1000 Acres

Our second country weekend in a row was wonderful, despite a five-hour drive in torrential rain on the way up. Culinary highlights included tarragon roast chicken and walnut tart with brandy prunes, plus I learnt to make pot-sticker dumplings. And of course we perused the 1000 100 acres ...

Back in the big bad city, we're into the second week of school holidays ... Yesterday, feeling a bit blah, I decided to take the offspring into town for some retail therapy. Kid 1 needed clothes for winter, and trying to shop with him on weekends is impossible, so it seemed like a good idea to seize the day.

I didn't realise that yesterday was the opening of the first Australian Zara store.
The queues were insane. We didn't bother joining them. Successful teen boy shopping did take place, despite some bickering between self and teen at the outset. Kid 1 bears more than a passing resemblance to that Justin Bieber person, so whenever I go anywhere with him in public, I'm very amused by the glances/stares/whispers from teenage girls. I'm not sure he's quite so amused.Then again, he won't change his Bieber hair, so perhaps he likes the attention.

And I bought a pair of red jeans. Kid 2 was not impressed. 'Why do you want to wear eccentric-coloured jeans?' she asked me disapprovingly. This is the same kid who has been prancing around for the last day in a loud, multi-coloured striped top, denim skirt, red tights and pink shoes with silver laces. I guess she prefers me beige ... Kid 1, on the other hand, egged me on, including telling me which shoes to wear with the offending red jeans.

Still on the fascinating topic of shoes, I ordered a pair of loafers from the Outnet. They were gorgeous. But half a size too big, and by the time I went online to return/exchange, they were completely sold out. Yesterday I tried on a pair of Tod's loafers and they were 100% perfect. Sadly, also 100% out of my shoe budget. I will stalk them.

A Weekend in the Country

We just spent the weekend at the (holiday) vineyard of some friends, up in the Hunter Valley. It was exactly my preferred type of weekend - much cooking and eating, lovely wine, a log fire on Sunday night (even though it wasn't really cold enough to justify it), walks, reading, happy children (they have three), even a happy teenager (mine) ... I think the offspring are mainly happy as they're now both on holidays for a couple of weeks.

Now I'm a day behind on my magazine deadlines, but since the publisher always pays me late, I'm refusing to care.

And this coming weekend I'm running away again, driving five hours north to visit a good friend who abandoned me and moved to the country (she used to be my neighbour). We plan to make marmalade and quince paste and gossip and plan her garden and play with her baby (9 months old) and cook hearty roasts and eat too much ... I might even motivate myself enough to take up my knitting needles.

It seems that my preferred activities would be more suited to a wardrobe of tweed and wellies, whereas what I really really want (thank goodness my size is already sold out on NAP) is this:

Up

I can't help it. Like everybody else, it seems, I've been suckered into buying a copy of Ines de la Fressange's Parisian Chic.



Living where I do, and Amazon being what it is, I'll get it some time next month, by which time I will probably have seen most of it online and be sick to death of it.

Already, I'm wondering why I felt such a strong compulsion to buy it. I don't find it hard to resist fashion magazines. I don't believe that there is one 'formula' that will make each and every one of us suddenly chic. And yet here I am, buying into the seductive myth ...

If I just buy this book, get the right pair of white jeans (so practical when you live with children, dogs and cats), the right navy cashmere sweater (forget that navy doesn't suit me) and the right ballet flats, I too will look like a tall, thin, glamorous French model with amazingly long legs. Or her 17-year-old daughter. Except I won't, will I? I'll look like me in jeans and a jumper.

I have been known to say I'd like to be Ines when I grow up. Up is probably the operative word. At 5'4", the best I'm ever going to manage is gamine ... Is there even such thing as a grown-up gamine?