a serial mover? Well, I am a reluctant sort of serial mover so we are hoping this move will be the last. At least that's what I've been promised...

And the city of choice?  Drum roll.... Melbourne.

I will be strolling up my local high street, shopping 'til I drop, looking sharp in black, eating out and talking about it and unearthing little thrifty finds at Camberwell Market. I am sure you CAN'T wait to read all about it....

OH NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Not another bloody Melbourne blogger.

Before that though, it's the move. Sorting, packing, sorting, emailing, sorting, sorting, sorting.

OH NOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Not another bloody moving blog.

It could be worse. You could be moving. Again.

Image from here 

Money, money...

Money is on my mind today which is unusual. As a rule I'm not that interested but it does make the world go around so I should develop a keener interest in a) making more of it and b) spending less of it.

I was interested to read a snippet online this morning about just how much money we'd now need to feel rich. Of course the best people to ask about this are the ones who are already rich.

42% (hardly a majority but never let that stand in the way of a headline) of the thousand American millionaires questioned agreed that $US7.5 is about the figure these days. Any less and I suppose they worry about where the next meal's coming from or at least the next BMW.

Righto, that's a little more than $NZ10,000,000... Time to get a job.

Or I could just email all the really generous people spamming me at the moment. I have been lucky enough to win more than £750,000 in the British PO lottery AND $500,000 in the Mega Ball promo whatever that is. Victor Hugo Bastidas just wants me to email my name address and phone number. How nice... if I were better at returning my emails I could be a quarter of my way to being rich.

Or I could develop a new business dreaming up more believable spam emails.

I am quite tempted by this little note from an admirer.

hey stranger your pitcures are stunning (seen you on that site)
im a 24 year old female just looking for some fun maybe u can
go on msn or yahoo messengiar madison21jobs@hotmail.com add me and send me a line
lets talk further there in private please


Although I am firmly and quite dully attached to my husband and men in general, any 24 year old showing interest is flattering. Take what you can get I say... particularly when you're feeling about 83 on a good day.

Just a pity Connie can't spell and seems to like Generation Z text spk. I just don't think I could have an online thing with someone who might end each sentence with lol or send me a smiley face. :) Know what I mean?

Calm...

My head has been too full to write in the past week... too full I think of the awful tragedy in Christchurch.  We are all glued to the news with the slightly unreal feeling that it really must be unfolding somewhere very far from here.

Normal life goes on for most of us and that vague sense of guilt that goes with it. In our house our heads are very full of the sort of cross-roads-of-life stuff that comes around all too frequently in the lives of serial movers. Do we stay or go or stay a little longer and then go or just never go or should we never have come at all?!  I am channelling calm as you can see by the picture above.

I am also trying to pin down my children in the search for one of my rings that has mysteriously disappeared off a high shelf in the kitchen. Two year olds are not reliable sources. He has sent me rifling through the lego box and into the vegetable drawer of the fridge.

Driving across Auckland's bridge an hour ago I was daydreaming about inventing a diamond detector (so handy) and then saw the flags at half mast overhead.  That brought me right back to the real world.

Image from here

Seven things...

Once again I have been surprised and pleased to receive another opportunity to talk about ME. It's come in the form of those rather nice blogging awards - the ones I am absolutely hopeless about passing along. I think it's all the lectures we were given about chain letters as children... or it could be my general uselessness. Probably the latter.

This time it's (surprisingly) the Stylish blogger award from the ever stylish Kerry A Tranquil Townhouse and Le at Third on the Right. Thank you both ladies. Before I started I thought I should check the last time I did one of these All About Me lists as;

1. I tend to repeat myself and tell the same story a couple of times... luckily I am terribly witty and interesting and people tend to hang on my every word so of course they don't mind. Except my husband. He cuts me off two sentences in. Poor man. Who could blame him?

2. I love it when my printer whirs into action the first time I press the print button. This last happened in 2007. Inevitably I have the page setting on A3, the connector thingy unconnected, the printer off or no paper. 

3. I love the sun.  I remember vividly the day each spring in London when you could actually feel the warmth of the sunshine on your skin for the first time in months.  At this end of the world the sun is too warm for most of the year and you can get burnt on a cold day. We might all be dodging skin cancer but we are definitely not depressed by a lack of light. I love that.

