Welcome to Sydney – the best address on Earth

Intrepid explorers of the Land Downunder

Follow the adventures of Helen Pitt and Liam Oliver as they follow the yellow brick road to their land of Aus. Don your ruby slippers as you are about to learn – like we have – there is no place like home.

Vale Margaret Oriel Atkinson my beloved aunt

My mentor and best friend aunty Margaret Aiken died last week. I am so saddened by this news. A funeral and celebration of her life will take place this Friday January 7 at 10.30 am at White Lady funeral home, 4 East Parade, Eastwood (on the eastern side of the train  station)

Please join us for refreshments afterwards at:

The Terrace

Courtlands Retirement Village

15 Gloucester Avenue

North Parramatta.

 

The funeral notice will be in this Wednesday’s edition of the Sydney Morning Herald.

 

My family thank you for your well wishes at this difficult time.

 

 

 

Women and wine

Take a look at my multi-media work online video and written story – what my boss calls Rambo journalism – ie we do everything. I do cringe everytime I watch it though

http://dpintranet.dp.jfh.com.au/intranet/herald/smh-homepage.htm

Learning to say gday again

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/its-time-to-learn-to-say-gday-all-over-again-20100914-15aua.html?comments=47#comments

Things’ll be great when you’re downtown

I had a great day at work today. I interviewed Petula Clark the singer who made the song Downtown famous. Who cant think of her when you hear the words to that song “When you’re alone and life is making lonely you can always go Downtown.” The caramel-toned voice of the chanteuse came over the telephone line from London. She lives in Geneva – where shes known as Petu  La Clark – but she was speaking today from London. She’s headed here for a performance in October. What a privilege it is to speak to one of my musical heroines.

Tomorrow I have a piece in the Opinion pages. Please make sure you check it out and make a post or write a letter to the ed about it. Gracias. Rainy day at the zoo today for Liam. Didn’t stop the fun though. Tonight he was sad and cried tears like the falling rain. “Sometimes I just miss Buba,” he sobbed utterly unprompted. After five years without him, we both still do.

It’s been a while between posts

Because I’ve been back to the United States. Here’s a summary of what I found that was published in the Opinion Pages of the SMH:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/america-has-lost-that-cando-confidence-20100727-10u6t.html

Pictures from the infamous J party

Cut and paste this into your browser

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41620400@N08/

Two days to go

Until the famous J party. If you haven’t got an invite let me know. It also marks the one year anniversary of Liam and my return to Australia. Seems forever ago and yet only yesterday.

J Party on the horizon

In the fine tradition of letter themed parties past – Jimmy’s J party is coming up this Saturday June 5. For those of you who know him and would love the chance to get dressed up as in decades past please contact me for details. And if you’re at a loss for a costume – you can always come as the big man himself.

Bye bye May

Peter's la catrina for day of the dead

What a great week this has been. I filled in for Doug Anderson the TV columnist and it was so much fun just to be able to write what I wanted. HP unplugged. William would have laughed as we didn’t own a TV for the longest time and I here I am as TV reviewer. It was a blast though.

Then there was a fabulous night with Andrew Hornery and a load of folks from work at the reopening of the Manly Pavilion. It always pays to hang out with Andrew as the top shelf liquor comes down. We drank a lot of Veuve cliquot and danced the night away. A great night if any of us could remember it!!!

In other news this week we got the $3000 cheque for Liam’s music lessons. He is the recipient of a Fairfax FOundation personal development grant – through my work – which gives us money to pay for guitar and choir classes. He watched Oliver for the first time and was inspired by all the singing and now can;t stop singing “I’d do anything for you mum anything.”

He went on a school excursion this week to the MAritime museum where I met up with him and his teacher who gave me the great news she’s going to advance him to Year 3 maths even though he’s still in Year 2. Was so proud to hear this news though I can’t take any credit for his mathematical abilities – that’s the Oliver clan.

May is nearly done which means June is upon us and Peter will return to the US as we will on July 1. We’re both really looking forward to it and for those of you in California reading this – you’re invited to the 8th birthday party at Skandia on July 8 at 5pm. See you there.

Let the sunshine in – it’s been raining cats and dogs here and I’m tired of it.

Markey’s birthday

Liam made a butterfly birthday cake for aunty Markey for her birthday.

As you see more of it ended up on his face and in his tummy than on the cake.

A nice job however and it tasted delicious.