Inside Sarah Jessica Parker's NYC apartment

Can you believe it has been 10 years since Sex and the City the TV series finished? What a fantastic show that was. Boundary-pushing (at least in the early years), clever, witty, oh-so-stylish and, despite the often risque subject matter, heart-warming. It could just as easily have been called Fashion and the City. Or better still, Friendship and the City. But I doubt that last title would have garnered it quite as much attention. My friends and I used to say there was a Sex and the City episode for everything that happened in life. (And if there wasn't, there was sure to be a Seinfeld episode to fill in the gap). Of course that was before I got married and had children.

And now: please indulge me in some of my favourite Carrie Bradshaw fashion moments...

If you're feeling nostalgic, like I am, you might enjoy this little tour through Sarah Jessica Parker's amazing New York apartment, while she speed-answers 73 questions from Vogue that range from odd to, well, more odd.

Yes yes I know, SJP is not Carrie Bradshaw. But that distinctive voice, that impeccable style, so many of those mannerisms... she gave them all to her character and they are so very familiar. I think it could be time to watch this show again.

Were you a fan? Who was your favourite gal?

On the rooftop

The Spiegelworld show "Empire" returned to Melbourne last week, and I was lucky enough to be invited to go along to opening night. It's so rare that I get to leave the house after dark these days. Going out is a real treat. I took my friend Tons along and we arrived on Crown Rooftop (yes, they pitched the Spiegeltent on a rooftop, it's an incredible location) just in time for a glass of champagne among the hammocks in a sheltered little garden, before the show started. People are always talking about how folks have become desensitised in this day and age. (Did I really just type "in this day and age"? What am I, 80?) We are told that computer games, the nightly news, the Internet and goodness knows what else have made us impervious to the true horrors of war, to the complex realities of love, to the fact that the kid who rode his bike into a duck pond on Funniest Home Videos actually hurt himself.

In my case, I can add to that list "amazing feats of strength and skill and cheating death." If you show me acrobatics on television, for example, I'll say "Wow" but I'm not really there, if you know what I mean.

You can't be desensitised inside the Spiegeltent. It is all just too close, too intimate. You can actually hear the artists hold their breath before a particularly difficult lift. You can see the sweat of effort trickling between their shoulder-blades. At one point, during which two acrobatic artists on roller-skates defied gravity in a terrifying spin, I whispered to Tons, "These seats may actually be a bit too good." Because if just one thing went wrong, the both of them could have hurtled into our laps at 100 kilometres an hour.

Empire calls itself "a love letter from New York City." Inspired by the vintage days of vaudeville, it is a no-holds-barred performance. Announcements are made before the start of the show to the effect of "Please do not use flash photography or you will kill our artists." And that pretty much sets the tone. The acrobats defy death and wonder and creativity and dreams. The singer belts out those notes. The audience has goose bumps. That drag-queen comedy duo did NOT just say that (they did). They did NOT just do that (they did). We are roaring with laughter one moment and biting our lips the next.

In the finale act a man slowly, painstakingly, balances a feather on a stick. Then he balances the feather and stick on another stick. And so on and so on, each stick getting bigger and bigger. The whole process takes forever. You'd think it would be boring, but the suspense is palpable, and the entire room is on the edge of its seat.

Desensitised? We are the opposite of desensitised. We are inside the performance, every one of us terrified, willing him not to drop that feather. The applause when he lifts that precariously-balanced, complex weave of sticks and single feather into the air is thunderous. It sounds crazy when I write it but you really had to be there.

Honestly, you did have to be there. If you haven't seen Empire yet, it runs in Melbourne until 30 March. If you get a chance to go along, take it! You'll love every one of the 90 minutes. (Just leave the kids at home, those jokes are not for the little ones). Tickets are on sale here.

In the interests of full disclosure, you should know I received the tickets to see Empire free of charge. But I was under no obligation to write kindly about it, or indeed to write about it at all. They didn't even ask me to. That I did willingly because this show was amazing. Thank you Spiegelworld!

