By the way, I wanted to advise that the lack of photos of my trip to Australia does not mean that there are no photos to share. O contraire, mes ami – it’s just that I can’t be Googled shifting the photos from my laptop to my parents’ desktop from which I’m posting these profound thoughts.

Actually, I’m also waiting on some pics from the wedding to which I’m happy enough to give clearance for publication.

I missed the Queen’s Christmas message last week (and not for the first time), but feel compelled – out of pure guilt – that I myself should contribute a post ahead of the new year, which rings in first in this far-flung part of our planet.

It has been so wonderful seeing my family and (some of) my friends while I’ve been visiting Sydney. While I’ve been here my brother married the fabulous Sophie, and last night I even attended a birthday party that took place in my own home, thrown by my “tenants” and attended by several mutual friends. I realise how much I miss my tribe, and how happy I am to be part of that tribe.

That said, I have a lot to do when I return to New York in about a week, not the least of which is finishing a draft of my book. Today I think I found the revised structure that will simplify the story but make it more powerful. My publisher friend Madonna Duffy told me that the parts of it I showed her made her laugh and cry, but were often missing a widow and a home. Which is a bit of problem considering I’m calling it The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement. As a result of her advice, I’m much clearer about what my job is to finish it. Daunted, but focused. Thank you Madonna.

While slumming it in Drummoyne, I’ve been forced to limit my computer face-time due to my parents’ lack of wireless internet connection. This has proven to be a blessing in disguise, as I’ve used otherwise useless email-checking time to walk, read, think, eat and drink. There will be plenty of solo hours of pc-uninterruptus to come when I’m back in Brooklyn.

And so a very happy 2007 to you, dear reader – and my eternal thanks for continuing to read the quirky ramblings of a slightly mad Apple Girl.

The acronyms came thick and fast in Newcastle just prior to Christmas, on the occasion of the purchase of a new party dress. The purchase was not mine but Jody McKay’s, my friend Jen’s flatmate and her kindred spirit in Newcastle.

Jody happens to be the new Labor Party candidate for her New South Wales electorate, and after an initial trial by fire – and media – seems not only to be surviving, but thriving. She came home on Saturday afternoon with a little black dress to wear to an old friend’s annual Christmas party.

“I love it, but it’s not the sort of dress I could wear to an ALP function,” she noted. Hence the LBD for the LPC.

Back from Vegas (see previous post), today I head north two hours in my beloved little car to spend the pre-Christmas weekend with superstar Jen Fleming. It’s her last day of on-air presenting at ABC Newcastle and she’s relocating to Sydney in the new year. So she’s ready to celebrate.

We haven’t seen each other since August when she was on her world tour. I’m so looking forward to seeing her.

And after several days of below-par weather – think cloudy, cool, damp and windy – it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas: humid and warm. So I’ve even packed my swimsuit for the weekend. It’s a long way from the goose-down marshmellow jacket, longjohns, boots, hats and scarves I had begun to wear in NYC before heading south for the Christmas season.

It came as a bit of a shock to my American friends to discover that while visiting home I would be hopping on a plane to visit a friend – and returning the next day. Most Americans don’t travel; when they do, it’s by car or train for a couple of hours for major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas (sorry, “The Holidays”).

So it was that last Sunday I used some frequent flier points to fly to Brisbane – aka BrisVegas – to meet up with my wonderful friend Madonna Duffy, Publisher of University of Queensland Press.

Apart from the usual talking, eating and drinking, Madonna has the dubious honour of being the first professional reader of what I’ve written thus far on THE BOOK. I had thought of taking a pic of our Serious Editorial Meeting, but we got ensconced and the photo was forgotten.

The verdict? I’ve written half of the book, but not the half I thought I’d written. The best part was hearing from someone I trust and respect that it is publishable. A momentous thing for me to hear – and to believe.

