Beautiful Thing I knew that the shortlists for APA Book Design Awards had been released, but I didn't realise until the weekend that ...

Completely Sherlocked Sherlock Holmes was my first literary crush (I'm not counting Captain Cook (who was, after all, real) and his di...

16th February 2012 (aged 45) Noticed that the producer of Outland is Andrea Denholm, who I think I went to school with in Goroka. If it...

Overheard: Two Ten-Year-Olds Talk Politics A: It's sad about Julia Gillard. M: Yes, it's a shame, because she was the first woman...

Some Happy News Crow Country has been shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Yay! The rest of the shortlists can b...

We're Ba-ack! So, we had a holiday in Tasmania. It was brilliant. This is what we did: Night Crossing I take ginger pills, and no ...

Abundance of Everything This summer, with all the rain, our garden has burst into life again. Trees are thrusting out crowds of leaves, cre...

6th January 2012 (aged 45) Michael's gone to the gym,  the girls to the studio with the-other-Evie's mum. First time I've had...

2011: A Year of Reading I read 107 books this year. What's that, about two books a week? That sounds about right. Of course, many of th...

Love like Nun Other I bought myself Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede for Christmas. I had thought Rumer Godden was a recent disco...

After School Mum, I'm hungry. Mum, I'm hungry. Mum, can I have some more onion rings? Mum, can you put this back in the fridge? ...

From Argentina, With Love I received a lovely email last week from Noel in Argentina: I'm writing to you today to tell you that I had ...

Ssh... Don't Tell Anyone, But... Alice is reading a book. I almost don't want to talk about it in case I put the mozz on it, but...

  Five Jobs I Quite Enjoy 1) Hanging out the washing. 2) Wrapping Christmas presents. 3) Ironing; it just takes me a while to get started...

2nd December 2011 (age 45) Whole family sitting around this morning when they're supposed to be getting ready for work and school, w...