Reasons to be cheerful

It's Sunday. Will's at the beach (so many sharks around these days that we see him off with "See you, Will, have fun! Don't get burnt! Don't get eaten!"). Dave's been occupied all day writing reviews. It's stinking hot – 41 today and 41 forecast for the next two days with rain and thunderstorms – so I'm staying inside, in the cool.
I'm listening to Philip Glass on Pandora and I'm making my mother-in-law a quilt for her birthday in a couple of weeks.

Saw Life of Pi yesterday with my best friend Laura. Though some of the images were breathtakingly beautiful, on the whole I was ever so slightly underwhelmed, as I was with the book. But I'm glad I've seen the film and read the book.

Indian Ocean Gods

City Beach Bodysurfing from will sheridan on Vimeo.

My very clever son Will made this short film a few weeks ago, with his new teeny-tiny video camera. He's in it with Lily (back from Japan for Christmas), two of their best friends, James (with one arm straped to his waist following shoulder surgery) and Pelham, and our grandson Mack (towards the end, at about 4:20).
It's a lovely summery video, shot at the very best of our very beautiful beaches, for all you northern hemispherians up there in the snow and the cold!

My best friend Shelley gave me the Jerusalem cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi, for Christmas and I've already made three fab dishes from it: a chicken and cardamom rice casserole, a syrup-laden orange, coconut and semolina cake, and a kick-arse hommus. It's a brilliant inspiration: almost everything in it I'd love to try.
How was your Christmas? We had ours down south on Boxing Day so we could be with eldest son and the grandkids. It was all very merry but the start of the heatwave, and as successive days got hotter and hotter, we felt quite glad – unusually – to leave the bay and head for home and the air-con, where we rode out the worst of it in quiet comfort.
:: Lily's been home for two weeks and I'm already thinking that in just over a week she'll be back on a plane heading for winter and Osaka again. No! Does her mum's heart good to have her here!