On Swimming

I love swimming. I love swimming enough to wear dorky uncle goggles frequently.

I love that my wonderful aunt and uncle live right next to my favourite beach in the world and that I'm able to escape to this incredible other world almost whenever I like.

Mission Lifestyle Rearrangement: Day Two

Last night I stayed up too late. Bad start to my Brand New Girl push, perhaps, but the point is that I woke up at eight thirty this morning and felt truly rested.

I hardly ever feel rested, so that was very exciting. I put it down to drinking lots of water.

I then hopped in the car with my family (including my brother, who was Not Happy about being woken... he's seventeen, which pretty much explains that) and drove to to beautiful Clovelly, where I had my first swim of the summer!

If there was ever something that deserved bold-ing, it is that. The water was perfect, the fish were swimming happily around my ankles, and although the blue groper eluded me, I saw a fish that I thought was a parrot fish and ended up being just a very clever regular fish carrying a stone in its mouth.

Getting physically active - tick!

I also enjoyed some pretty wonderful food, which I'd like to share in my slightly crazy, point-form way:

• tabouli in pita bread pockets with baba ganouj
• a big old strawberry milkshake
• door-stop sized slices of a wonderful chewy sourdough bread we bought from a woman selling loaves over her garden gate in Clovelly, with olive butter
• Fresh strawberries and grain crisps

Documenting food and exercise may be very boring for any readers I may still have, but is wonderfully helpful to me. I hope I can keep going like this for at least another little while...

Mission Lifestyle Rearrangement

I think I probably could have managed a snappier title. Oh well!

Yes, I am, to put it mildly, COMPLETELY FED UP with my failing immune system and as such have decided that I need a serious shift in habits to stop my body from giving up on me.

So, I've made some goals:

1. No more alcohol.

I don't drink that much, really, but occasionally I drink too much too frequently and make myself very unhappy. I think it has something to do with not drinking at all until after I turned eighteen due to a mixture of respect for the law (ha) and the fact that my liver just couldn't take it after I was seriously ill when I was younger.

Normal nineteen year olds are far more bullet-proof than I am, and I must remember that.

What I will do now is swear off the demon drink altogether until the 20th of March (the closing night of the next show I'm producing) and then reassess whether I really can't live without it after that.

Besides, less drinks = more shoes. Or something.

2. Get physically active.

This is a hard one. Apart from the effort it takes to actually get out of the house after you've had the flu or similar (as I've experienced repeatedly in recent months), Australian summers are unkind to those who wish to walk/jog/do anything out of the water. Luckily enough, I'm a very strong and fairly fearless swimmer, so that makes my choice easy.

I'm on holidays. My boyfriend drives, my parents both drive, they all like going to the beach (even though Roman swims like an Englishman*) so that's what we will do. I will go swim laps of Clovelly Bay every day I can this summer, and on days I can't, I will either go for a nice long walk after dark, or put on Paul Simon and dance like a maniac.

*Not very well

3. Eat Well

I know I can do better than I'm doing right now. I plan to eat healthy amounts of healthy food and stop buying meals wherever possible. For example, today (day one) I have eaten:

• An organic cheddar, bean and tomato toasted sandwich with orange juice for breakfast
• A small but awesome serving of Dad's home made veggie fried-rice
• A parsley omelette with rye toast, fresh tomatoes and baba ganouj.
• About to eat apple slices and raisins in natural yoghurt. Yum yum yum.

The great thing is I know it makes me feel so much better than eating the crap I usually buy at uni or work. So yay, let's hope I can keep it up.

3.1 Eat Meat!

My vegetarian period has coincided with the highest rate of recurring illness in my life. After watching far too much of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on River Cottage, I've realised that as long as you eat good meat that has been treated organically and ethically in its previous life, it's not actually a sin to be an omnivore. Plus, my dad makes amazing lemon lamb.

4. Drink water

Seems dumb, right? Well I am dumb. Profoundly, apparently, because my doctor says that two days ago I was so dehydrated it was raising my heart rate. More fluids required. This is an important one for everyone, I think, especially anyone planning on dealing with Australian weather over the next few months.

5. Get on the self-respect wagon

This is the big one. When I'm staying up to all hours with no food and too much drink in me, I forget that I'm actually a bit of a goddess.

This sounds ridiculous, and in many ways it is, but I don't think it'd kill me to remember that I've got a beautiful, feminine body that needs a bit of care given and attention paid.

..Which is why I painted my nails! They're a deep, shimmery turquoise. Like the shadow of an iceberg under the southern waves.

It's the beginning of appreciating what my body does for me and thanking it just a little for that immense labour.

I know I'm going to get better.

Twenty Eight!

Oh my goodness, dolphins and porpoises, it's going to be twenty eight degrees on Sunday!

I know it's only August, but summer is really on its way, the breeze has been so wonderfully zephyric and balmy and I'm starting to turn into Summer Kenny (a fundamentally unsound oceanid with a desire to jump into water from dizzying heights) already.

