Too many reminders

I hauled out my storage box of old photos this week, searching for a high school pic of me with Kathleen Folbigg for a project about her case.

It’s a big storage box and, of course, the photo was right at the bottom. So I got to trawl through so many snapshot memories of my life as I dug through the humus.

I even found an ashtray with my grandmother’s face at the bottom of it. It’s curious the things we once cherished as souvenirs …

I think she picked it up in Switzerland during one of her adventures. My beloved Nan (pictured with me as a baby in the main shot) only hopped on her first plane in her 60s, but she quickly made up for lost time, even fulfilling her wish to kiss the Blarney Stone …

She was lucky – I’m not sure the days of kissing tourist attractions will ever return.

I was also reminded of why I spent most of my childhood wondering if I was adopted …

The above pic also explains why my dad was suspected of being in the mafia when going through airport security on business trips.

I remembered my love of rollerskating, which was my favourite high school sport – I did it three terms out of four – and was also a beloved activity once I moved to Sydney. I’d head to Gay Skate in Petersham on Tuesday nights and whizz around the rink to Xanadu.

I marvelled at how ’80s I looked in my Ken Done t-shirt, high-waisted baggy jeans and perm.

And I found this photo, which is evidence that I was so obsessed with the boys in Year 12 that I bought their class photo.

Then I started dating one of them – a cute Boy Scout called Michael. He’s the blonde and the other cute Boy Scout is still one of my dearest friends, John.

After I moved to Sydney, I got to hang out with celebrities in Hollywood while I working as a feature writer at Cosmopolitan. That’s Portia di Rossi with me in the pic above, getting her hair done before a photo shoot.

I was dating a boy with hair longer than mine, who I ended up marrying.

And I wore very short dresses. Damn I wish I had that figure now:

I bought a house on my own, without my long-haired boyfriend, as he wasn’t ready for a mortgage … and we lived in it together for five years.

I called it Ruby after my great-grandmother.

My boyfriend proposed while we were walking the Pilgrim Trail in Spain. After our wedding, we moved to Singapore for two years so I could edit Singapore CLEO.

We bought an apartment in Bondi before we left and an apartment block in Newcastle while we were there, which we nicknamed “The asbestos palace”. My obsession with year 12 boys had been replaced with one for property.