Here's a sneak preview of the show. And remember, this is the Spiegeltent. So as close as those cameras appear to be, that's how close you'll be too. Yikes!

Update: I've just been told the show has been extended to 11 May 2014.

Melbourne dispatch - Brunswick art crawl

Motherhood can be isolating. Your heart expands beyond anything you could have imagined possible but, at the same time, your world contracts almost to the four walls of your home. Life, now, is scheduled to military precision around meal times and nap times and baby-or-toddler-safe activities. If like me you also work at home, and if you're new to your city, that can make for pretty lonely days. And culture? The arts? I am the mother of a 20 month old girl. Peppa Pig is all the culture I get. A LOT of Peppa Pig. Hours upon hours of Peppa Pig. Soon, I will start dreaming in snorts and giggles and "everybody loves jumping up and down in muddy puddles" (my fellow parents will know what that means). After all, it's not easy to navigate private galleries with prams and energetic toddlers and babies who suddenly need to be breastfed RIGHT NOW. It's much easier to put Peppa Pig on dvd. Again.

Enter Culture Mamas, the brain-child of two mums who get it. All of it. So they arrange pram-friendly, baby-friendly, toddler-friendly events that give us parents an opportunity to enjoy the arts, opening doors that would ordinarily intimidate anyone with milky spit-up on their sleeves and a little bottle of bubble-blowing liquid kept permanently in their purses.

Yesterday, Harry and I joined a handful of other mums and bubs on an art crawl through Brunswick with Culture Mamas, on a tour of public and private galleries, public sculptures, architecture and street art, led by Jane from Art Aficionado Tours. It was an insider's glimpse not only into the artworks themselves, but also into the arts scene in the local community, tossing in a little of the cultural and political history of the area for good measure. We were introduced to artists, agents and curators, who were all happy to talk about the works around them. The walk ended, as all good tours do, with coffee.

The sun shone, the wind cooled the day, my new boots neglected to give me blisters, and my baby behaved like the angel he is. I fell in love with a major work by Turbo Brown that was so far out of my budget it might as well have been a Picasso. But tonight I will dream about black swans and three white chicks and bold blue behind the river-reeds. Which will be a lot better than yet another dream about Peppa Pig.

Book crush - The Other Side

"The Other Side" by artist Istvan Banyai is a wordless picture book all about shifting perspectives. It challenges the assumption that we could ever know the full story. We might think we do, but there is always more: more above, more below, more beyond, and more on the other side. I like to leave my copy out on a coffee table for guests to thumb through. It's fun watching their reactions as they turn the pages and, slowly, the realisation dawns that they are looking not at a random collection of clean and bold illustrations but, in fact, at a cleverly-constructed chain of interconnected events that are all occurring simultaneously on the flip side of one another.

It fascinated Madeleine, too, on the weekend. For approximately 30 seconds.

Little things - hand blown bottles

Little things in my home...

The Global Financial Crisis hit New York about six weeks after I moved to SoHo in 2008. It was just in time to come AFTER I'd signed a 12-month lease on my apartment, effectively locking me into a year in a dodgy, six-floor walk-up with mice and bed-bugs, for a price that could have rented me a doorman building and an internal laundry, if only I'd waited. The crisis also hit the Australian dollar hard, which was particularly tough since I was in the US on a Foreign Correspondent visa so all my income was Australian. Suddenly, I lost 40 percent of everything I earned in the exchange, and that came after tax. The meagre savings I took with me on the move that should have paid for new furniture and everyday household goods that you take for granted (like dinnerware and cutlery and pillows and clocks), was almost completely swallowed up by currency exchange. There was just enough left to cover my broker's fee.

So, like so many people before me, I started my new life in New York by furnishing my apartment with an odd assortment of hand-me-downs, thrifted finds and found objects. A dubious futon sofa-bed, left behind by the previous tenant. A desk that a client of my friend's cleaner was giving away. An unbelievably-heavy metal shelving unit, left on the third-floor landing of my building.

