I have been collecting vintage/antique jewellery for about 20 years.  Mainly I concentrated on the Deco era and had managed to build up a lovely little collection of brooches, bracelets, rings and necklaces.  Lucky I started when prices were quite manageable and was able to pick up some bargains along the years.  Most of it wasn’t ‘real’ jewellery, it was glass and paste but it was all gorgeous.  I did get a few genuine amethyst & diamond rings and a bracelet with emeralds in it, but most of the value was in my enjoyment at looking at it all.

A few months ago someone decided to come into my house and take it all (they also fancied my tv and my video camera).   There were a couple of sentimental pieces I was quite devastated at losing but overall I coped with the loss quite well - only about 2 whinges per minute for the first 3 weeks.  I kept opening the drawer and looking at the empty spaces where I had it all displayed and felt quite cranky, but my real regret was not wearing it enough.  Now I look back and think Why?  why didn’t I wear the pieces more often and for no reason.  I was scared of losing it - well look how that turned out.

What is the point of owning beautiful things if you don’t wear them or display them?  It’s kinda fun to start the collection again without having to do any rigorous culling of what I already have (thanks burglar).  In some ways its actually re-invigorated my interests.  Looking back,  I was too worried to wear some of this stuff out in case I lost it or ruined it.  Well I damn well hope my burglar is mincing about in the stuff right now because it deserved to be worn and I never gave it that chance.  Oh and if any-one sees a burglar lurking around covered in vintage bling - it’s mine.

My life needs some more romance in it.   More Sinatra playing on the radio, more candle lit nights and fresh bouquets delivered to my door.  I need a grove of orange trees to wander about in at midnight whilst wearing a pale pink satin robe and slippers.  My garden requires a rose covered arbour into which I am invited for flower filled afternoon teas.  How I long to be swept around a highly polished dance floor to some heartfelt murmuring french tune and drink champagne to cool down afterwards.

To have holidays in an old stone cottage in the green countryside and be presented with breakfast in bed, on a beautiful white tray.  Later to go off riding on a ruby red bicycle with a basket on the front filled with scented roses and stop to cool my feet in a fresh water stream.  Over a candle lit dinner that evening on the balcony to see a shooting star in the night sky and have diamonds presented to me as a special gift (beautifully wrapped of course).

Back home to my fresh smelling, beautifully arranged, light filled home for a cup of tea from an exquisite china tea service with pale pink macaroons to eat.   I would wear long silk skirts with flowers on them and cashmere twin sets and handmade leather shoes in jewel toned colours.  If my beloved thought I looked a little cold he would go and get my mohair wrap and gently lay it around my shoulders, without me even asking.   Then we could go for a walk in the moonlight.

Oh sigh.  I may not have much romance but it appears I have an extremely rich and active fantasy life.

I have had the pleasure of being tagged three times in the past week so I shall attempt to de-tag myself now.  First up is 6 random things about me from Ashe Mischief

• I own about 12 sets of pjamas
• I do not know how to spell pjamas, pajamas, pyjamas?
• I rarely watch television
• At my wedding I walked down the aisle to a ‘Frankie goes to Hollywood’ song
• The song was ‘The Power of love’ extended remix
• I live at the very top of a hill

 Next materfamilias has a meme for which the rules are;

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. Open to page 123

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

 The meal came to an end.  “No coffee” said Thyrza apologetically. “One doesn’t want to be overstimulated.”

I’m sure you all picked up where that came from!! It is an Agatha Christie novel “The Pale Horse”.  I love to read Agatha Christie novels, as they are mainly set in the 30’s and 40’s and I like to pretend I am there - except for the murdering bits of course.  In between the murders which are not grisly, it’s all beautiful ladies swanning about in satin evening gowns and staying in country houses.   

Final tag is from La Belette Rouge and is an interesting and lengthy one.  Since I feel a bit indulgent talking about myself so much (you know so different from my ordinary postings) I’m only going to answer the first six questions.  I hope thats alright?

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?  Sorry its been so long I actually cannot remember.

