Back.

Home sweet home. In the three weeks we have been away every leaf has fallen off our trees - it's definitely winter in Hobart:

So I've had to dig out the winter woolies:

The brown leather jacket and knitted dress are from Gerard Darel which I bought, pregnant, eighteen months ago in Montpellier. I love them because they are French, (fickle, I know) yet at the same time they still carry the association of pregnancy, and, without beating about the bush, I was enormous with my 4th child. The jeans are Sass and Bide and the pashmina I bought for about $15 at the Crawford Market in downtown Mumbai. It is impossible to go to India and not buy a pashmina - they have all tourists picked as being desperate to own a pashmina and flog them at every possible opportunity. I am still regretting that I didn't buy a gorgeously embroidered 100 per cent cashmere pashmina, yet after two hours at the Crawford Market my husband was showing early onset signs of pashmina fatigue, from which he never fully recovered. I was lucky to get this one....and a pink one before the rot set in. While I was coveting pashminas he was coveting G & Ts at the Air Bar at the Four Seasons.

Don't be deluded into thinking that, due to my blogging silence, the last week of our family road trip was uneventful. Far from it. After Port Fairy we drove two hours inland to hang out with old friends from school at their farm. Isn't it nice catching up with friends who you don't see very often due to the tyranny of distance? We had gossiped, driven to the paddock by the river where the picnic was set up and were just embarking on our first wine.......when Felix almost severed his ear off on a protruding stick. A trip to hospital and eight stitches later...... I'm very happy to report that Felix has made a great recovery. And a monumentally big thank you to Orge, who, with her exceedingly good nursing skills saved the day.

Our last day was spent in Melbourne en route to the Spirit of Tasmania:

Melbourne at this time of year dragged me back to this same time four years ago, when my Dad was being treated for Acute Myeloid Leukaemia at the Alfred Hospital. It was a harrowing time yet the Leukaemia Foundation offered wonderful support to our family, if you feel like making a donation. Then it was Toby in the pram. During those bleak days we had no idea that one day we'd be pushing the pram around Melbourne with another little person. I miss my Dad yet at the same time I feel so incredibly blessed to have welcomed Camelia to our family. It's a strange combination of feelings.

We bought a ticket to see this:

The Napoleon exhibition at the NGV.  If you can, go. It was brilliant. Amongst all of the fabulous things on display, and there were lots - Napoleon's hat, Josephine's coronation ring, a lock of Louis XVI's hair and a miniature of Marie Antoinette's close friend the Princesse de Lamballe fittingly on display next to a revolutionary's pike (she met a gruesome end being decapitated and her head was then impaled on a pike and paraded under Marie Antoinette's window) - was this:

(photo from the NGV catalogue)

A Sevres 'Nipple Cup' or 'Breast Bowl' from a service made for Marie Antoinette's pleasure dairy at Rambouillet. Yes, a pleasure dairy. When you already have a cubby house on the scale of the Petit Trianon and it's accompanying hameau why not have a dairy to play milk maids in? It was from these cups, rumoured to have been modelled on Marie Antoinette's own breast, that visitor's to the dairy drank milk. I admit to being fascinated by this period of French history and it's utter decadence. Does anyone know where you can buy a reproduction of one of these....I would like one for my birthday.

R

PS If you would like a 'Nipple Cup', you can buy one here for US$925......unfortunately, all of my four children combined don't make that much pocket money!