Adelaide: the story

I spent a lot of time with friends and relatives. All of them so delighted to meet my darling dorter, who has never been to Adelaide before. One aunt who was even slightly teary! And darling dorter had a good time meeting people, playing with the kids, having excellent champagnes and wines and of course lovely tucker... on Saturday was a picnic for the extended family, to celebrate a visit from my brother's daughter, who lives in Germany. She was the life of the party, with her sparky smile and her glowing auburn hair. My DD a close second with her voluptuously-red lipstick, her black hair flowing down to her hips, and a fabulous 50s dress with a cowl collar framing her sweet face. Okay, so I'm biased about how beautiful they both are. But they are!

My time with family was more complicated, with various challenges and woes in the families needing discussion. Families are indeed complex beasts. This being a public document, I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that these problems arise from people who love each other trying very hard to deal with complex and delicate emotional issues about their dear ones. I came home feeling rather shocked by the amount of unhappiness and worry I'd seen... but also glad that in some cases I'd been able to help a bit, perhaps, by listening and trying to understand. Even my DD is going through a challenging period of self-questioning and feeling very unsettled. My main hope for all of them/us is that the huge amounts of love and caring will overtake the unhappiness and life will look rosier for everyone very soon.

Somehow in all of this my visit to the uberdoc, the main purpose of my visit, seemed very trivial! But it is wonderful to have such good news from him, that my sinuses are healing and being healthy and looking like they might now start being 'normal' for longer periods. It's been a worry to me that I've had to take a lot of courses of oral steroids this year - I don't really want to end up with osteoporosis all through my body. Enough with limitations I say. I have a dodgy nose, a dodgy back, and a general lack of fitness which slows me down too much. I can work around the dodgy back more easily than the nose stuff, but I am too young to fall into a wheelchair of sloth and turpitude just yet. Most days...

And now it is more than a week since I got home, and somehow time is on high-warp speed towards the dreaded Festive Event, and although I have done lots of things I feel late for everything. But underneath this is a constant, happy little voice going 'wow, my sinuses are ok!'. That's a DAMN fine feeling.

The last five days brought to you, in this order: Trussardi 'Inside', lots and lots of Chopard's 'Wish' (cos my darling dorter needs extra wishes right now), Gucci 'Gucci', Chanel No.5 'Huile Sensual', and for a Tiki party last night, Christian Dior's 'Diorissimo', cos it is a classic 50s scent. For the record, the rest of my outfit was beehive hair , turquoise eyeshadow (shudder), a very VERY loud Hawaiian shirt and capri pants. I nearly wore kitten heels but at the last minute I defaulted to thongs and a very daggy old straw hat. Everyone else looked far more elegant, especially the real women in 50s shirwaist dresses and heels. What do I mean by a real woman? Well, a real one. Not a skinny, spray-tanned bottle blonde with Botox for a face. Curves, undulations and no bones at all. REAL!!