By thinking about things you can work them out

I love the look on his face. I'd had just told him my best joke - the one about the deaf drinkers - and he couldn't stop laughing. But that's not why I've called you here.


Like most women tapping away in the blogosphere, I read Sal's Already Pretty daily. I like her thoughts, her writing and the way she poses in the middle in the road. I also like - very much indeed - her Land's End shirt dress.

In fact, it got to a stage where all I could think about was the Crimes Act (1900), whether I had any rides left on my bus ticket and how I could get a Land's End dress like Sal's and wear it with the same confident prettiness.

It might seem like a simple thing, to like a dress and just get one but the day my life gets that simple is the day I adopt someone else's complex personality.

So I hung around the Land's End website for a while. It's very welcoming in a home-cooking American way. They have bedsheets and school clothes and slippers as well as the dress. I'd lurk and pine and covet, then I'd go and check my bus ticket or confirm the maximum penalty for manslaughter and not buy the dress. (Twenty five years if you're interested.)

But the other night I stared at the dress for so long I became hypnotised and clicked purchase before I'd even decided to actually buy it. (This is why I'd never go and see a hypnotist. I'd be the woman who gets turned into a chicken and can never be reversed.)

It arrived yesterday in a big white bag that said LAND'S END so there was no turning back. My dress, the dress I had see on another woman I've never met and wanted not because I needed another dress but because of how it seem to make her life wonderful, was here.

My new dress is black and pristine and we're both rather shy of one another. I'm not sure how to wear her and I'm not entirely certain she wants to be worn by me. I feel like we should be formally introduced before I can start wearing her properly. Anyway I've hung her on the outside of my wardrobe so she can talk to some of my work dresses and see my shoes.

Maybe we'll get a little more used to each other over the coming week.

Before you know it

Opening tonight's post is the most untrustworthy cat in Sydney. She is pictured here masterminding a credit card fraud operation.


You don't get much of a winter in Sydney. Even when the nights start getting cool in May, you can still feel the sun during the day. After June 22 the days start getting longer and by the end of August the single digit Celsius coldness has gone for another year. In late August or early September you get your first warm day - we had it today - and by October you've usually had one unexpectedly hot day. On the October long weekend everyone packs aways their jumpers and scarves and blankets, just in time for a brief return of cold days, and by the time they've fished them out again there's another hot day. And then they just keep coming and don't really stop until April.

I manage the hot weather by buying frocks. And by going to Coalcliff, like this:

There's a pool and a beach at Coalcliff. Plus starfish, if you're really lucky.

Entirely unreliable

Somebody I know emailed me last night and told me they had been reading my blog. I was very surprised - I had just about forgotten I had a blog.

I'm very fond of diaries and particluarly fond of this one that requires no biro and allows me to whack in photos of entirely unrelated things, like the fattest cat in Paris who I've called upon to open this post.

Anyway, the thing is, I'm busy, have a short attention span, suffer from bouts of crippling self loathing and bleakness wherein I am painfully aware of how great every other blog in the world is and how stale bread-dry mine is. But the other thing is, I love writing the blog the same way I love buying huge bags of M&Ms and shovelling handfuls of them in my mouth.

So I'm just going to.

Can't quite dislodge the words I want to say

I've been having a go on chat roulette. I think perhaps they should change the name to penis roulette because I see a lot more of them than I do any chatting. I'm unsure of the whole thing but should I come to any fixed conclusions I'll let you know.

Meanwhile I thought it would be pertinent to admire Nat's lovely boots:
No prizes for guessing the label - that simple chequerboard would have to be one of the most iconic designs in the world. Have a look a the back - the detail is wonderful:
I love the way she has matched the tones of the socks with the shades of the boots.The jeans are Paige, the socks are Wolford and the boots are Lou- no, actually, you guess and tell me!

I wore one of my favourite necklaces to ward off the cold.
Luckily I wore lots of layers too because those beautiful chunks of green didn't do much about the single digit temperature. I bought these years ago in a junk shop; I was reading Gone With The Wind at the time and I loved them instantly because I thought Scarlett would have loved them too. I like Scarlett O'Hara, she's one of literature's most impressive female characters. She gets bad press and I think is well overdue for a re-evaluation.

I wonder what Scarlett would have made of Chat Roulette? Hard to say, I still haven't quite figured out what I think about it. Fiddledy-dee, I'm tired. I'll think about that tomorrow.

In camera

I went to the Bondi Markets on Sunday. This is a fun market, smack bang smash on the northern end of Bondi Beach, filled with tourists and locals in sunglasses. The Sunday shopper will find a satisfying mix of crafty, vintage, stylish and practical.

I bought three books from a lady who was clearing out her house for no adequately explored reason:

*Cheating Death by Sanjay Gupta, MD
*Polaroids from the Dead by Douglas Coupland (I love Mr Coupland)
and
*Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

However, I am still reading Wheat that Springeth Green by JF Powers so these books are balanced precariously on the Tower of Books That I Will Read Soon.

I also bought an excellent pendant from a shy and talented young jeweller. I present my new pendant in repose and in situ:
Cute, is it not?

Time enough for love

My stylish and wildly accomplished friend Nat has announced her intention to marry her gorgeous man Michael and I can tell you, I'm not the only woman in Sydney hankering for details about how stylish and fun this wedding will be. I can tell you I am one of the few to have seen the wonderful dress she has chosen but am sworn to secrecy. Oh alright, here's a hint: it's the colour of camellias and light as springtime in Paris.

Congratulations Nat! I hope you will both always be happy.

We have enough time to get old

Of course I could regale you with tiresome stories of where I've been and what I've done but this is far more interesting:


It is my new Givenchy coat. I found it at an organic food market, being hawked by the one merchant who wasn't' selling sour dough bread, buckets of mandarins and bags of raw hazelnuts. Instead she had a table full of scarves she had knitted herself and a rack of clothes she found in charity shops in her district. This baby, a beautiful leather printed with the iconic Givenchy houndstooth, is one of the reasons I'm considering moving in with her. This is another:

It is a silk-linen mix drawstring jacket made by (sharp intake of breath, grave unblinking eyes) Dries Van Noten. It is unworn. "Where did you get this?" I asked her as I handed over the twenty dollars she was asking. "Oh, my boss's friend has a lot of clothes she never wears and just gives them to me to sell."

On second thoughts I may move in with her boss's friend. While I contemplate that notion I invite you to admire the detail of both garments:
Perfect colours, goes with all my boots and scarves.

Ah Dries, all of your devils are in your details.

Tomorrow is the start of the core of the proper Sydney winter. It last for about six weeks and while it frequently incites snorts of derision from our Northern Hemisphere cousins, it does actually get quite cold. Because I am, as a result of my two week absence, grown a little unreliable, I am hovering between two garments tomorrow. One is the vintage navy blue Hermes skirt I bought in New York when I was there in March:

The other is an entirely impractical Prada skirt I bought at the same store in the same assault on my credit card:

I've been waiting all year to wear this, waiting for an occasion where I seriously want to be diverted from unhappy circumstances by the intense loveliness of a garment. Tomorrow with its five degrees Celsius and generally Mondacity could well be that circumstance.