4. I love swimming in the sea but I like it to be clear beneath me so I can see the nasties that might be lurking. Ideally for me the ocean would be like a huge saltwater swimming pool with the occasional Nemo-type fish swimming by. I think that's why I like Sydney's rock pools so much... (Bronte's my favourite). I know... it's un-Australian to be such a wuss.

5. I also love chocolate which is nothing new. But not all chocolate.  Not chocolate cake, chocolate desserts and those overdone handmade twiddly chocolates (although I demolished half a box last night and will eat a cake to be polite of course). I really like just plain old chocolate, milk not dark if there's a choice.  I have had to go cold turkey quite a few times to check that I can actually survive without it.

6. I love old things, furniture particularly. Not groovy, mid-century stuff, and not those real antiques crafted from mahogany but well-used wooden tables, chests, chairs and useful old things with a solid feel and a lovely patina of age through use. 

7. And I'm sorry fellow bloggers, I love all your blogs but I loathe these little things... 

Inglatie? My brain and fingers freeze and then I type the word it nearly is. Without them I would be a much more efficient and then clearly better blogger.... I think.

Reading in 2011

It's less than five weeks to Christmas, and however many days until 2011... time to start planning next year's reading list.

I've found a very nice place to start - with my blog crush India Knight and her ultimate comfort reads. Her lovely list is here.

How could I not love a list that starts with Nancy Mitford and includes Agatha, Daphne Du Maurier, PG Wodehouse and Austen?  I'm not sure Jilly Cooper fits with my resolution to read better. I may leave her off in 2011.

I loved Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and as a girl despite being THE worst dancer at Mrs Todd's Ballet School, anything by Noel Streatfield.

Jane at My Pear Tree House gave me food for thought last week (as she so often does when it comes to books and food) with her post about grand castles in literature. I'm adding Kate Morton to my list - she's not English but Australian but Jane assures me she does English very well.

So many of the authors I love are English, terribly English. So many of the books I love are set in a particular period in English life and in a particular class too it must be said... perhaps in a past life I lived somewhere like Chatsworth House.

Maybe I spent my teen years in that other life mooning about in a grand country home in a scratchy tweed skirt, gazing out over green rolling hills while dreaming about silk dresses and pining for love.

One day in my much talked about dream house in this life (with a laundry, dressing room and library) there will be a room crammed with comfort reads - a no boy zone.

In my past life it may have looked like the drawing room at the Duchess of Devonshire's new Vicarage.

As the Mitford sister who married very well,  Debo (now 90) has downsized from the beautiful Chatsworth House. There's a lovely interview with her here and another lively Mitford book to look forward to.

Ah well, this Villa Life might be a little drab in comparison but my family is at least sane and pretty happy. They are rarely sane or happy in the books I've loved.

I'll settle for a book corner like this perhaps. And a silk dress.

(Image 1 and 4 from here, 2 and 3 from here)

Stepping back...

On Saturday night, 33 years after this picture was taken, I went back to school to our 20 year reunion.

Actually it was in a bar. Fifty or so women. Working mothers, wives, single women, stay at home mums to babies and some with teenagers. Students, nurses, lawyers, a hairdresser, doctor, social workers, a naturopath. Some planning weddings, others divorced and splitting the care of their kids, some already mourning the loss of a parent -  all women in their late thirties getting on with the business of life.

I thought it was a fabulous night. I hope it was just as good for everyone else. I was lucky enough to love school but I remember those who probably didn't. The teenage years can be tough. Sometimes just the thought of it makes me go a little cold. I'm pretty glad to be the age I am. Remind me of that as I slide to forty...

There were a few who didn't want to come, some we couldn't track down and others like me who flew in for the night.

I thought we all looked good - and I didn't drink much so it wasn't the wine! Some have aged amazingly well. It's probably a little late too ask what their secret is... sunscreen and good genes I suspect.

Wrinkles aside it's comforting to realise that people don't seem to change much. Thirty three years on I still don't quite know how to smile for a photo.

Face time...

It's September... time surely to think about next year's resolutions. I didn't get around to making this year's until February so I'd better start a little earlier. A friend emailed last month to say she'd been giving 2011's some thought. Second on her list is more maintenance... do the the nails, facials etc. It should be top of mine.

I had 'Be Better Groomed'  on my list two years ago and failed miserably - along with embracing early mornings... that one ended on January 1st when my then nine month old woke at 5am.