These three bottles were among the very few luxuries on which I splashed out during that time. They are hand-blown, and graced the window of a homewares store on Thompson Street a block or so up from where I lived. I thought they were just beautiful. The play of the three colours. The way the light flowed through some surfaces and bounced off others. How smooth and heavy they felt in my hands. I carried the bottles home and sat them the window sill overlooking my fire-escape where the sun, even during darkest winter, could do them justice.

There wasn't much I took home with me when I returned to Australia, but these bottles were among the first I packed. Carefully, tenderly, in reams of tissue paper and bubble wrap. And despite five Interstate moves in the 18 months that followed, this little glass trio has graced a table-top, a window-sill or a mantle-piece in every house I've lived since.

Our newly renovated home is still very much a blank canvas. You won't see many pictures on walls or cushions on couches or other little pieces to give it character. That's why I haven't featured before-and-after photographs or stories on this blog yet (that, and because by the time I've cleaned and tidied the house to a degree to which I'd be happy to photograph it for you, there's no time left to actually take the photographs). But my three New York bottles sit proudly above the hearth in our dining room, still gleaming like jewels after all that time and all those moves.

Until I came to Melbourne, I really hadn't felt at home since leaving New York. In each place we lived, these three bottles were my pretty little homesick tonic. Something both constant and lovely.

::  ::  ::

"Little Things" is a new, occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you'll find around my home. One day, I promise to share the big stories about our home renovation. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I'd love you to tell me about them! Or if you'd like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don't forget to share a link to it so I can read it.

ps. Can you help? I'd love to know more about the artist who made these bottles. I bought them from a shop called Clio on Thompson Street in SoHo (between Prince and Spring) which has since closed down. The owner told me the artist was from Brooklyn, but that's all I know.

The madness in the moonless night

'Cause I want to be someone, worthy of your conversationThe madness in the moonless night So shake off your leeward side

And everything that I did or did not do In the miniature of my life, has a lineage back to you...

I've been listening to "Leeward Side" by Josh Pyke all weekend. It such a beautiful love song. The leeward side is the protected side of an island, and Josh is telling his love to "shake it off," to step out into the wind and dance.

The song is about taking risks and, as I've been singing it to myself this weekend, I've been thinking about my own risk-averse personality and some ideas I've been hesitating to try. Maybe it's time to shake off my own leeward side. Perhaps I'll find... I wonder what?

Favourite things - notable paper

Hurrah for Friday! Friday for me doesn't so much mean the last day of the working week as the continuation of the working week, but with the help and company of my lovely husband. And that makes a BIG difference. What does Friday mean to you? Whenever I get the chance on a weekend, I like to write little letters to my friends, and post mail to you guys, like this. In case you're thinking of writing mail for anyone this weekend, or perhaps just a little note to say "hi" or "happy birthday" or, especially, "thank you," here are five ways to make your letters extra special.

1. Stamp your face

Leave a lasting impression (pardon the incredibly bad pun) with this customised stamp of your face. I also think it would be a lot of fun to have stamps made of other people. Like Nanna and Pop, to grace the invitations to their 60th wedding anniversary, etc.

(seen via Swiss Miss)

2. Birthday cake in the mail

What a fabulous birthday card this would make! Paint up this giant birthday cake (complete with glittering candles) following the tips on You Are My Fave, roll it up, and send it in a tube in the mail. I'd maybe fill the tube with little lollies or confetti or other treats to make it extra special.

3. Vintage photo collages

Take a leaf out of Belgian artist Sammy Slabbinck's book. Sammy creates unsettling and sometimes surreal collages by combining a range of vintage photographs into new portraits and landscapes. I might try it (but less spooky) with old gift cards.

(seen via Honestly WTF)

4. Edible pens

Are you a pen-muncher? I was a terminal biro-chewer in high school, my biros were all mangled and dented with teeth marks. Danish industrial designer Dave Hakkens has invented the answer to my (and possibly my pens') prayers: edible pens made with little bite-sized pieces of candy in different flavours. Talk about a homework incentive!

