There was the famous interview in 1999 where Woody Allen accused Michael Parkinson of a ‘morbid interest’ in his private life after Parkinson asked Allen about his affair with his stepdaughter Soon-Yi. Allen tried to get the interview edited afterwards and made quite the song and dance about it. Apparently, he had asked Michael Parkinson not to go there before the interview but Parky went there anyway.

I can understand that a lot of celebrities with spicy private lives must get sick of being asked that question. Bill Clinton must have become really sick of fielding questions about the stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress. Camilla Parker Bowles must avoid questions about Princess Diana like the plague. And you just know that if anyone even whispers the word gerbils to Richard Gere that he just turns on his heel and runs.

I get that. It must be really annoying when every journalist you meet appears to have more interest in that little indiscretion from 1985 involving the cross-dressing pharmacist than in your brand spanking new movie. That would annoy me too. The problem is that journalists are people too; and some people just can’t let things go.

You all know of the problems I’ve had with my parents and how I felt that after Christmas we could begin to move forward. I recently had a conversation with my father where in the spirit of being open and honest and moving towards the light, I mentioned I was feeling a little stressed about certain things in my life. This is the rant that ensued from my father which I am calling - I Am Telling You This For Your Own Good.

Consequently, I took several steps back. Many steps.

So I have decided that I need to make like a celebrity and have a list of topics that are out of bounds when conversing with my family. They include my husband, my finances and that unfortunate incident with the pineapple (only joking….)

When I talk to them I am going to imagine I am a well-known celebrity sitting with my publicist who looks like a nightclub bouncer, dodging inappropriate questions flung at me like rotten tomatoes from the press gallery.

It’s unfortunate – I am of a naturally open disposition, but I think a list of Don’t Go Theres is how I will keep things civil and hold on to my sanity.

Sometimes self-editing is the only way to go.

So I’ll post my story here instead. Thanks for the inspiration, Gabe.

Lottie Leavensworth hated lemons. Her mother, Lorelai Logan Leavensworth, had read in Fantastic Parenting Weekly that lemons not only kept a child’s digestive tract free of infection but stimulated brain development. Research showed a correlation between regular ingestion of lemon juice and a genius level I.Q.

Lottie’s mother always took heed of correlations, consequently deciding to serve something lemony with every meal. It started off simply enough with lemon juice dressing in salad, a twist of lemon in the morning brew and lemon zest curls in the icing of the cupcakes Lottie favoured for afternoon tea. But very quickly it grew to sweet and sticky lemon chicken; whole baked fish with lemon slices for scales; lemon delicious pudding. Lemon meringue pie. Lemon butter on lemon-scented scones. Pork stuffed with lemon, sage and thyme served on a bed of apples infused with lemon. Lemon gelato. Roasted fennel with lemon stuffing. Lemon and rosemary roast chicken. Lemon and strawberry muffins. Lemon syllabub.

Initially Lottie didn’t mind the abundance of lemon-inspired dishes but on the day she found home made lemonade bulging with half a sliced lemon in her school lunchbox instead of her favourite apple and pear juice Popper; and a container of candied lemon peel instead of her beloved yoghurt-topped muesli bars, Lottie saw red or in this case – yellow.

When she got home from school she decided to broach the subject of lemon overload with her mother but Lorelai Logan was busy getting her new Italian designer kitchen installed. In stunning shades of limonata.

Lottie realised she needed to enlist the help of her siblings, Lightning Lou Leavensworth, so named for the fact that their mother went into labour with him during a thunderstorm and that he came into the world when a lightning bolt struck the roof of the maternity hospital, causing a blackout; and L’il Lola Leavensworth, named after Large Lola, the Leavensworth matriarch.

Lightning Lou was on board straight away. ‘My smile is turning sour,’ he said. ‘Too many lemons.’ This was a big admission for Lightning Lou who was renowned for his smile. At 8 years old he was already a ladies’ man with his dazzling smile. ‘He’ll be a leading man on the stage, mark my words,’ Large Lola was fond of saying.

Li’l Lola didn’t say much. She was only two years old. But whenever she saw a lemon she loudly proclaimed: ‘No. NO!’ pointing at it with her finger as if she was trying to zap it into oblivion.

Lottie knew it was time to act. The man installing the kitchen had left a floorboard loose at he side of the stove.  There was a deep hole beneath it, a cavern. ‘I think that goes all the way to Antarctica,’ said Lightning Lou.

