What was my 51st birthday present, you’re wondering?
I waited 3 weeks, carrying it with me from Australia to France, under instructions not to open it. So at last the moment came, at 1am on birthday morning in my cute orange tent under the walnut trees (which was absolutely my birthday good and proper in Oz)! It was a 2nd hand book. A kid’s book. A classic, nostalgia-filled, heart-warming kid’s book, which sat on every single bookcase in Australia (and America? Did you have one?). Except… H ripped out all the pages. So I got the cover, and the inside cover, where clumsy young fingers would proudly print their names: Then as you can see from the chickens, it all went a bit rogue and unpredictable! And that’s because dearest H is the most amazing collage/graphic artist, and spent hours making me a unique record and interpretation of our dating journey, from the first cheeky email in October, to the meeting under the Flinders St clocks in Melbourne just before Xmas, and so on and so on and so on. I wasn’t going …