Fruit and Flowers

Thursday May 24th

Four months away from home and only three hundred posts on my blog. This is the worst case of writer's block I've ever had.

Today is our fourth wedding anniversary. Darren reckons four years is represented by "fruit and flowers" but I think he's making it up to avoid spending too much money. It was "leather" last year and he bought me a beautiful handbag, which set a standard I'm not sure he can afford. (The first year we were married it was "paper" so he treated me to a pack of playing cards depicting scenes of Kefalonia, which was more the kind of thing I'd been expecting).

So, fruit and flowers it is. This morning I dropped Ella at nursery and drove over to Westfield Bondi Junction to buy myself a pair of boots for winter. Of course, when I say winter I mean sunny days and moderately cool evenings, but the aussies love playing at dressing-up and already I've spotted Ugg boots, gloves and opaque tights being actually worn, not least by my colleague Jackie, who pitched up in a scarf on Monday morning under the impression it was cold. "I knew you'd have something to say about it" she said, looking a bit sheepish. Actually, I had nothing to say, I just fell about laughing and put the fan on.

At Westfield I tried five or six shoes shops without success. In every shop, I was approached by an assistant asking me "Hi, how you going?" to which the expected response is simply "Good, thanks". Any more than this and they back away because they can't actually answer your question or don't understand humour. "Good Thanks" allows them to tick the box that says they must approach the customer offering to help.

After four months of alternating between flip-flops and Merrell sandals, my feet have flattened out and now refuse to be squashed into fashionable shoes and I can't say I blame them. The problem is, Merrell sandals are fine with shorts or three quarter length combat pants but they look ridiculous worn with full length boot-cut trousers and if this carries on much longer I'll be the laughing stock of the eastern suburbs. Anyway, I came away with a pair of pyjamas for Ella, a pussy-cat tin for her to store her sea animals and a placemat with the numbers 1-10, not because I'm a yummy mummy hothousing my daughter but because she's got herself into number recognition and keeps insisting that number five is number six.

As for an anniversary present, he's getting chocolate-dipped strawberries and a bunch of gladioli, which is apt because we're off to see Dame Edna this evening. I told the girls in the florist and they suggested I take one to wave around. "The problem is, she'll come up to you and make a big deal of it" one of them said. "It's a bit of a risk". I paid the $12.95 for the flowers, hit both florists on the head with them and said "I'll think about it, possums" in my best Dame Edna voice. They laughed, but I could see they actually thought I might be really, properly mad.