Hello

As a lawyer I get really annoyed about inaccuracies, misrepresentations and wrong information being given to me.

There is a lot of it out there when it comes to cancer.

But I can only post so many post anonymous comments on the Daily Mail in response to people who comment that anyone who has surgery and chemo for cancer is a fool or a 'Sheeple'.   I would like to help people sift through all that stuff.   I don't want people to feel bad about their treatment, or guilty, or God forbid, as if they have not been positive enough.  

Cape Otway by me

 

So I would like to mention my little Cancer FAQs at the side. I have just updated it, after leaving it un-updated since last November, which is way too long when you have a potentially life shortening disease.  

The reason for the delay is this. The longer I left it, the more superstitious I became that the very instance I updated it to say all is well I would have some catastrophic relapse into Cancer World. 

The same strange conviction has meant that I have not had my oven cleaned since December 2010, because the day I was diagnosed with cancer was the very day the Man Came To Clean the Oven. He did a great job by the way. But I feel that if I get him back, I will get cancer again.  (In case you are wondering, yes I have cleaned my oven in the last 19 months.  But myself, and not very well.)



From Anna Spiro's Instagram feed.

I know this is regressive, just like being a 16 year old and having some strange lovestruck repetivite thoughts like 'If this tram comes and if the boy is on it and sitting down the end then that means he likes me'.

But I can't help it. I have so little control over my life in some ways that if one way of getting that back is to have some little superstitions and phobias, then so be it. At least I don't have PTSD, which, truly, some people do get following cancer treatment.

Anyway, there it is.  Have a read and you can see where I am.

From Facehunter's Instagram feed

I am also in another place at the moment, the world of Instagram. I must confess, I am finding Instagram a great place to instantly connect with people, in a way which is really simple, and uncomplicated.   You can locate me on Instagram here . 

I have included in this post some favourite images from the last little while.   Fear not, you do not have to be inundated with images of 16 year old girls doing their nails. There are some wonderful images. 

 

 

From NatGeo's feed

 

To be honest, Instagram reminds me of blogging when I first started.  Before it got a bit cliquey, and a bit complicated, and a bit too much about branding, and advertising and making money from your blog, and counting stats, and linking, and etc etc.  Is that negative? I don't mean to be. 

I am just finding that I seem to have the time to post images to Instagram and I don't seem to have the time to blog. Feel free to follow me, but even better, go to Followgram and or sign up for Instagram if you have a smart phone and check out all the other amazing images, like Greenbeen below, who posts her fantastic breakfasts every day.

And if you have a feed I am not following, please let me know.  I still find the Instagram search function hilariously beta.   What I have found is a whole collection of Japanese people who post pictures of their very elegant, very charming cats.   I cannot resist.

via Ryukutora's Instragram feed



Stay happy, dear readers.

xo

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Savannah

One of the many books I read during my chemo purgatory was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.  A great book for sleepless nights wondering about the random nature of life.

(designer Lyn Morgan's Greek Revival House in Savannah) 

(living room)

I first bought it at university, prompted I am pretty sure by the rave reviews of my friend Aussie New Yorker but I never quite got to it.

If you have not read this book, it covers the author's lengthy stay in Savannah, at the time of the four trials of antique dealer, Jim Williams, who was tried for the murder of local good time boy (and his assistant), Danny Hansford.

I so loved this book, the humid, creeper clad decadence of the Savannahians, and their eccentric cross dressing, backwoods bars, corrupt politicians, secret affairs, all night parties, internecine rivalries, and the two unforgettable female characters - a local voodoo high priestess and drag queen (the Lady Chablis - formerly Frank).  The writer describes the shady world as Gone with the Wind on Mescalin, one of the many lovely turns of phrase sprinkled in the book.  

I particularly liked Mandy Nichols' observation that it is so much better to be on the 'edge of a party'.

This book is a great exploration of the darker side which hums beneath every city, town and village.   As Minerva the voodoo lady puts it -

'Dead time lasts for one hour -- from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half-hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half hour after midnight is for doin' evil.'

This is Jim Williams' house (Mercer House, now a museum I think) which he loved to live in because it annoyed all the 'right people'.

Here are some typical houses from the historic quarter:

(via Young House Love)

(via Pinterest)

For all of Lyn Morgan's stunning house in Savannah, go here.  

