Shiver me timbers

Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day and also my 450th birthday. In order for my day to have meaning, I’m harnessing the power of celebrity (raising teenagers and eating their two-minute noodles will do that to your brain). Growing up near Crows Nest I was obviously born to plunder. Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum, hoist the mizzen.


I share a birthday with Twiggy, Mama Cass and my spiritual guru, chocolate maker and philanthropist George Cadbury. I work for a charity that was sponsored for years by Cadbury chocolate. As Oprah would say, I found my destiny; I was born to consume chocolate, preferably the expensive stuff.

aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I’m no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.” Kathy Acker


Happy Next Year

Happy New Year. Hope you have fun tonight. I want a smallish glass of good champagne. At one point in my life I would have drunk tequila made from wombat wee if the bar ran dry and now I’m a one glass screamer. Mummies getting smashed is so last year.

In 2019 we will have:

More hopes

More dreams

Fewer emails, more laughter

More kisses, less complaining

Zero idiot rich white male politicians, more wise women from diverse backgrounds

Less coconut milk, more chocolate

Fewer inspirational quotes, more doing

More policies, less political slogans

More teenage dirtbags, less sanitised posers

More sleep, less stress

More grunge, less photoshop

More fun, fewer rules

More rebellion

More open hearts

We can learn to love again