Blogging helps with resolutions. It's like standing on a virtual rooftop and yelling a pledge to the world - or at least the handful who read your blog. 

It also helps when wonderful fellow bloggers give you things. I was the very lucky and rather overwhelmed winner of a giveaway over at A Lasting First Impression.

Emily's parcel arrived yesterday with a lovely note and some fabulous things.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Emily sells Sensaria products and gives lots of little tips with her Facial Mondays. We'll see what lovely things they do to my face.

What a way to kickstart the 2011 resolutions. I may start small with wash, tone and moisturise twice daily? Is that achievable? Those laughing just don't know me at all...

Seven things about me...

Thank you for all your kind comments on my last post. I did wonder before I published it whether I was telling you just too much... but it's good to navel-gaze and great to find a book that invites you to.

So while we're talking about me... here's a little more.

I am a bad blogger, the sort that gets blog awards from lovely people and never does anything about them.  Janette of My Sweet Prints who makes very sweet prints gave me an award months ago. Now Jane, an old friend and new blogger with Life on Planet Baby has included me in another blogger award here.

So seven things you probably don't know about me, unless you're family.

1. I don't like things under the sea. I like being in the sea and on top of it, sailing, swimming anything. But I freak out a little (okay, a lot) when I put on a mask and snorkel and see fish and things under my feet. I really hated the only dive I ever did. Nearly swallowed the whole reg in fright.
2. I don't drink coffee because I don't like coffee. Can't stand the taste. And if it sneaks into a chocolate I get cross. The not liking coffee thing can get a little awkward at a hip and happening coffee shop. The people you're 'having coffee' with just think you're a weird health nut, until you order a hot chocolate. Then the barista looks down their nose at you.
3. I am not into sport. I like sporty things but I don't like watching it. Unfortunately I am married to a sport nut who has a love of all and any sport. I have drawn the line at netball (nothing duller, sorry ladies) and darts. I mean honestly, darts?
4. I don't much like cats. Actually I really don't like them at all and unfortunately married a cat lover and have a boy of five who seems to want a ginger cat. I wonder where he got that idea from?
5. I don't like a TV in the bedroom.  Mine or my children's. Otherwise I love it. And almost any trash on it. Go on judge me.
6. I don't like snakes. What sane person does? I love New Zealand and walking in its long grass and letting my boys go anywhere in bare feet. It is so darn safe I may never leave.
7. I don't like putting butter on cold toast. I have been known to leap across the kitchen, knife in hand, to get to the toaster as it pops. Not a second later. My father, who loves to tease, once lined up all the cereal boxes on the kitchen floor as an obstacle course. I came flying around the corner to get to the toaster and saw them all and him collapsed on the floor laughing himself silly. I made more toast.

I really, really don't like the thought that you now think I am seriously neurotic. I am a little bit but in a hopefully likeable way.

By the way, the photograph is Wineglass Bay on Tasmania's glorious east coast, a place I really do like.

Why I am Australian...

I read this book in two hours... with a two week break in between. When I first picked it up I had tears welling up by page four. I had to put it down at page 80. It was as though she'd taken something sharp and cut a little hole somewhere in me and I couldn't quite handle the flood of emotion.

Nikki Gemmell is an Australian writer  - the name behind the The Bride Stripped Bare. We are terribly similar. (ah yes apart from the award winning author bit)

She moved to London 12 years ago when I did, also looking for a life outside the ordinary and stayed. I lasted seven years, she's still there. Her husband is Australian too. They even did the same sort of work I did. She has two boys a little older than mine and a little girl.  Now she wants them to know Australia. This book is written for them.

It nearly broke me but I loved it. I finished it last night and read it all in such a rush I felt as though I hadn't quite taken a breath for an hour.

Nikki (we're on first name terms, now of course) who lives in Notting Hill writes so vividly about London that I can almost smell it and taste it again.  Those were the first tears.

Then I welled up a little more at her rich descriptions of Australia, its openness, it's roughness, its sunshine. She's sunshine obsessed and I remember that feeling after the suffocating, grim, grey, endless English winter. She wants her children to know Australia and to be Australian. She feels as though she's raising little English boys, pale and polite.

I laughed at her memories of her own childhood and her joy in coming home each year... the way I also used to revel in coming back and eating buckets of mint slices, the joy I had when we left London for Australia and saw our toddler in turn revel in the wide open spaces and warm weather, knowing we'd made the right choice.

