A good life at any age
16 December 2025 | Life-Style
Let me start with a story. I was living the corner office dream in the 1990’s. A well-paid corporate job, big hair and shoulder pads, and a big ego, I was General Manager of an international consulting firm, saw little of the family and a lot of the coveted glass domed corner office, a fishbowl by any other name. But life was good. I’d made it.
My Eastern European mother was not impressed. I was the daughter she rarely saw. My constant travel seemed exhausting and dangerous to my mum whose life revolved around her beautiful garden and sewing clothes for me, that I never wore.
She was thrifty. Mum lived alone and bought food at Aldi when it was on special. Nothing wrong with that, except she had eleven frozen chickens and six hams in her freezer at one time…in case the economy crashed!
One Christmas I decided to share my bonus, buying luxury gifts for the family. In the exclusive store Georges, which used to grace Collins Street here in Melbourne, I would find all the treasures for my Christmas splurge. This was the kind of store where Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman would have been denied service. Georges was a store where after an exhausting day of shopping, ladies would take tea and often champagne, in the tearoom.
I walked the soft pile carpet looking at designer handbags, dresses my mother might like, but settled on a Christian Dior pale pink dressing gown in the softest luxury fabric and finished with the CD monogram sewn with a flourish on the breast-pocket. To accessorize, elegant mule slippers in pink with a large jewel front and centre, surrounded by pink feathers and with kitten heels. Mum was in her 60’s but what the hell! Viva 70! Mum will love it!
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Instagram ‘s a funny thing. As I scrolled and liked my way through the day’s posts I came across Retiring_Not_Shy and smiled. Clever. Funny. A woman who models my kind of clothes. Months pass and I post a shout-out for people to be interviewed for my book 50 Faces: 50…
16 August 2021 | 50 Faces 50 Lives
This week I met a remarkable man. Let me set the scene. It’s my first interview in over a year for my Ageing Well book. For the past year a Covid world made meeting people a risky business. So today I’m as excited as a kid at Christmas as I…
26 March 2021 | 50 Faces 50 Lives
I published this article after an interview with Petrus Spronk in November 2019..it seems like light years ago! It was one of the highlights of the research for my book and I’ll never forget encountering the creative mind in all its purity and the outstanding talent of this great artist….
19 February 2021 | 50 Faces 50 Lives
Let me start with a story. I was living the corner office dream in the 1990’s. A well-paid corporate job, big hair and shoulder pads, and a big ego, I was General Manager of an international consulting firm, saw little of the family and a lot of the coveted glass…
16 December 2025 | Life-Style
Never one to live moderately, I now belong to 3 book groups. I’m reading more than ever and I’m reading books and exploring authors that I never before knew about. Recently, we were asked to share a list of all-time favourite books. This is my list in no particular order……
13 November 2025 | Life-Style
” Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” A mantra for older age. A Funeral eulogy favourite. Dylan Thomas’s famous poem suddenly came to life last October when I visited his…
8 January 2024 | Life-Style
Mention Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro and Oprah in the same sentence and the mind goes into overdrive. The judgement noise around the use of injectable weight-loss drugs is LOUD. Taking away drugs from those who really need it ie Diabetics, was probably the first judgement call. Then there’s- only people with…
12 December 2025 | Living Well
I’m often asked what does Positive Ageing look like? It all sounds as if surround sound, continual happiness is the goal. In Fairyland maybe..but not in this world! Leonard Cohen, in one of his songs says something like- “There’s a crack, there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light…
8 December 2025 | Living Well
” It’s beginning to cost a lot like Christmas!” A saw a pale face look back at me in the mirror this morning. Lady, you need a day off! It’s the pre-Christmas season and catching up with friends, family adventures, shopping, packing, cooking, decorating, planning, cleaning, more planning and negotiating …
1 December 2025 | Living Well