Sikamikanico Blogs

Well, we've been back in Newcastle for a month now; it has gone so quickly. (But then, it sometimes feel like I just wrote this . And when I did write that post, back in 2007, I remember a then-colleague of mine telling me, the world's oldest teenager, that I'd return to Newcastle with a husband a child. How I laughed at such a ridiculous notion). All that I can't leave behind  The idea of returning north had been kicking around for a while. I was tired. I was tired Sydney; tired of the crowds, the pollution, tired of getting pretty much anywhere being an exhausting hours-long odyssey, tired of not going to the theatre, the trendiest restaurants, tired of having my nose pressed up against conspicuous consumption. I wanted a simple life - picnics, the beach. So I set off to secure our fifth home in three years ( oy vey ), found one after a moderately tedious search, and we left Sydney for the final time. The move has been regretted by no one. We have a three bedroom ho

It's been said that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So it was with a heavy heart that, in light of the recent debate about the failed war on drugs, we braced ourselves for the re-hashed opinion of Angela and Tony Wood, parents of Anna , who died after taking an ecstasy tablet in 1995. Mr and Mrs Wood appear in the media every time drugs are debated, gamely determined to prove they are out for revenge and have learned absolutely nothing. This time it's an article by Adele Horin , whose writing I normally admire but who has sadly been sucked in by the Woods' peddling of their zero-tolerance message. The Woods want a "real" war on drugs. Ignoring any evidence that the war has failed , ignoring that the actual drug laws in place at the time of her death were certainly not in favour of harm minimisation - even ignoring that harm minimisation policies may have saved Anna's life by alerting her

The new, first time mother is the subject of much mirth. She is expected to be oversensitive, paranoid, laying down the rules of what she will and will not do with her child, worried about everything. It was certainly true for me with BabyG. I obsessed about germs and sniffles. Dummies which fell on a freshly mopped floor were boiled for five minutes before going back in his mouth. I changed his clothes three times a day. The first time he fell off the bed (all babies do this at least once), I was ready to call 000, until DH the paediatric nurse talked me out of it. That was then. Fast forward to today, when I bought BabyG a raisin cookie to keep him entertained whilst I did the shopping. He enjoyed the cookie greatly. He enjoyed it all over his clothes and hair and face, in fact. And as we passed a woman wheeling her newborn in a Bugaboo, delicately wrapped beneath a beautifully embroidered bunny rug, I heard her mutter about never letting her baby get that messy. I had a small chuckl