They say time heals all wounds. So how come it hurts that I forgot my grandmother’s birthday yesterday. My mum had to text and remind me. My Nan passed away in 2010. Whenever something big or exciting or annoying or unpleasant happens in my life, I still reach for the phone to call her. Her […]

Who was I on my wedding day? I was hopelessly naive. Not about the wedding night or catering costs or anything. No surprises there. But when it came to transport, I was a wide-eyed innocent. No, scrap that. I was a tight-arse fool. I didn’t organise transportation to my own wedding. On purpose. To save money. We lived in East Sydney, […]

When I wrote a blog called “Who Were You In High School” I wasn’t expecting it to strike such a chord with everyone from the former geeks to the former goddesses. One of the cool “Duran Duran girls” that I wrote about posted a comment saying: “It’s funny to suppose that other people thought we […]

Things I remember about infants school: learning to sing ‘Frere Jacques’, poking around in drains for coins to buy 6-cent packets of Chickadees from the canteen, being mortified that I couldn’t pronounce “choir” during a reading test with the principal (couldn’t understand why it wasn’t choy-er), sitting on painted circles drinking warm milk out of glass […]

When I was 17, my mum got a puppy as a leaving gift from work. We called him Casper. My sister was initially underwhelmed. She’d been yearning for “a real dog”. When my dad got home from work and saw Casper asleep in my lap, he said: “I hope that’s a toy.” My dad didn’t […]

It’s school formal season in Sydney and it’s sent me on a nostalgia trip about mine. But I’m struggling to remember who I was back then, let alone what I did. I know I was determined to be different. I wanted to make a statement with my outfit. I wanted to look HOT. I didn’t […]

I’m talking “will you go with me?” love, not the unrequited or poster-on-the-wall kind … It’s funny how little I remember about my first love. You’d think the details would be permanently etched in my mind. I was sixteen when we met, we dated for six years, we even moved in together. Shouldn’t more have […]

I got all giddy yesterday. No, it wasn’t premature menopause. Or actual menopause (the latter being a more likely scenario). It was flashbacks or déjà vu or something retro and stomach spinny like that. I returned to the wine bar where I (illegally) spent every Saturday night during my teens: The Gunfighters Rest, in Hunter […]

A year ago today, the Household did something very, very silly. We went to a fireworks parade in Barcelona. It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measures. To celebrate its anniversary we’re doing something similarly nuts – going swimming at Maroubra. (After going to something that Husband informed me at 5.30am he bought on a […]

A year ago today the Household were in the South of France. Ah, how the other half lived before realising they needed to pull their heads in … then forgetting again and redrawing on the mortgage to book two tickets to New York next April … This year’s school-holidays-on-a-budget will be spent in sunny Newcastle […]