Consider the goannas of the field when you take the long way home

Happy New Year!

Sloth has certainly undone me today. Sadly, at 8 in the evening, I am still in my pyjamas and smirking inwardly at the high point of today's activity being the consumption of a full bag of violent yellow cheese puff things.

They were delicious.

Yesterday I visited my mother who lives about up on the tip of the Central Coast, just below Lake Macquarie. It was a very hot day so we decided to take the long way home to see just how hot it actually was.

Conclusion: very hot.

We stopped in the middle of nowhere to stretch our legs.

Here we were greeted by a local who measured about two metres from the tip of his snout to the end of his tail:

Isn't he wonderful? He'd been sunning himself near the fence when we arrived and made a graceful exit to the nearest tree when he saw my camera. I've heard that in open country goannas will run up the nearest vertical structure if they are frightened. If you can make out his claws in this photos you can see why I took my snaps from a distance.

I wasn't dressed appropriately to chase goannas but perfectly for the forty degree Celsius heat.

The silk dress is by Sarah Jane (a lovely local designer who has a great outlet store in Newtown), the silk-cotton cardi (chosen to protect my shoulders from the sun rather than modesty) is from Lee Mathews, the Raybans and the thongs are from New York. The necklace is a favourite - freshwater pearls strung on a length of suede. Apologies for the distant shot. I would have taken another one except I was expiring from heat and irrational fear of being shredded by a nervous goanna.

Come in, sit down, have some cake

The clock is ticking fast in Sydney; 2010 is slipping out under the front door for all time, while the Year of the Rabbit has snuck in around the back and is about to undo the latch.

I started this blog back in February with the sole intention of posting travel photos for a couple of colleagues. It turned out to be a good deal more fun than I envisaged, and the communication with so many clever people was an added bonus. That these delightful clever people have publicly declared their allegiance as followers is a never ending source of pleasure to me: that eight of you follow me is at least eight more followers than I expected. Thank you all for coming by, and thank you too for not only reading the posts but taking the time to comment. Your thoughts are regularly the highlight of my day.

Allow me to offer you a rainbow lorikeet as a token of my esteem and gratitude:

And to you lurkers - thank you also for taking the time to read! Few things can remind you of your place in the world as quickly as noting that someone in Germany, Brazil, Malaysia, Slovenia or Lithuania has taken time to read about my dresses. (Seriously - Brazil! Lithuania! Slovenia! Brazil! Germany! Wow!)

Please accept a lilac rose with my compliments.

Special thanks to freedastyle.blogspot.com and inprofessorialfashion.blogspot.com, both of whom have posted links to the Shillings on their blog. I send you a magical singing chicken with gratitude:

I hope you, the lurking countries and Charlotte, Shybiker, Sheila, Lawyerdoll, Jenarcissist, E-Dubs, D-Med and my learned friend Luke will now join me for some cake. It's made with real cream.

But just excuse me a minute while I unlock the back door.

Gravity and waggery

Christopher Smart is one of my favourite poets (ticks all the boxes: complex, given to madness and visions, wildly competent with metre) and his piece for his cat Jeoffry (his spelling), from the Jubilate Agno, is one of my favourite poems. I also like cows and was reminded of this the other day when I met four - the two up there, and their neighbours across the road who wandered over to see what all the fuss was about.

And it got me thinking of cows, and one thing led to another and I next thing I know I'm writing poetry like I swore I never would again. I thought I'd sneak in here on the busiest night of the year when no one is watching.

For I Will Consider the Importance of Cows (after Christopher Smart)

And their ready-made suede.

For they are large and imposing.

For they have no desire to impose.

For they stare at you benignly.

For they chew their cud with care.

For they bring forth little cows.

For they share their thick milk

Hot, shiny, and capped with fat cream.

For they stand with full dignity.

For they do not resent the sun.

For they will move for the barking dog.

For they will not budge in the rain.

For they are often the perfect chestnut colour.

For their delicate feminine legs more than amply support their ponderous weight.

For their tails swing like fine chains.

For their udders hang like church bells.

For they are utterly unconcerned.

For their eyes are black and dull

Yet they notice all things.

For they are peaceful and meditative.

For they have always been.

For no time has been unhindered by cows.

For they are sacred in some lands.

For they, the cows, do not care either way.

For they live on farms.

For they are too docile to be feral.

For they are civilised and composed.

For they have an expanse of teeth.

For they choose not to bite each other.

For they prefer harmony and bliss.

For they become a vast range of foods.

For they become stock in soup.

For they are the meat in curries.

For their butter covers breads.

For their cream thickens custard.

For they are in pies.

For you can serve them hot or cold.