I come from a family of migrants. My great grandparents were all migrants to South Africa - one set gave up and went back to Scotland. Snakes or snow I suppose. In turn, my parents are migrants to Australia.

I feel embarrassed by this reaction, this flood of emotion. I am not a migrant who's moved cultures, left Russia or China and come to a totally foreign culture. I haven't fled a despot or war or persecution. 

I don't see myself as a migrant but I know what it is to not quite know one's place in the world.

I have spent just long enough in another country to start to feel as though it's more home than the old home. I felt such a wrench leaving London that I felt I was making a huge mistake leaving. It took a year to like Australia again and get used to it.  I now live in a place that is so close to Australia that people often think it should be. They're wrong, New Zealand is  different. Similar but not the same.

Now I guess I'm raising little Kiwis. My five year old cried in frustration when I mimicked his changing accent the other day. I remember my parents doing the same to me. I'll try not to do it anymore.

I know I am Australian. Not born but bred. As my new mate Nikki agrees, it's not perfect (just watch breakfast television and you'll want to leave again).

We'll get back one day and before we lose our children to the land of earthquakes and All Blacks... for my husband I don't know which is more dangerous.

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...

My life in ten dishes with thanks to Jill Dupleix

When I lived in the UK Jill Dupleix was the food editor at The Times. Oh, what a job to have and how well she did it... Now back in Australia, she and her foody partner Terry Durack share a blog, Table Talk.

Recently Jill wrote her own food biography, 'a life in ten dishes' as she calls it. They don't have to be the ten best dishes you've ever had -  she says they should just represent you at certain ages and stages. 'That's your entire life there, plate after plate.'

Read hers, read mine. Then write your own.

Coleslaw, chops and plain rice
I was a child in the seventies.  It's not my fondest food memory but it's enduring - I  remember being old enough to help cut the cabbage and grate the carrot. I was like most kids a little tricky to feed but wailed in protest if anyone called me fussy.  I do remember fights over the minutest piece of onion and being forced to eat my carrots. Poor Mum, I do still hate raw onion and simply can't eat a carrot cut into discs.

Spaghetti Bolognese
Oh so Australian, at one stage this was declared the new national dish. It was the first thing I learnt to cook... after coleslaw faded out of fashion it was our family staple throughout my teens and I still love it. Mum made it the proper way, diced carrot and celery and herbs. I can almost smell it now bubbling away on her treasured St George stove. She went overseas for five weeks when I was about seventeen leaving me with Dad and my brother.  I had her car to drive (oh joy) but was left in charge of the house... I don't think we did much cleaning and I'm pretty sure we lived on spag bol.

Boerewors on the Braai
I'm South African by birth so in my parents' house it was a braai. Charcoal, never gas and quite often boerewoers with  gem squash from the garden grown from seeds carefully handed on from other migrant foodies. Now that Dad (like me) has learned to cook rather more than just spag bol he serves up  rolled smoked lamb or char grilled quail and risotto with a grape jus. And I think he calls it a barbie these days...

Boeuf Bourguignon
I finally learned to cook and learned pretty quickly. I was 25 and running a small ski chalet in the French Alps for a season. I also learned all the french words for vegetables and meat but not much more! We had a week or so of training (how not to gas yourself with too many chemicals while cleaning a loo) and then were given a recipe book.  First week Christmas dinner for ten! Boeuf B was always on the menu of course and the girl who ran the next door chalet was vegetarian so I'd make hers too. Never did nail the boiling of an egg at high altitude.

Roast Vegetable Lasagne

In London I had four flatmates in a lovely large family home near the All England Lawn Tennis Club. We'd often cook at home and host dinner at the drop of a hat. The crowd would quite quickly grow to a dozen or more around our large pine table.  Red meat and I were not friends in the UK so it was always roast vegetable lasagne and mine was much, much better the more wine drank while making it. 

Bangers and Mash
Of course in London if you weren't at home you were at the pub. The sun always shines in an English pub... And if it was the day after the night before or even the day before the night before you would be  eating bangers and mash. Good bangers and mash... cumbrian sausages and full-of-butter potatoes with an onion gravy. 

Trofie al pesto in Liguria
Italy for countless holidays, quite a few in Cinque Terre. I discovered the simplicity of a very good hand bashed pesto with trofie. This only just beats the first moment I tried truffle in a tiny restaurant in Rome.  Drop eggs with shaved truffle. Turns out drop eggs are scrambled eggs and I actually don't even like them but OH MY it was good. And I don't cook with truffles but I make my own pesto so it wins.