Lottie and Lou gathered up all the lemons in the house. The jams, the chutneys, the marmalades and the particularly sour and pungent lemon pickle Lorelai made for Large Lola which she ate with gusto, with aged cheddar. They put them all in the hole beneath the floorboard by the stove, making sure the floorboard looked undisturbed.

Every day they picked out the lemons from their food, stashing them beneath the floorboard. They did it for days. They did it for weeks. They poured their lemonade, their lemon punch, their lemon sparklers through the cracks.

Li’l Lola turned out to have a nose as good as any sniffer dog when it came to lemons, finding them in remote corners of the pantry or lodged in the far reaches of her mother’s shopping baskets. ‘NO!’ she said, pointing to the lemony culprits, which her brother and sister promptly shoved beneath the floorboard.

One morning Lou shook Lottie awake shortly after dawn.

‘There’s a tree in the kitchen,’ he said.

The kitchen was lopsided, full of bumps and lumps as if it was built on an uneven rock face. Leaves were growing through the floor, through the walls and windows. Small branches were coming under the kitchen door. An enormous limb plunged out of the place under the loose floorboard, big as a giant’s arm.

The kitchen was groaning, swerving, capsizing. Lorelai ran in, her hands to her mouth. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

L’il Lola, teddy bear in one hand, prodigal lemon in the other shouted ‘NO!’ throwing the lemon towards the huge branch issuing from beneath the floor that seemed to be growing by the minute.

There was a cracking, a splitting, an unsettling rumbling deep within the earth.

‘There’s a storm brewing,’ said Lightning Lou who could sniff out a storm the way L’il Lola could sniff out lemons.

Lightning Lou was right. The floor shifted, tilted. The Leavensworths fell backwards, all the way back into the living room where they tumbled and rolled and landed on the couch.

There was an almighty thwack and the tree, which turned out to be a lemon tree, bedecked as it was with the yellow fruit, thrust its way up out of the earth, pulling the kitchen and the wall between it and the living room with it. Up and up it rose. Like a helium balloon set free, like a kite caught on the wind. Like a rocket.

It was the biggest tree the Leavensworths had ever seen. Bigger than the kitchen, bigger than the house. The lemons it contained were the size of footballs, filling the air with citrus-y vibrance.

Up and up it went, taking Lorelai’s brand new kitchen in stunning shades of limonata with it.

‘It’s going to Mars,’ said Lightning Lou.

‘It’s going to the moon,’ said Lottie.

The top of the tree and the kitchen were soon out of sight. The Leavensworths wondered how far it would actually go, they wondered if it would break through the atmosphere, and then all of a sudden there was a snap, a slit in the sky and the earth shuddered.

The tree burst into yellow light, beautiful as stardust. It glowed and it shimmered for almost a minute; wondrous, a marvel, and then it was gone. All that remained was a hole in the side of the house and the smell of freshly squeezed lemons, zesty, zingy, filling the air with a vivid vigour.

‘Well, you know what this means?’ said Lorelai Logan Leavensworth. ‘No more lemons.’

‘NO!’ agreed L’il Lola, pointing to the sky.

‘I was getting sick of lemons, to be honest,’ said Lorelai. ‘Apparently, blueberries are better for you, anyway.’

Sometimes we need a bit of pink. It makes the spirits ascend and hover in a happy place. And where better to find that pink than in the local flora.

So here is some pink, pink and more pink.

Funny how some flowers remind you of people.

I call this one the Greta Garbo because it looks like it’s saying: I vant to be alone.

This one is perky and jolly just like Doris Day.

And this one is kind of flamboyant and a little bit sexy just like Brigitte Bardot.

Pink does indeed make the boys wink.

Fight the man.

Fight the power.

Fight the corporations trying to control everything we do. Otherwise whenever we go online there will be so many blocked, blacked out sites we will feel like we are banging our heads against a brick wall.

If you want to learn more about SOPA and the blackout here are some great links:

from The Verge

from The Huffington Post

from ABC News

for and against the protest on BBC News

SOPA Blackout Plug In For WordPress

Boss of Motion Picture Association is Mad

from Anonymous

And if you think it could never happen in the land Down Under, we already have an internet filter

See you on the other side….

Well, I like photographing those things too but I still love my inanimate objects. And, of course, the most beloved object of all is (drumroll) the CHIMNEY POT.

