Date: 26 September.

Location: sunny Windsor, early for aerial yoga.

It's Friday. In the great and lazy tradition of all things TGIF, today's post about some things that happened this week comes to you in an easy to write and easy to read bullet point form.

1. Something quite sweet: I live in a big interbellum house divided into lofty little apartments. From the foyer, a grand old staircase sweeps up and down between floors. There's even a tower. (Lifelong mission: secure access to tower, drink tea and read books there. Potentially creep out small children passing by and become figure of urban legend.) The bottom step of this grand old staircase has become a trading posts of sorts for residents. We leave things there for one another. In recent months items left on the step include: a basket of homegrown lemons and parsley, a stack of Women's Weekly and Frankie mags, two polar bear soft toys. My favourite thing to find (besides food, obviously it's always food) is books. Better yet, it's become customary to leave a short book review along with your literary offering, ideally of the prosaic and humorous variety. For example I found Death Comes to Pemberely, with a sticky note saying 'Lizzie did it. JK, read it yourself'. Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Everything, was abandoned with a note saying 'Not short. Not everything. Felt cheated'. 50 Shades of Grey, 'Not enough sex', with a two sad faces– that someone has then turned into nipples. Keeping it classy. Last week there was a tattered copy of Gone Girl with the note 'A good read'. This week it turned up again with the same note, scratched out and amended to read simply 'Liar'.
2. Something awkward. They re-painting the outside of our grand dame of a house this week, meaning men on cranes at window height. It's all fun and games and an exciting new shade of white for Bradoc House until you come home one day, strip off all your clothes, work on your sofa in a state of déshabillé then realise that you need to leave to get to an appointment and begun to stroll into your bedroom to dress only to realise that there are two men out there looking in as they paint the house. This leaves you with a conundrum: unable to leave the house as you're severely under-dressed (and, sadly, not Lady Gaga or a post-Disney starlet, upon which this behaviour would seem sonnormal that it would merit barely a tweet), but unable to get to clothes because of said state of undress whereupon you pace the length the apartment, a bit like (semi-naked) tigress until you fall upon the laundry hamper and, holding your nose, don cold-sweat crusted yoga clothes and strut into bedroom to retrieve real clothes like nothing was amiss. (Note: this awkward moment was only to be exclipsed later in the week when, confident that the bathroom windows are frosted, I go to the toilet, only to discover that the top pane of glass is not at all frosted and the painters outside? Not at all trying to pretend not to watch.)
3. Something Japnesey: With fellow cat-liker Dawn, take a visit to Melbourne's first Cat Cafe. Yeah, that's right. You get coffee and play with rescue cats. Sadly, it's not a BYO cat situation.
4. Something Nordic: I'm having a Scando style week, reading Australian-Icelandic novel Burial Rights whilst watching the Swedish version of thriller TV series The Bridge. Those Northern Europeans truly have a sense for the grim macabre that is utterly unrivalled.
5. Something from under the bed: I spring cleaned this week, an adventure which necessitated going through and washing everything in my costume box. Hanging its freshly-washed contents out to dry on the communal washing line behind the house really made me take a long hard look at myself: slutty Bier Wench outfit, slutty Dorothy outfit, slutty Spanish Señorita outfit, slutty Sailor Jupiter outfit…. The painters on the cranes really seem to like me.
6. Something new: I've started working with an international recruiter and I've begun to really warm to the idea of a year in London or the Middle East. However, I'm truly worried that I'd simply be throwing myself back into the sweatshop/slaughterhouse that is legal private practice, merely with a new backdrop and less fun colleagues. Newsflash: making grown up decisions is hard.
7. Something terrifying: Next week I turn 29. I know. Thankfully, I intend to be so washed away on a tide of German beers and giant pretzels at my Oktiberfest birthday celebrations that I'll barely even feel the ageing process. Slutty beir wench outfit to get an outing.

Love

Alex

Have I mentioned the recently discovered addiction Bunky & I share? Painting ceramics and gossiping at All Fired Up? Well, this is Bunky's latest artwork: giant mug with skyline. Too cute! My goodness, we're going to make sure awesome little old ladies one day...

Healthy lunch: celery, lettuce, spinach, lemon juice.

And it's equal and opposite reaction: peanut butter and jam donut from cult cafe, Short Stop.

Rock n roll night in: Burial Rites and tea. Oh yeah.

Hello grand final week! (Go hawks).

The 'Ladder Fun'. From Taj Mahal tickets to Turkish daisy crowns, wedding invitations to Polaroid happy snaps from Christmas. Going to need a bigger ladder.

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