Roast chicken drowning in gravy
Something I would make even for just the two of us because I love it. Heavily influenced by Jamie Oliver's tips... tuck herbs under the skin, rub it with garlic and olive oil and shove a lemon into the nether regions. Always, always served with lashings of real gravy. No packets please. The family joke is to make me wait until last for the gravy and laugh at my discomfort.

Baked chicken with tomatoes, balsamic and capers
Now known rather unglamorously as midweek chicken because we have it so often... how life and work and children get in the way of cooking new things... but it is good and oh so simple for a Wednesday night.

Cheesy pasta
How funny life is. One day this will be my son's enduring food memory and I will be cringing just as my mother is reading about chops, coleslaw and rice. I make him all sorts of more interesting dinners and it is just cheesy pasta he really wants. With white sauce, grated cheese and peas. I usually sneak some too. It is quite good but I wouldn't say that out loud.

The road to nowhere...

Thank you for your kind wishes over my very womanly battle with man-flu. I am now chock full of antibiotics and am back on the bike.

Not le Tour de France, le Tour de Legs.   I'm talking about spin class and I'm strangely obsessed.

It's totally ridiculous of course and made all the more ridiculous by all the wonderful images flashing past me on our television as my sport mad husband keeps up with the Tour antics.

I like the Tour - I like it for the scenery, the villages, the mountains, the drug scene, the days when a dog dashes out in front of the peleton and they all go down like nine-pins. I like it for the sheer grit and guts it  must take to do it. I liked Lance Armstrong's first book, I like the cyclists and their crazily defined legs and groovy gear. I like Paris on the final day.

But all that has nothing much to do with my new thing. You see in spin class you ride in a sweaty peloton but you're going nowhere. Fifty odd people pedalling their hearts out, sweating up imaginary mountains and not moving an inch.

In 500 years time when they're carefully excavating the ruins of Auckland (a la Pompeii when one of the city's volcanoes finally blows its top) they'll laugh their space-helmeted heads off at the sight of all the dinky bikes in a row with no wheels.

But ridiculous or not, I am into it.

I am not a gym-going kind of girl. I've flirted with it in the past - aerobics classes at uni  and a couple of years membership of a flash London gym where it was warm and almost felt sunny with nice reception staff who gave you a fresh white towel when you arrived.

This gym is a gym-goers sort of gym. Nice people, rubbish showers, sweaty rooms, packed studios and me. Sweaty, slightly trimmer and grinning like an idiot.

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(First three images from here)

Monday-itis

It's Monday and I have man flu. You know the sort of illness I mean. Normally it afflicts the weaker sex (men) and is a mild, sniffly, coughy, chesty thing that leaves the sufferer with a total inability to do anything but groan a lot and haul themselves around like a ten ton lumpy sack of potatoes hoping for sympathy...

Being a woman I have been soldiering on and ignoring it for three weeks and it does not seem to be working. So today I may give in and see a doctor. I may lie around a little and make myself some soothing sort of lemon drink. I will ignore the washing and wait for ants to clean up the leftovers my kids have flung down around the dining table.

Tonight the latest series of Masterchef Australia finally starts on New Zealand television. Perfect fuel for man flu. We can all watch that instead of actually cooking...

By the way the image is from this lovely UK shop. Even better than a lemon drink.

And yes I don't dish out much sympathy. There has to be blood and lots of it before I'm really interested. It's genetic.

Reading in 2010

You may have noticed that over the past few months I have been listing my reading material. The idea was to keep myself on track with the New Year's resolutions I made in April to read more selectively.


I had fallen out of love with reading and books. Too sad for a girl who has always read obsessively, voraciously, hungrily, passionately... and rather likes big words.

Why? Well, number one was the usual excuse of the mid-thirties mother. I needed sleep more. I always read before bed. During the day I can't be home alone without background noise, at night before bed, no TV or music.  I want peace and quiet and a book.  Unfortunately thanks to my lack of sleep, most nights I couldn't even manage three pages.

Second, I was a little bit time poor and a little bit lazy. Reading just crime novels because I like PD James and Ian Rankin and I could whip into the library with the rampaging toddler grab a book and whip out again.