2. What book are you reading? ‘home sanctuary’ by Josephine Collins.  Its a how-to book on creating the perfect space for body and soul.  I’m dreaming again.

3. Favorite board game?  Connect Four!

4. Favorite magazine? I love magazines I don’t think I could choose a favourite, it would make the other magazines too sad.

5. Favorite smells?  Home-cooked cakes, the world after it’s just rained, Lemon eucalyptus gum trees

 6. Favorite sounds? Kookaburras singing (or whatever it is they do), rain on the roof, children laughing, happy people

If I had to choose just one food to eat for the rest of my life, I would choose cheesecake.  I am cheesecake insane - I need to go to Cheesecake Anonymous or something and get myself weaned off the stuff.  I have certain suppliers around town who help me with my habit.  There is a cafe just around the corner that I go to, but I start to feel ashamed after my second or third cheesecake takeout in a week.  So then I have to go further afield, hunting out restaurants and cafes with a good supply.  Also it has to be cafe cheesecake, it can’t be that inferior supermarket stuff.

Sometimes while I am finishing off the last of a piece I am already thinking about where the next bit is coming from.  I have made friends with someone I ordinarily wouldn’t, because she is a terrific cheesecake baker - oh the low depths I will go to for provisions.  People without cheesecake addiction wouldn’t understand why I do these things, but I have no control when it comes to this.

I have referred to past holidays as “the place that served the great cake” ahead of many other lovely memories.   I have photographed the cafe refrigerators containing the assorted cheesecakes as holiday keepsakes.   The varieties of cheesecake that are on the market nowadays, cookies & cream, Kahlua, rocky road, chocolate, plain,  ooh la la  - the world has truly benefited from experimentation in this area.  If it were in my discretion to present a Noble Prize (and it will be one day, I’m sure) I would present it to the inventor of cheesecake.

This is a view of the hair, the pink stripe isn’t particularly visible (thank the lord) because I have washed it many times.  In fact this is a rather flattering shot, perhaps I should tape this photo to my head?

The pink stripe (which is at the right of the photo) really glows when I’m outside in the sun, but I’m hopeful it will fade and once it does I know I’ll want it back again.  Sigh.

It was time again the other day, to attempt another trip to the hairdresser.  I have been going to the same salon for a while now so decided it would be good to change salons and look elsewhere for a miracle.  Somehow I was led to a place in the city centre that billed itself as “alternative”.  Well, that sounded good enough for me since the alternative to my current hairstyle would be a good hairstyle.  They also said they specialized in retro hair-do’s and as I have a love of the retro, I thought they would be able to think outside the box and suggest something interesting.

 So I dropped the children off at school and guilelessly went off to an alternate universe.  This universe was entered via a dark black stairway that dropped well below street level.  It felt like an underground carpark but unfriendlier.  Good start.  The walls, floor and ceiling were painted matt black.  There were coloured dreadlocks hanging from the walls like some sort of hippie scalping aftermath.  The young multiple facially pierced girl behind the counter told me my stylist would be over in a minute.  Brilliant.

So I sit down and tell my mohawked hetero male stylist what I wanted (yes, I said hetero, that’s how alternate this place was).  I wanted a dark blonde with reddish tones for the colour and a deeper red stripe just in the fringe - you know, a little rockabilly, the style was to be a  more suburban version of Ms Dita Von Teese.  So the stylist gets out the foils and the other hairdressers all start saying that they’ve never even seen foils, they didn’t know the salon even did them, because they are so different you know.

I sat there surrounded by many pierced individuals, all dressed in black with dreadlocks in gorgeous colours hanging down their backs.  Tattoos flashing, corsets creaking, lisping from their tongue piercings.  All threading coloured dreadlock extensions into black clad, tattooed and pierced clients.   I was sitting there enjoying myself immensely, boning up on what the ‘hip young things’ were into, when it struck me.  There was only one individual down there and that individual was me.  All that effort they were putting into standing out just to end up identical.

Four hours and about $170.00 later, I left the salon, with a bright pink stripe in my fringe (don’t ask) and a side-parted bob.  Damn.