It is quite divine and the antithesis of the dark antique filled rooms of Jim Williams.  You can read more about him here. 

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Accidental Bedhead

Apparently mattresses only last 10 years... so this week we bought another, as ours was 13 years old.

And something odd happened yesterday when it was delivered.  We received a lovely mattress which is truly like sleeping in a very fluffy cloud.  But in addition, we received a large bed base, made of deep mocha suede, which is made to fit with the mattress.  

The invoice is confusing, our order is confusing, the extremely surly delivery man didn't want to talk about it, and the website of the multinational 6 star hotel which also sells beds did not explain exactly what it is we ordered or didn't order.    

So we truly cannot work out whether our new bed base is a mistake, or a kind gift.   I am inclined to the latter, as I sort of deserve a kind gift.   (And it is nice to know there are people out there looking out for me even if it is a global corporation) 

What it does mean is that we need to decommission our bed, and find a bed head.   

As much as I like the drama of the padding, or the shaping, the truth is that I will end up with something plain and simple and dark blue, just like the rest of the room: 

Now I know you can DIY headboards, there are a million little step by steps out there on this.  But I have a confession.  My DIY stuff looks like crap.   So I think I will get a professional to do it.  I have found this place who makes them up to order.    Does anyone know of anywhere else which can do bedheads?   

Weird Chemo Side Effect No 3 - as if I didn't have enough ethico-legal dilemmas to deal with along the lines of should we return the accidentally delivered bed base, I have now discovered that my hair is falling out again, after a short respite where it grew a bit.   There is only one response to this: arrgggghhhh.  My new approach is to not look at my hair at all until this ludicrous and ocassionally surreal experience is over (on 20 June). 

(Images: (1) Pinterest (2) Pinterest (3) Elle Decor (4) Samantha Pymm (5) Canadian House and Home) 

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Dark and Moody

Dear Mother Nature

I know it must be challenging having one planet with two hemispheres and reversed seasons. Are you confused? I think you must be, as I sit here staring out the window to yet another day of rain.

I feel a bit pushy for reminding you of this, but today is 1 December 2010. In Melbourne. It is the first day of summer.   Where is the sun?  

I do want my heart to skip lightly to bright whites and lobster, and sarongs and sun hats but instead I find myself attracted to this:



because who needs windows when its always dark outside.

and wanting to sleep more than usual, here:  

 

and here:

to nurse my flu \ cold.  Did I mention my cold?  Oh, I think my cold, and the cold and flu that half my office has, have come about because it is the first day of summer and it is still raining and cold.  Just like it has been since April.  Sorry to mention it again. 

Anyway this weather is making me turn to boho Dickensian dark and moody interiors, like this: 

and this, which has given me quite a lot of pleasure lately:

And also I have a hankering for a bit of 1940's wartime to get me through this wet spell,  wearing of course my new Persol spectacles from the man section at OPSM.

I now have something suitably wartime to watch on DVD, the film of the wonderful book Enigma by Robert Harris about codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the UK during WWII.  

Here is a code breaker Kate Winslet style.  This is what I would look like codebreaking:

And here is the real thing. I probably wouldn't look so much like these women, clever and brave as they are:

Last year these amazing women were finally recognised by the UK government.   If you have not seen or read Enigma you really must.

Perfect for this grim, rainy weather.

(Images: (1)(2) Scanlon & Theodore (3) (5) Airspace  (4) Bodie and Fou (6) Michael Paul (8) via Daily Mail)

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Delft Blue from the Past

Over the weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Handworks to buy cardboard and envelopes for my daughter's 8th birthday party invitations.   Theme as yet undecided.   Date decided but timing as yet undecided, but it will be in the early evening.   Anyway my daughter graciously said I could choose the colour for the invitations if I would let her buy 6 sheets of  origami paper which she tends to keep in secretive piles and never uses.

And this Delft blue colour is what I gravitated towards.   How I love this shade.

Half finished invitations, flowers hand cut and glued by me

Why do I love this colour so?  For me, it begins, as does so much for us, with my childhood.