(seen via B for Bel)

5. Photographic gratitude

This latest gratitude project on Kickstarter is guaranteed to happen: they've surpassed their target. The idea is to encourage the return of the humble "thank-you" note, using stunning photography, beautiful paper-stock, custom-crafted envelopes, and lovely extras like wax seals and desk accessories. The folks behind this project, Gramr, say they've been researching gratitude, and "the recurring thing we’ve found is that habits of active gratitude are a key to happiness and wholeness." Anyone you want to thank today?

And that, folks, brings us to the weekend. Enjoy!

Lost

Photo credit: "Lost Glove. Cold Hand" by Antony, licensed under Creative Commons

This week I lost:

* My diary * The shopping list I'd been working on all week * My notebook, filled with blog and other creative ideas * My street directory * My camera * The wireless trigger I use to play music in the house * My alarm clock * My torch * My address book * The week's weather forecast * A list of recipes I'd been intending to try * My compass * The software I use for real-time Twitter and Facebook alerts * My telephone

In other words, my iPhone died. Whether or not it will resurrect is yet to be discovered.

These days it's not just community we lose with our smart-phones, it's basic household items like clocks and torches and journals, too. Eek! The day the computers decide to overthrow the humans, I am in deep, deep trouble.

The technology-silence would actually be golden, if I wasn't so worried about something going wrong with the children and me being unable to call for help. Does anybody know what sort of coins public phones take these days? And for that matter, does anybody know where the public phone booths actually are? Someone should develop an app for that…

Black and white

It's quite interesting to take a look at something that is completely familiar, through someone else's eyes. It's amazing what you'll notice for the first time. My parents were visiting on the weekend and my father took his camera with him on a walk through our neighbourhood while the sky was heavy with the promise of rain. I love that the subjects of these photographs are so familiar to me - I walk these streets every day! - yet they feel slightly foreign. It's rather pleasantly unsettling.

Note from my Dad: "The two guys with the skateboard called out to me to take a shot of them and just at that moment one of them came off the board."

ps. If you want to see some more of my dad's photography, look here.

Melbourne dispatch - Fat Tuesday

Happy Mardi Gras! It was Fat Tuesday yesterday, according to the good folks at Gumbo Kitchen, so they threw a shindig that involved bands and buskers and dancers and beads and picnics and sunshine and a second line marching band that led everybody, Pied Piper-style, down the tree-lined path beside the Melbourne Cemetery, and back again. ↑↑ We arrived just as the sun set and the band was warming up, so we were all over the marching and dancing right away. Madeleine busted her best "twirl" moves, which made forward motion somewhat challenging, so I had to keep picking her up and running through the grass to catch up with everyone else.

↑↑ Back at the cemetery gates, we settled in for a picnic while buskers entertained us from under a nearby tree and the sun set behind the little semi-circle of food trucks that kept everyone happy and well fed.

I'm recovering from a stomach bug so wasn't eating, but for everyone else, there was delicious fare from Gumbo Kitchen (of course), Beatbox Kitchen and the Brulee Cart for desert. Mr B opted instead for a piece of giant, doughnut-shaped cinnamon cake that was dressed in purple, green and gold icing. Is this a Mardi Gras thing? Does anyone know?

↑↑ You've never seen a child happier with three strings of coloured beads than my little Madeleine, but she was generous enough to share them with her baby brother (despite his mild consternation and ultimately-futile protests).

↑↑ When Way Past Bedtime started to take its toll on both children, we bundled them into the pram. Jazz bands were preparing to take to the main stage, a few people were already up and dancing again in the grass. It looked like loads of fun.

That night, walking through Carlton North under old trees and past even older buildings, the ferocity all gone out of the sun and cats starting to roam the alleyways... walking with my family as Mr B hummed and Harry sucked his fingers and Madeleine waved her beads in the air... that was one of those sublime "grateful" moments that took me back here all over again. Perfect.

ps. About the photos... Apologies that the quality isn't great. My camera is in being repaired so I borrowed my father's old camera, BUT I managed to bring the good lens and forget to bring the actual camera, AND earlier the same day my iPhone died... so I was snapping away on Mr B's old phone.

ps2. Want to see us at Fat Tuesday, last year?