So, just to get me more excited, twenty eight glorious things Sydney summer is bringing to me: -

1. Icy Poles

2. Clovelly

3. Twilight Picnics (mosquitos and all)

4. Strawberries

5. Raspberries

6. Blackberries

7. Eurydice

8. Making a Dent in My Reading List

9. Getting Oil Paints all over my Hands and Clothes

10. Sleeping with the Windows Open

11. The Clovelly Groper and his Lady Gropers

12. Late Nights at the Duck & Swan

13. White Sandals

14. Sun dresses

15. Home-Made Lemonade

16. Summer Projects

17. Sewing Bags and Dresses

18. Early Sunrises

19. Late Sunsets

20. Late Nights with Good Friends

21. The Mystery of Edwin Drood

22. Colourful Flowers Everywhere

23. Straw Hats

24. Sleeping Nude

25. Swimming in the Ocean Every Day

26. Wandering Through Markets

27. Living in Bare Feet

28. Spending a Third Summer Kissing That Man of Mine

Sunday in Pictures

Good morning, beautiful flowers from a beautiful boy. Good morning fresh fruit! Good morning beautiful Sunday morning!

A feast of thick crunchy toast, antipasto and other delicious things I found in the fridge.

And of course my mum's fantastic (yumyumyumyumyum) Greek Salad.

And here comes the darling flower-bearer's requisite appearance in Sunday, doing his newspaper crossword... I must say I find there to be something so wonderfully intimate and endearing in that image.

I decided to go swimming at the beach... I can't go for a week without being with the ocean, it's so silly. So we packed our beach bags and waited impatiently to get there.

A sweet little fabric flower wrapped around my belt-loop made my day (and my outfit... heh).

Finally we got to the beach. I look like I've been swimming in this picture but it is in fact because my sister poured a bottle of water over my head. Still, it was so wonderful to be on the sand again. I was so so very excited to go swimming with my goggles and look at all the amazing fish that live in Clovelly (there are a family of Blue Groper that are like big beautiful puppy dogs under the sea).

Alas, it was not to be... as I first stepped out into the water I noticed something bobbing on top of the water. It was a bluebottle.

FUCK. That is so annoying.

For anyone who is unfamiliar, bluebottles are fucking horrible little stinging (for lack of a better word) jellyfish that sit on the surface of the water waiting to sting the shit out of people who are dumb or unlucky enough to swim through their path. My mum tells horror stories about big dirty long ones that wrapped themselves around her leg when she was young. They're not life-threatening but they are incredibly painful. And there's never just one - if you see one you can bet your life there are a thousand more blobbing towards you.

Basically, when you see one, you get out of the water. So there goes that great beach adventure. Poo.

The funny thing about bluebottles is that they have no choice in who they sting - they have no muscles or motor skills, they are just a pouch of air that floats on the water's surface and a tangle of blue tentacles that stretch out below. They don't attack, they just float where the sea takes them. Tomorrow morning the beach will be covered with them - they'll wash up on the beach and die, turning dark as they dry up in the sun. Wouldn't it be horrible to have that little control? One thing's for sure, when you're at the very bottom of the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation, you're a fucking bluebottle. Poor bastards. Still, get the hell away from me.

After our failed swimming expedition we returned home where I cooked my weekly meal. This week it was Emily's delicious Cherry Pilaf, with lovely firm grape tomatoes and beans.

Followed by DESERT PIZZA. Banana/Apple with caramel sauce. Oh my goodness. Death and heaven all in one.

Have happy weeks ahead, my loves!

Sunday in Pictures

Sunday began with tea, ricotta and jam toast, and a plum.

... sitting across from lovely Roman as he reads his paper (such a ritual ever since he got a free student subscription!)

Then we went to Manly, which I must say is not my favourite part of the east coast, but the light was just perfect on the almost-stormy summer day.

There's something very theraputic about the rocking of the waves as they come in, something so lovely and complimentary in the steely blue ocean against the frothy white foam...

I followed my lover over the rocks...
(feeling like some sort of amphibious fairy girl as I hopped over the wet stones)
I reminded my darling how silly and sweet he makes me feel by writing our names into the sand... it really was a very perfect little adventure for young lovers.

There is a certain aesthetic poetry in the lines and contours one finds at the cusp of earth and sea, I think.

Whether they're man-made...
..natural...
... or a crystalline mixture of both.

One finds all sorts of treasures at the seaside.
And some fascinating little creatures in its rock pools.

For me, there is nowhere like the coastline. It's the perfect place to sit and contemplate your next move...

.. or simply to gaze out at the supreme majesty of God's creation.

Emotional Support for Marine Invertibrates

Oh, Mr. Octopus, why are you so gloomy?

Cheer up - at least you're not a weedy seadragon!

I love the sea.

There is nothing quite as wonderful as the ocean on a burning hot summer day.
I spent the other day beach-hopping with my beautiful pink hibiscus sister...

... and ferny orange hibiscus cousin.

Balmoral baths are a favourite. Lilly and Roman and I took turns jumping off the jetty.

And I was very happy with Roman, who likes beaches about as much as a cat would, for his swimming and sand sitting. Roman good boy.

There's something about sticky wet swimmers, sandy feet and burned shoulders that just feels right. Do you like my ocean coloured nailpolish?