I don't play that game anymore

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I don't play that game anymore

The bicycle-policing-roadworker looks over at me. He’d finished smoking his last cigarette at 8.07am and was back on the job.

‘You know what should be illegal?’ he says. ‘Middle-aged men in lycra.’

I laugh agreeably despite pretty much wholeheartedly believing the opposite: that anyone – but especially middle-aged men – could benefit from some time on a bike, both physically and mentally; and in spite of the fact that they really do give me the shits when I’m stuck behind them in traffic.

‘Slow down, mate,’ he says as another whizzes by, this time already suit-clad. Navy blue.

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Conversations with Grandad

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Conversations with Grandad

Whenever I could in those months I’d get a bus – with or without my friend Clare – and go *somewhere else* and that’s where the magic was, up and out of Florence, where shopkeepers didn’t roll their eyes and reply in English to our dodgy Italian and where I didn’t have to pretend I didn’t understand English to avoid American tour groups. (‘But today we’re supposed to be in Florence. This is Firenze – what have we got wrong?’)

Once we were out of the city people looked kindly on us speaking the language. Old men in suits in bars bought us espresso and joked they were going to marry us. We walked and walked and got sunburnt and talked about life and drank wine and then as the sun looked like it might disappear we made sure we were on our way back to Firenze. 

My Grandad’s cousin Romy had grown up in Perth but in her 30s decided to move ‘back home’ to a place she’d never known as her own home, just that of her parents, in Sondrio, right on the border with Switzerland.

All the puzzle pieces had been there in the past, and had I touched on them all. It was like I’d been circling, dancing around the edges for years. But until now, the timing hadn’t been right to create the picture. But enough now, it’s time to make the leap and see what happens.

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Not My Journey

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Not My Journey

‘Do you know how to make pasta?’ he asked, but I didn’t have to do the mental gymnastics to realise he meant ‘do you even know how to make pasta?’ He taught me to save the starchy water the pasta is cooked in, and add it back in to the sauce to help the pasta bind to it, making it creamier and more delicious. Looking back, that was the beginning of me truly healing my relationship with food. He would never let me give him credit for it and I would never try, but it was time and he was there. He showed me what it meant to live simply and fully, by example and in practice. He cooked - even just for himself - with integrity, with care and with joy. Less ingredients meant more.

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One day I'll eat chocolate again

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One day I'll eat chocolate again

The reason I had to stop eating chocolate for a while? There were days I would eat a whole block. Or hide it in the pantry. Or have a block in my handbag. We laugh off ‘wine mums’ and ‘binging’ on a Friday night while we watch The Batchelor. Or The Batchelor in Paradise. I probably have the wrong show and the wrong day but I don’t have a TV, so I’m not that up in pop culture.

Either way - if you’re still reading after that confession, we normalise this sort of behaviour as if it were ok. It’s not. It’s not ok for our health and it’s not ok for our minds. And I reckon most of us know that, if we dig deep enough and are honest with ourselves. Binge is a pretty serious word, and alcoholism laughed off in memes isn’t funny.

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Venus and Mars, Australia and Italy, coming home

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Venus and Mars, Australia and Italy, coming home

This swing between Italy and Australia that we’ve put ourselves on means at times we might not feel at home in any one place. But I reckon there’ll be times we feel completely at home in two places as well, and I hope that we can have the flexibility, compassion and generosity with one another, with our families, our friends, and our vastly different but equally breathtaking environments (hello, Western Australia and Tuscany!) to be fully appreciative and conscious of what we’ve been given, and what we have to give. And that’s a lot.

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the dawning stages

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the dawning stages

Peter rolls up in his landcruiser, red-faced, with Tahla the golden lab in the back. Lucky you called when you did, he says. We just got back in from a nine week stint in Cambodia. Had to get out of this bloody cold. The Italian gives me a sideways glance, as if to say ‘owning the Prevelly villas must be a pretty good gig if you get six weeks off a year in south-east Asia’. Yeah mate. 

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