Third, the sheer cost of buying books in Australia and New Zealand.  I don't earn much these days and I really think twice about spending thirty dollars (and the rest) on a paperback.  We used to buy three new books a week in the UK - they are so much cheaper there. We've decided buying in bulk overseas online is a better idea and I also need to invest more time in second handbook stores. No great chore you'd agree...

So how's the resolution going? I used to know what was on the best seller list, what was shortlisted for which prize and I had an opinion on whether it should have been... I still don't know any of that - I'm playing catch-up remember.

But I'm back. I read during the day last weekend - desperate to finish my Barbara Vine. I stayed up on Friday night at our bach in front of the fire alone and finished Seabiscuit.   Ah, that feeling when you simply can't sleep without knowing what comes next. It's back and I'm loving it.

By the way the image is from Remodalista... thanks Claude, it's becoming a favourite...

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AND I  need to add to this... I had half written this post last week and Kerry from A Tranquil Townhouse messaged to say she'd like to start her own reading list - a little like mine.  Well she has and she very kindly blogged about it today and said some very nice things.  Now I get to check out what she's read and liked and make my book shopping list... you should read her lovely blog too, she's a doer not just a talker like me!

Spring cleaning - lessons learned

I think there are two types of people in the world, NEAT and NOT. I am not.

Much as I love an uncluttered home and clear bench tops what I actually have is a daily battle against myself. I wonder if the homeowner in this kitchen had my sort of frantic clean-up before the stylist arrived? I'd like to think so...

I've been spring cleaning in autumn and I did promise a progress report.

First stop Flylady.

This is a self-help plan you don't hear about until you blog. Ironically it's quite the most cluttered website you can imagine, not well explained and a little too much sweet stuff for me.

But there is a very good method in the madness.

It all starts with a clean sink and getting dressed early in the morning. I get dressed every day so I'm halfway there. The emails from other subscribers make you realise there are a lot of people who have BIG problems with their NOT neat lives. A little depressing actually.

Anyway here it is... my Flylady experience.

1. Clean sink, clean mind.
I have been working on this,  in other words, washing up a lot.   Just got to get the husband on board. He went away for three days and came back a little shocked to find his "don't worry, I'll do it in the morning" wife had left him.

2. Flylady loves a timer.
Frenzies are big in our house already but if you have a highly competitive five year old, a timer just annoys him.  We have 'putting away all the toys' and 'cleaning my room' frenzies every night and he is so caught up in winning he's quite forgotten I once mentioned a prize. 

3. Flylady recommends a Control Journal.
If I had one I'd lose it.  Lists work for me and  I love moleskin notebooks and very nice stationery from Kikki.K - the family calendar, weekly planner and shopping list. Guess I'm a sucker for an overpriced notebook and a magnet.

4. The fifteen minute rule.
Basically tackle a little not a lot. Suits me and she's right - you've always got fifteen minutes to spare and even I can face fifteen minutes of housework.

5. Declutter.
No problem at all with this.  I love a clear out and don't have attachment issues. I've been working my way through the house and clearing drawers, kids' clothes, my useful box and the dreaded spare room which doubles as a shed (not a good combination).

So what have I learnt this month from Flylady? Lots actually.
Has my life miraculously changed? I wish - like most other things it's a work in progress.

Image from here 

Navel gazing...

I have been outing myself... admitting to close friends and even people I don't know at all well that I blog.  When I tell someone I slip it into the conversation and then immediately play it down. "I don't know why I'm doing it really," I'll say. "It's not that great and no one follows me."

Well actually it's not that bad - on some days it's quite good. And I didn't do it for followers although I do get great pleasure from any interest people take - I'm only human!

It certainly makes me question why I blog as if I need to justify it... mostly to myself I think.

The official reason was to get writing and see how it all works on the worldwide web. After years in broadcast media and then a couple more at home while the career died a slow death and my family flourished, I was losing myself. In a new city with no one much to talk to in those first few months I started to explore the net going from blog to blog finding amazing talent. Designers, writers, photographers, artists and a lot of ordinary people with their own little window on the world.  I wanted to have a go.

I've never been really into hobbies.  My hobby was my work which sounds absolutely tragic but I imagine a lot of people spend their twenties and early thirties like that. And in my defence I had an interesting job - different every day and terribly exciting on some. So now no job, no hobby.