Did you know there is a chimney pot hierarchy? I didn’t.

I was speaking to my neighbour, June, the other day, who has lived in the area for over fifty years and she told me that the more chimney pots you had back in the day, the greater the status symbol. A chimney pot meant you had a working fire place which meant that not only could you afford to keep your fireplace in order, you could afford the fuel to run it.

So I set about to see if there was any evidence that this chimney pot pecking order might be true. Now, of course there are exceptions, but generally I found that the lowlier single storey semi-detached houses in the area had one chimney pot; while the grander two or three storey detached terraces had umpteen chimney pots. Now there are more rooms to heat in the bigger houses so it stands to reason that there would be more chimney pots, but maybe the size of the house wasn’t taken into account when it came to chimney pot hierarchy, maybe it was all about the pots. Imagine ladies back in the day gazing up at their three or four chimney pots thinking: In your face single chimney pot people. In your face.

In spite of the pecking order I still think one pot has its appeal -

And there is nothing like a smoking single pot. It conjures up images of hot cocoa, sweet woodsmoke and toasty toes.

Dual pots also have their charm – there is a sense of continuity when you look at them, a completeness -

And if you have three or more you’ve just hit the jackpot -

But it doesn’t end there. You might want to brace yourselves because I have found the piece de resistance of chimney pots, the Donald Trump of chimney pots. Feast your eyes on this baby -

Some people have got it made.

However, regardless of whether there be one or two or ten, I still love my chimney pots. A quaint reminder of days gone by.

Sara saw it on the wall that ran around the churchyard and knew straight away that Dane had written it.

Don’t be so cold.

It was the last thing he had said to her before he walked into the study, shut the door behind him and waited for her to leave.

Sara didn’t know what to do when he did that. She really didn’t. She stood in the hallway, bags at her feet, seeing where the front door had banged against the skirting board in the wind; little filigree marks as if a tiny bird had dipped its feet in brown paint, and couldn’t move.

Dane accused her of it all the time. Coldness. Aloofness. Disinterest. Hard-heartedness. And any other related condition.

Sara saw herself in mirrors and windows sometimes and was surprised at her expressionless face. It was a face that blended right into the crowd, a background face; uncommitted.

She’d been at a funeral once. With Dane. A friend had died too young. Dane had been distraught, his face red and tear-stained. Sara stood as straight as she could, trying to rearrange her expressionless face into one of care, of compassion, but try as she might she could feel her face resolving into its usual lines.

‘Why don’t you cry?’ Dane said. ‘Look at you staring straight ahead like you’re at a school assembly. Why don’t you cry? You’re as cold as ice.’

When Sara was a baby she was visited by her mother’s Aunt Loretta. Sara didn’t remember much about Aunt Loretta except that she jingled and rustled – gold and silk. She put a lucky charm in Sara’s cot – a piece of crystal that glowed blue and white at night; a clean blue, an icy blue.

The piece of crystal stopped Sara from sleeping. She remembered her childhood as the time of deciphering the shadows on the ceiling as she endured yet another long, sleepless night. When she was able she threw the crystal out of her cot, out of her big girl bed, but her mother always put it back.

By the time Sara was six years old she’d had enough of the crystal. She got a hammer from the cupboard under the stairs and smashed the crystal up. Tiny shards like snowflakes filled the air, descending like dust.

Sara closed her eyes and mouth tight, blocking her ears to protect herself from the falling crystal pieces. After a few moments she opened her eyes. The air was clear. The icy blue light was gone. But she felt a wetness on her chest, a cold pricking like rain driven by wind. She lifted up her top and on her chest, right above her heart was a drop of blood, so small it might have been imagined. She got a tissue, wiped the blood away and saw a scar puckering the skin. Small as a pinprick but cold to the touch, cold as ice, with the puckered skin an odd sheen of icy blue.

The ice from the crystal settled around Sara’s heart. For years she tried to dislodge it, thumping herself on the chest, drinking cups and cups of really hot tea, sitting in front of the oven as close as she could bear; but nothing worked. Her heart remained encased in ice, cold and blue.

In some ways an ice-coated heart was a good thing. The hot, frenzied arms of life that grabbed everyone else Sara knew, bypassed her. She could go through life without any obstacle or crevasse in the road affecting her; as uncommitted as her face.

Sometimes the ice seemed to retreat. When Sara met Dane she felt something jerking around her heart, a pounding, a thrusting, hot and cold all at once, as if ice and fire were doing battle inside her.