There are times when you look back at your life and think about the paths that you didn’t take.  Do you know the ones I mean?  The job offer in a remote town, the pleasing man at the party, the profession you didn’t study, crack cocaine.  Its interesting to reflect on what life would have been like if we had taken any of these paths and how it would have been different.

There are paths I have regretted not taking and have gone back and re-done them, my education for one and other paths I simply walked away from - the man I didn’t marry.  I can’t think of too many wrong paths I have wandered down, the expensive car I bought in my early 20’s and couldn’t afford, the idiot I dated for a while, the exercise I didn’t do and the sunscreen I forgot to wear - but nothing major which means I am pretty pleased with where my life is at the moment.  There were still things I was going to go back and do, some new things to try, I was happy.  Until I heard this song on the radio;

“At the age of 37, she realized she’d never drive through Paris in a sportscar with the warm wind in her hair*”  (I know the lyrics aren’t correct but you got the gyst of it and now you will be occupied the rest of the day trying to remember exactly what they are - so don’t say I don’t do anything for you!)

At the age of 37 - 37! that’s a little younger than I am now dammit - why I wanted to scream at the radio, WHY did she give up at the age of 37.  That’s positively young, especially to be giving up on one of your dreams.  I began to worry, is it too late, I had been planning to drive through Paris in a sportscar, I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

So perhaps I am getting too complacent, I need to get working on some of those plans - start heading down those paths.  So much to do, I’ve got to book that trip to Paris, climb a mountain, write some thank-you notes.  I also need to stop listening for philosophical content in songs.

* in case you haven’t heard it or were racking your brain its called ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’

You know those little things that people do, that really really get on your nerves (I bet you just thought of one immediately).  Well I have made a list of my specific upsets;

Superficial things which bother me:

• People that don’t use coasters - this only bothers me at my own house
• People that don’t put DVD’s back in the case - immediately
• Pusher in-ners (you know who you are) - They don’t even have to push in front of me to make me angry, in front of any-one will do
• Radio switchers - you don’t even have time to hear whats on that station before they switch to the next
• Giver uppers - “I tried that its too hard”  or “I can’t do this you do it” over something as simple as de-corking wine put some effort in then  - sorry, they make me really really angry
• Sighers - you know those people that sigh when they sit down, they sigh when they have a drink, they sigh when they begin to talk, they just bloody sigh, sigh, sigh all day

This list is making me angry I’d better stop now, oh one last thing

• People that get angry over stupid things

My love of vintage finds its best and most useful expression in vintage tableware, old china bowls, vases, delightful tablecloths etc which I bring out on any occasion going.  I also have a supply of vintage and retro decorations, one of which is the above guy, who is a swinging 60’s golfing chap.  My husband is a bit younger but is also a hipster golfer guy and I used this on his cake for his birthday last week.

The cake was delicious and whilst I was distracted with it, the children took off with my cake topper - to play with him.  He had an accident, his golf-club was broken off.

So next years birthday cake topper will be “The Urinator”.  I think it’ll work don’t you?

Everyone goes on about how wonderful La Mer face cream is, how it is the one product that actually works - which begs the question why does the company (Estee Lauder I think) continue to make any others?  Of course I wanted in on this youth carrying band wagon, but since the cost of La Mer is hilariously high, I did a little research first. 

What I learned is that the back story to La Mer (burned astronaut makes his own healing cream) cannot be verified.  The main ingredient is apparently marketing bullshit and that  many people claim it is the same as Nivea Face Cream.  So finding out that it was all hype and glory, no real substance was a downer.  Being depressed I went shopping and bought some La Mer face cream.

What I really wanted to find was that this cream is an overpriced jar of hope and in many many ways it is.  I wanted to waste my money once trying it and then move on to other less expensive brands with outrageous claims of youth.  Bugger me if the damn stuff doesn’t work - its fantastic, I love it.  I got complimented on my skin more than once (twice actually).  I loved it so much I talked my sister into trying it - she hated it and said it was a waste of money.

The trouble is, it wasn’t meant to work, I don’t want to shell out the sort of bucks this cream costs every couple of months - but now I am afraid, I have to.