I think that's why I am enjoying the blog. It's my hobby. And one that's helped me to feel like the writer I wanted to be before I left law school and fell into a TV career. I've written four magazine articles in the time since I started My Villa Life and should be writing another right now!  That surely makes me a writer... blogging to avoid a deadline. How very 2010.

By the way, the photograph was taken in London's Kew Gardens - my local park when I first swapped the job for motherhood. I seem to have a thing for all things spring this month... must be in denial about the cold weather which seems to have arrived for good.

Spring cleaning

I know, I know, I live in New Zealand and it is not actually spring but I need to sort out my life and I need something to spur me on.

Today it is unseasonably warm  - actually what would I know?! I haven't lived here long enough to know what the weather should be like!  Anyway it's warm, sunny and feels like spring. And in spring you de-clutter, tidy and clean. And that is me in the month of May 2010.

First the overflowing paperwork drawer, and the tangle of spoons and other crap paraphernalia that lives in my second kitchen drawer. Then it is drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard, room by room through the whole house. We've only been in it for nine months but boy is it a mess.

Along the way I am going to test out all the advice I can find on blogs and self help sites and let you know what I think works and what doesn't.  I am a messy, lazy, domestically challenged, busy mother who actually hates clutter and mess - the perfect crash test dummy.

By the way the photograph was taken a few years ago in London's beautiful Richmond Park - in spring. When spring sprang in the UK it really was the most wonderful feeling that you never get in NZ or Australia. That first day in March or April when you can feel the sun's warmth after months of weak, watery sunlight is magical.

The milk of human kindness

I am having an up and down kind of week... but thankfully it is now much more up than down.

The other day I lost my wallet. Popped to the hardware store with the boys to buy light bulbs and came back with a lovely pansy-filled hanging basket that was half price and a bit too heavy to carry while wrestling a two year old with an aversion to car seats. In the chaos the wallet disappeared.

After much searching and racking my brain as to what on earth was in it I cancelled all the cards - in two countries...

But there is an upside to a) never having any cash in my wallet and b) never cleaning it out.  A very nice truck driver found it scattered across the road near our house and dropped it in at the local physiotherapist because he found an old appointment card.

Ah the kindness of strangers. I am so grateful...

Now what have I learned?

1. Don't be an idiot.
2. Make a list of all the things that live in the wallet because you forget.
3. Make a list of all the things that live in the wallet. (worth repeating as I am a very, very slow learner)

By the way, milk of human kindness  meaning care and compassion for others came from the Great Man Himself. Not the really Big Guy but Shakespeare.

Macbeth "Yet doe I feare thy Nature, It is too full o' the Milke of humane kindnesse." 

Google is a great thing.

Self improvement...

This is an odd thought for an April Monday but I have a bit of a thing for a brand new year and for the  New Year's resolutions that come with it.

I love other people's resolutions too and have the most fabulous friend who really sticks to hers. I don't see her that often but we normally get together over Christmas and New Year so I'm always sure to ask for a progress report and see what she's resolving for the coming year.  

A few of her resolutions stick in my mind. One was to learn to swim - I'd never realised she couldn't. She reminded me about a day ten years earlier when we'd dived off a yacht together and she'd struggled to get to shore. I'd no idea that day how scared she was.  She stuck to her resolution, got swimming lessons and now swims laps to keep fit.... impressive.

In December I asked her how she'd gone - and out of her wallet came 2009's list - tick, tick, no, mostly.

So I made a list this year although it took me until February to decide what should be on it. I wanted my resolutions to be specific and not just "do more housework" or "eat less chocolate" - although both of those should be  there!

1.  I wanted to look and feel better physically by next Christmas. My youngest is now two so the whole "I've really just had a baby" simply doesn't wash any more.  We go back to our home state each year and I've been struck by how great some of our friends looked after twelve months of eating better and exercising. . I know - simple. Well, I'm doing it. Gym three to four times a week and much much less junk. So maybe that one will get a tick.
2. Read more selectively. Read books that don't immediately appeal and stop reading eleven crime fiction books in a row because I liked the first one.  Read the books on our shelves that my husband loves. Pick up random books in the library and give them a go. Do not read trash. This resolution is a work in progress.
3. To say yes much more to the boys. I feel as though I am failing spectacularly on this one. But tomorrow is a new day and there's always next year. 

By the way, the photograph is of the beautiful Wineglass Bay at Freycinet on Tasmania's east coast. A lovely, lovely part of the world to make resolutions.