As they grew closer, as he made her smile and look forward to each day she began to think that maybe Dane was the one to unseat the ice from her heart. To melt it.

She tried to let Dane’s smile, his goodness, work its magic, but the ice was stubborn, intractable, unwilling to let the fire of love claim it.

Sometimes Sara felt like she was two people. A real person with real emotions who laughed and cried but also a creature, daubed with blue-white light, mostly made of ice.

Dane wasn’t coming out of the study. He had locked the door. Sara knew at this moment, at the end of their time together, that her heart should plummet and fall out onto the floor; that she should weep and wail and pull at her hair, but she calmly picked up her bags and walked out of the house.

She rented a room. It was on a main road but she didn’t care. The curtains were grey with exhaust fumes. The kitchen sink was stained and marked as if someone had run a saw over it. She sat alone night after night watching the car headlights speckle the roads with yellow.

One day on the way home from work she met Lucien. An old man dressed in a dirty green coat. His fingernails were gnarled, his beard matted in parts. As he walked he left a trail of leaves and small twigs behind him. He had a dog – Cyrus. An old black Labrador, greying at the muzzle. Sara walked up the stairs to her room to find Lucien and Cyrus padding along behind her. They stopped on the landing as she fumbled for her key.

‘What are you doing?’ Sara asked.

‘We’re coming for dinner,’ Lucien said.

Sara felt sorry for Lucien and his dog. She was surprised that she did, so surprised that she clutched at her chest to make sure the icy fragment was still there.

‘Feeling the cold?’ Lucien asked.

Lucien and Cyrus stayed with Sara for a week, sleeping on her floor. Oddly enough, she didn’t mind them being there; she felt comforted by their presence. Every night Lucien lit a candle – a large red candle that dripped wax all over the kitchen table – inviting Sara to sit with him over a bottle of wine he produced from the interior of his coat like someone doing a magic trick.

The candle flame burned amber and yellow. It filled the room with the kind of light usually associated with sunsets.

‘There’s a lot of heat coming from that candle,’ Sara said.

‘There’s meant to be,’ Lucien said.

Sara had a really good week with Lucien and Cyrus. She smiled at complete strangers, she was pleasant to people at work, she noticed the flowers and the trees; if she hadn’t known better she would have thought she was feeling some degree of happiness.

On Friday when she came home from work Lucien was gone. Cyrus looked at her from his position on the rug, wagging his tail. ‘Where’s Lucien gone?’ Sara asked him.

There was a box of candles on the kitchen table. Big and red. And a note that said – Even the coldest heart can be melted.

Sara clutched at her chest, gasping when she could feel no coldness, running to the bathroom mirror to see if the puckered scar was still there. The skin on her chest was smooth and completely warm. She heard a sound from somewhere on the street below – a rasping, jingling brushing of the pavement – moving away from her. Moving far away.

Every night Sara burned one of the red candles. She noticed how the amber and yellow flame danced on the windows and hoped that Lucien would see it and would come home.

Twice a day she took Cyrus for a walk to the local park. He was a drawcard for all sorts of people – children, grandmothers, teenage boys and one balmy afternoon – Hal.

He was sitting on a park bench looking out at the water, a still life in long, angular limbs. Cyrus, bold as Lucien ever was, walked straight up to him and put his head on Hal’s knees.

Sara didn’t know much about dogs and their power, but she defied anyone to resist the lure of Cyrus’ eyes – soulful, tender.

Hal was pulled in straight away, patting Cyrus, talking to him. Laughing, animated.

‘Is he your dog?’ Hal asked. Sara looked at Cyrus, thinking of Lucien, thinking of red candles and cold hearts melting, and realised somehow that Cyrus had become her dog. And that she wanted him to become her dog.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This is Cyrus.’

Sara and Hal sat on the bench by the water until the fading light turned the water dark green and the cormorants took one final dive for the day before disappearing home. It was as if they had been sitting there for most of their lives. Cyrus sat between them; an eager child, a link.

Hal organised to meet Sara for dinner as they walked out of the park onto the street. Even though night was falling, the sky seemed bright. She caught sight of herself in a shop window as the last flakes of light hit the glass. Her smile was as wide as sunlight.

As Sara walked Cyrus home she touched her chest, nervously, fearful it was still cold, but it was warm with blood and life.