For they become clothes.

For young people learn to walk in shoes borne of their skin.

For older people stay warm in their supple skin.

For most people carry their goods in their skin.

For some people lay their skin on the floor, near the fire.

For they are large and can moo.

For they moo to communicate.

For they will not moo in malice.

For they are gentle and gracious.

For they graze, and sleep still on their feet.

So various, so beautiful, so new

We took a day trip down to Nowra on the South Coast. The South Coast is serious dairy country covered with cows and studded with lots of little seaside villages that are currently filled with people making summer holidays.

I kept my wardrobe very simple.

The jeans are J Brand (the style is Steve), the Birkenstocks came from eBay, the white blouse was on the five dollar rack in a local hippie store. The bag, which is hard to see but nonetheless sitting on my right is a Vivienne Westwood and one of the great thrift store finds of 2008. It cost me $12.00. My swimmers (just visible under the blouse) are from the Land End catalogue, a document which brings me great joy now that our dollar has parity with the US dollar.

I'm chilling in black and white next to the old Culburra lighthouse. Sadly this lovely building is abandoned; the trash inside suggested that it provides privacy and shelter for local teenagers.

For me it provides a bit of fuel for the imagination wherein I somehow magically inherit the old building, restore it and spend the rest of my days preventing shipwrecks.

Oh, and here's a better look at the bag. For those of you who love Vivienne Westwood, note that she even gives a waist line to the simplest messenger bag.

Every baby rat counts

From an early age I was adamant I'd never get married. My views were cemented in my teens when I stumbled across, and managed to comprehend mostly, books including The Female Eunuch, The Women's Room and The Feminine Mystique. I was lucky enough to meet a decent man early on who was keen to get married but not keen to push an issue to which I was so opposed.

So we lived together. We had a tatty couch, lots of spag bol dinner parties and sardonic cat called Biskitt who liked to set up her own indoor safari parks. We were forever tracking down and releasing some terrified piece of wild life Biskitt had brought home for her hunting pleasure. (For the squeamish amongst you I hasten to add that well-fed, middle class Biskitt never managed a kill.)

One evening it was an infant rat, trembling behind one of my chatty chain store cushions. My partner fetched his heavy canvas work gloves from the car, the pair he uses when working in the bush, and retrieved the little rodent from its hiding place. He held it up gently, smiled at it and then carefully turned his cupped hands to me so I could see it too. "Isn't it beautiful?" he said softly.

I knew there were few men so kind and so gentle who would see the value, purpose and aesthetics of a baby rat before releasing it safely down near the flour mill at the end of the lane. I decided that if I were to sign a legally binding contract to declare my exclusive alignment to anyone it would be such a man.

That he turned out to be the kind of man who would order from London a rare Mulberry Bayswater, the elusive one designed to carry the Macbook his clumsy disorganised wife lugs to and from the office on a regular basis, is an added bonus.

And as for his perfect choice of stocking stuffers - well, sometimes you just get lucky.

What's not to like

Christmas was a very happy affair in my corner of the world. It started on Christmas Eve, when we had the first feast with my sister in-law, her husband and three sons. My oldest nephew - just turned ten - made excellent biscuits that he served us with coffee after his mother had fed us a beautiful meal of pork and vegetables.

This young man is promising to be a great cook as well as a prudent housekeeper. Here he demonstrates a perfect use for the leftover chocolate ganache that filled the biscuits:

As always we celebrated Christmas Day at our house with many portions of both our families. It was bright and sunny but not too hot to make quaffing kilos of roasted meats and plum pudding difficult.

The highlight of Christmas for all of us is my mother-in-law's pudding. My brothers start inquiring about the pudding from about September onwards.

You have to be quick to see the pudding in all its glory. It doesn't last long.

If you look closely you'll see the washing up piling up in the sink in the background. Here's where I make my Christmas confession: I actually enjoy the clean up.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas in what ever way you chose to mark the day. Tomorrow's post will be about the gifts Santa left; as always he met and exceeded my expectations.

Did you have a lovely Christmas? What happened?

There's a pawnshop on the corner in King Street east of Petersham

I have always wanted a gold toe ring but the few I have seen are garish, ugly, too overpriced or not really gold. To compensate for this tiny gap in my life I often have my toenails painted gold, especially in summer. I once read a woman describing gold polish as making her toes "into ten little jewels".

Last week I had my toes gilded and later, hurrying to meet my spouse, stopped short at the window of a pawn shop. I've passed this store many times but have never been charmed by the jewellery in the window. To be fair, they've never displayed a gold toe ring.

It was twenty five dollars. I thought it was worth that alone for perfect match it made with my toenails.