I have been rediscovering the delights of Sydney over Christmas time – the long lunch, the lazy hour or so in front of the cricket, the desultory reading of magazines and lots of face-to-face time with loved ones. It’s GREAT to be home.

Today is the first in a series of days filled with not only dinner engagements, but with breakfasts and lunches too. I am trying to manage my intake of food and wine by driving to said lunches and dinners, having fruit (fruit!) instead of the usual Vegemite toast, and finally trying to get used to skim milk in my coffee. They’re hard yards, but a girl’s gotta do …

I never suspected that seeing Turkish toast on a breakfast menu would be so exciting.

Move over TomKat and BrAngelina – now we have ShLloyd. Unfortunately I have no photos yet to share of my brother’s wedding yesterday to Sophie (Hicks, hence Shicks, hence ShLloyd), but I can happily report that despite fairly heavy rain it was an extremely happy day and enormous fun.

I was sharing MC duties with Sophie’s brother Michael, which worked a treat – well, people laughed on cue anyway. I was able to share with the crowd that Jen Fleming had announced the wedding on Newcastle radio the other day, because she had found out from me that her bridesmaids were Pru and Trude, and her mother’s name is Jude – a coincidence any fan of Kath & Kim found too good to ignore.

The after-party upstairs at the Lord Dudley hotel in Woollahra was wonderful, particularly seeing old friends of my brother’s and other people I hadn’t seen in years. A superb day. I was glad, however, to finally remove my red velvet stilettos after 12 hours of non-stop wear.

I just received this snapshot taken in NYC two weeks before flying home. The photographer was the bartender at Raoul’s, a New York institution for almost one hundred years and a busy bar no matter what night of the week it is.

Pictured grinning with me are Sachaa and her husband Adam. She and I worked together at Freehills before she moved to London to be with Adam. They are expecting an addition to the family very soon – so soon in fact that their trip to NYC was dependent on her doctor’s permission.

We had such fun comparing life in Sydney, London and New York and the endless cultural variations thereof. After a couple of quiet ones Sachaa and Adam headed uptown to catch a show, and I rushed a few blocks north to NYU to get some information on a course I’m thinking of doing next year. (Don’t panic people – no more degrees, I promise!) 

No sudden romantic developments to report: Head Over Heels is the name of the Newtown salon where my guru Orlando (the only straight male hairdresser in Sydney) works.

“Please fix this,” I asked him this morning, pointing to the mess atop my head – the result of a disastrous trip to a Park Slope (Brooklyn) hairdresser related elsewhere on this blog.

“It was pretty dreadful,” he admitted of my ‘do, as he snipped away, recounting his latest romantic misadventures and asking me questions about life in NYC. A Londoner by birth, he reckons my accent has changed slightly, to a mix of English, American and Australian. I don’t believe him, but I will take a straw poll amongst my friends over the next few weeks to gain a consensus.

What with my chipped tooth being fixed, and my hair now looking somewhat normal, I finally feel ready for my “homecoming debut” at my brother’s wedding on Friday.

Today I thought of using this phrase as the title of my next book, about winning the Green Card and my subsequent travails living amongst the ‘Merkins in their natural environment. Now that I’ve thought of it, it seems so obvious that it must have been done already. What do you think?

It’s been one exciting appointment after another since I arrived on Sunday night, with an emergency dental appointment on Monday afternoon to fix a chipped tooth, and a visit to my accountant to bring me up to date with the Tax Office on Tuesday. Wooh! What a triumphant homecoming for Apple Girl.

But I’m living in the lap of luxury at my parents’ place, being spoiled with home-cooked meals and enjoying catching up on the day-to-day things that phone calls often miss. My dad not only retrieved my car from my aunty’s garage where it had been stored for the past nine months, but he also filled it up with petrol AND washed and polished it. How sweet is that?