Don’t be so cold. Dane had written it about her when the ice was lodged in her heart, when she was so unfeeling she was almost neutralised; when she was doing nothing more than just existing.

He couldn’t write that about her now. An old man and his dog had seen to that. She walked as the evening spilled down, as the light turned her red and orange. And she knew she’d never be cold again.

Obviously, the answer is one day at a time. Baby steps.

A thing that always helps me when I am feeling down is silliness. Recently I have taken some photos of things that have looked like something else. I’m sure you’ll agree that many of these photos taken in my local neighbourhood look like hats. I had so much fun pairing them up. (I took all the top images and the credits for the images at the bottom of each set are listed below.)

I think this pink flowered eucalypt looks so like a vintage couture hat, complete with ostrich feathers.

This hat definitely looks like a group of lily pads. You’re certainly making a statement when you wear it. And it’s very GREEN.

This is a building in King Street, Newtown which always strikes me as looking like a German Officer’s cap from World War 2. I am sure that building comes to life at night and marches around the streets.

This is a hat that looks like a cat (or maybe a teddy bear.) It’s not the cat in the hat, it’s the cat that looks like a hat.

This photo looks like two things. It’s a photo of the umbrellas at the fish markets with the Anzac Bridge in the background. I originally had it matched to workers in the  rice fields in Vietnam who were wearing those conical hats, but then I saw this photo of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and couldn’t resist. But do you see it? Do you? The hats look like the umbrellas AND the bridge. Things that look like hats for the win.

You should try matching up some of your photos to things that look like something else. It really is a lot of fun.

*PHOTO CREDITS -

1. Pink ostrich feather hat

2. Lily Pad Hat

3. German Officer Hat

4. Cat Not In The Hat

5. The Clintons

It is as if King Midas himself has reached through the sky and has stroked the shape or form he finds favour with. It is gold, pure gold. It is as if you have been sitting all alone in a darkened room and suddenly a band comes, playing your favourite songs on golden trumpets.

It is as if you have been transported to ancient Egypt caught in a moment of worshipping the sun gods. It is wondrous. It is rapture.

If you were smart you would be able to harvest that gold. You would string nets made from the edges of clouds on the buildings and gather all of that gold. You would store it in glass jars that lit up the night, trading it for wishes and smiles.

Whenever I see the sunlight burnish the buildings in the city in that tiniest of moments before twilight claims the land; I imagine myself, booted, wearing a hat with the whitest of feathers, flinging my nets wide and far. Dreamer, wishkeeper, suncatcher.

Oh yeah, you say with a sardonic glint in your eye. Like that’s gonna happen.

I believe it. I feel it. 2012 is going to be a better year for all of us.

Let’s go.

Let’s get into it.

Let’s make it happen.

2012 is our year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!!!!!

I thought I’d share with you some of the photos I have encountered on my walks around the neighbourhood, lately, and what they made me think about.

How gorgeous is this? Look at the waterfall and the contours on the rocks. Some of the street artists around here are very talented. If I was a poet this type of scene would inspire me to write a haiku, but sadly, my poetic skills are lacking and the closest I can come is a very bad limerick….

A lot of people tell me this bakery is very good but every time I see the sign for some reason I think of Sweeney Todd and how the victims were put in the pies and I wonder what this bakery is putting in the cakes. It seems like a bakery that would exist in a Stephen King novel, so I think I might pass on it for now.

Beautiful blooms brightening up the street. The local council plant them. You can’t help but smile when you see them.

How sexy is this graffiti girl? Look at the lips and the eyes. She’s painted on a door. I bet a lot of people wish they could open the door and there she’d be, for real. Is it just me or is she really hot?

What is it with me and birds? This duck looks like he wants to kill me. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you will see the glaring intent in his eyes. First it was the crow and now it’s the duck. I feel like I’m in an Alfred Hitchcock movie….

I like the city skyline taken here from Blackwattle Bay. It is all blue and gorgeous. Hail to thee fair Sydney!

This is probably my favourite boat on the bay at the moment. I love the shape of it, the colours, the size. It seems to invite stories about sailing alongside dolphins and going to the best spots to catch the sunlight on the water.

I had to have a sunset for the final shot. This shot has it all – the water, the light shining through the clouds, the fading hues of evening, and of course, CRANES. Who could ask for anything more?

Thank you for coming with me on my walks this year and for indulging me in my quirky, photographic observations. It’s been fun for me. I hope it has for you too.