(by Janeych on Flickr)

When my parents separated and we moved out of the pink house into a considerably smaller white house and my mother went out into the workforce for the first time ever, she promised me that I could decorate my bedroom in colours of my choosing.  In Laura Ashley.  Of course. I say of course because in those days Laura Ashley was THE fabric of choice.  And indeed clothing of choice.  I can remember being pretty thrilled with my Laura Ashley pinafore as a little girl, which looked rather like this:

The fabric I chose for my bedroom was Campion (third along, second row down) for the curtains, and Wood Violet (third along, fourth row down) for the wallpaper.

For me, getting that room decorated my way symbolised some kind of completion of a very horrible stage in our lives.  And a transformation into a more grown up girl.

Go here to see some wonderful Flickr photos of vintage 1980s Laura Ashley prints by Janeych. I do not understand why these old prints are not re-issued.   They still look great.  It's not my taste anymore, but I think they still look wonderful in a little girl's room, or in a guest room.

I still love Delft blue, but now like it like this:

(J Crew from a season or so ago)

(Cocco Lave bag by Bottega Veneta)

Or this:

(Wrottingham Castle)

(via Design Crisis)

(House to Home)

A blue dining room. I think I could live with that. 

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The Best Rooms of 2010...?

Australian House & Garden does a feature every year where they list the top 50 rooms of the year.  The 2010 picks have just been released.   There were quite a few which did not grab me at all as they looked too styled, too display home, or just a teeny bit ugly.  These are my five favourites:

 

You can see that I like white, clean and bright.  And this did get me thinking about this question: what exactly is Australian style?   

There is a lot one could say on this topic, one could mention our 'easy going' inside \ outside sunny lifestyle.   But that forgets of course that a substantial part of the south of the country has cold winters and even snow.   One could talk about how we love to use colour, but then what about all those lovely white and neutral interiors we see everywhere?  Or we could look at all the natural timbers and fibres we use, or our hard edged modern back extensions.  

My answer is much simpler, and harks back to the days of the Australian Impressionists who, inspired by the French, gathered at Heidelberg outside Melbourne to paint in what was then a radical new style.   They found that the light in Australia was completely different to the light in Europe.  It means that they had to adjust their painting technique and subject matter and colour to address the hard squinty brightness of the light.

This is illustrated by these wonderful works, all painted in the same year:

Charles Conder 'Herricks Blossoms' 1889

Arthur Streeton 'Golden Summer Eaglemont' 1889

(this is now an inner suburb of Melbourne)

Arthur Streeton 'Windy and Wet' 1889

I think this hits the nail on the head.  The light in Australia is different to the light in other countries.  It is harsher and brighter (and burnier, as I have found out at some cost).  This means you have to decorate and design differently.  You need shady spots, and you have to be careful with too much white.  It means that colours show through clearly and cleanly, so the shade of red which may look burgundy in a room in France is fire engine red here.  And that lovely white Swedish room may cause sun blindness here.

I know someone whose mother died in the 1980's and when they packed up her home they found an Arthur Streeton painting hidden under her bed.   Why would you hide the work of such a wonderful artist?    


(Images: (1)(5) Australian House and Garden (6) from the book 'Living the Modern - Australian Architecture) (7) - (9) from the National Gallery of Victoria)

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A hankering for an inside tree

I wonder when exactly it was that indoor plants fell out of fashion?  I know that people still have them but do you remember exactly how ubiquitous they were?  Palms especially.  And maidenhair ferns.  And what about those hanging baskets made of some kind of barky moss?

I really like the idea of an inside tree.  It must be sculptural and dramatic.    I think it is one of those 'I had one in my childhood home therefore must have one now' impulses.  I will try to control it for a few days I think.

Grant K Gibson

Ellen Pompeo's house in Hollywood.  

Some musician's room (I assume) 

This tree is thriving.   To say the least.

Awful blatherglam name check living room in Reed and Delphine Krakoff's home.  But I like the plants.

 

Most of the big leaved trees above are figs.  Not sure how available they are in Australia though.  I went off to the nursery yesterday and found these:

Umbrella Tree.  Grows outside in Queensland.  Inside in Melbourne.   Nice big leaves. Maybe a bit spindly? 

Palm.  Pretty basic.  But nice big leaves.   And unkillable.

And this is the spot I have in mind.  Once the lamp and chair are moved.  Stay tuned for the purchase. 

 

(Images; (1) Grant K Gibson interior design (2) (4) Elle Decor (3) Design Sponge (5) Vogue (6)(7)(8) Jane)

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