Greetings from Sydney, dear reader. I am not entirely sure what day it is, but I do know I’m back in my home town. I can tell this because of a few key points of differentiation from my adopted home of New York City:

*my parents picked me up from the airport
*there has been a constant chorus of “yeah, mate” and “good on ya’s” since boarding the QF 8 from Los Angeles
*the whole city seems peaceful, almost deserted
*I asked for a FLAT WHITE at the Bowen Island Bakery and it was superb
*I enjoyed a lovely glass of champagne with my friend Michelle and there was not only no extra tax, but no tip – ie, it cost what the menu said it would cost
*the bus driver smiled and joked with me as I boarded the bus this afternoon
*it’s 27 degrees (70s fahrenheit) by 10am

It is great to be back for a few weeks. Especially as the temperature had fallen below zero in the couple of days prior to my departure.

Trying to describe a recent male acquaintance’s unfortunate wardrobe choice to two friends yesterday, I used the phrase “daggy jumper” and was met with a pair of blank expressions. I think I should have used the local variant, “funky sweater”. (Funky here often designates something a bit old-hat.)

I could understand daggy not being used here, but jumper? It made me feel quite proud of our vibrant Australian idioms.

It’s official – http://www.bridgeliteraryservices.com/ is live on the internet. As I’ve said a few times before now (and hopefully not more than once before on this blog), unless you’re a virtual somebody over here, you’re an actual nobody.

Having two book proposals to send out to “editors” (what we in Australia and the UK call publishers) gave me a rather pressing deadline. The immovable object, however, was my flight to Sydney in two days’ time. Preparing the proposals, finalising the website content, buying Christmas presents and scheduling appointments for when I got back – in addition to my work with Simi – I felt out of control there for a week or so, awake all hours of the night, eating badly, eating too much.

I realised yesterday that I’m honestly looking forward to getting on the long-haul flight, just so I can kick off my shoes and watch one B-grade film after another, all the way home.

Let me introduce you to my wonderful friend Madeleine Beckman, a published poet, writing teacher, culture vulture, and sculpted shoulder for me to lean on since we met in April this year. (At a poetry reading, darling.)

She and I are pictured at the hot-hot-hottie-hot Spanish restaurant Casa Mono, posing for our waiter, a beautiful Bulgarian we initially mistook for a Spaniard.

Afterwards we strolled around the Gramercy Park area – my ideal place to live in Manhattan, were expense not an issue – and took tea at the Gramercy Tavern, a local institution.

Nothing like a party to usher in the holiday season. On Saturday night I met a very entertaining crowd at the home of my part-time “boss/client” Simi Linton at their annual December bash. The photo on the left is of Simi’s various assistants over the past few years; the photo on the right is of Simi and her current Gal Friday giggling as they dance to their theme tune, KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight” (that story will have to wait for a subsequent post).

There was plenty of eating, talking, dancing and yes, drinking. I contributed a fresh batch of my infamous “Sludge” dip (see previous post) and networked like a Trojan. I met two professional dancers – one of them a wheelchair dancer – chatted with a director of a non-profit organisation, and with a writer for the New York Times Magazine, among a host of other creative types.

My dear friend Jen Fleming has just told me she and stain-removal guru Shannon Lush, are the co-authors of the Number 1 (Spotless) and Number 7 (Speed Cleaning) titles, respectively, in the list of Australia’s biggest-selling non-fiction books in 2006.

I’m so proud of you, Jen. Rumour has it US publication is pending. Look out Martha Stewart!

Tonight there was a severe storm warning for New York. Not just for the leafy counties and shopping strips north and west of Manhattan, but for Manhattan and Brooklyn too. There was even a tornado warning for two counties just north of the city.

How exciting! People “upstate” were being encouraged to huddle in the centre of their house and wait out the storm. In my Prospect Heights neighbourhood I eagerly anticipated raging winds and driving rain lashing against my windowpanes. By the time it arrived at my place, sadly, the storm fell into the meteorological category of Whimper, rather than Bang.