MAY 15.
Tonight I hurl myself into cyberspace with the launching of my website www.nadinewilliams.com.au and I feel like I am soaring high on a kite and who knows where I will land.
It’s an exhilarating ride, but I am also incredibly scared of what I may have unleashed here. I am like a kindergarten kid navigating a Boeing 747 at 37,000 feet!
However, the occasion is a special event in my life because we will announce publicly at the perfect venue – the Wallis Cinema Complex, at Mitcham – that I have sold the film option rights for my debut book From France With Love to young Adelaide film producer Peta Astbury. Of the crowd sipping champagne and nibbling on my home-made petite quiches, only family knows this exciting fact.
Special guest is Joan Lady Hardy, former Adelaide model who met and married the dashing Olympic Gold medallist yachtsman and wine king, Sir James Hardy. She is “special guest’’ as the epitome of ageing well and arrives in a stunning black dress with its draped, cowell neckline – glamorous, gracious, warm and dignified – and still so beautiful. Read more »
Philippe Clergue from Le Cordon Bleu
Quality more than quantity still rules the plate in France, despite societal change surrounding food, says eminent Parisian Cordon Bleu chef, Philippe Clergue, who was in Adelaide recently for Tasting Australia.
And, whatever the future holds for French cuisine, his message is that seafood will always be a dominant ingredient on the menus of France.
So it is no surprise that the one-star Michelin chef, who is responsible for aspects of the curriculum at Cordon Bleu in Paris chose a seafood menu for his recent Masterclass at Cordon Bleu at Regency Park.
It is the first time the elite culinary school has brought out a top French chef to run a Masterclass for guest students from the public. Read more »
Who would expect one of the most spectacular wildlife experiences on Kangaroo Island to happen while sipping early-morning tea at an unlikely place – on the veranda of American River’s general store.
Amazingly, straight ahead of us four magnificent pelicans glide into view, circling and swooping over the sparkling blue waters of Eastern Cove. They are like kites as they put on a wonderful air show, but then they seem to fall into line in a row overhead to do what could only be described as a fly-past, in perfect formation as if to say “Good morning’’. Or perhaps it is to let us know what we might have missed for not being patient when we had strolled along Scenic Walk on our way to the store. The birds had been clustered there in the shallow waters on the foreshore patiently waiting to be fed by staff from All Seasons Kangaroo Island Lodge. A few families of guests were gathered for the feeding time scheduled for 9am each morning. We had stopped for a few minutes, scooping up our small Maltese dog, Jackson, until five minutes after 9am before strolling on our way when no-one arrived to feed them. Read more »
It seems only yesterday that our generation would sing parrot-like that Beatles’ hit When I’m 64 and never waste a thought on what life would be like then.
The notion that we would ever “get older losing my hair’’ as the four Liverpool lads belted out, applied only to old men.
Yet,this is the year the baby boomers, born in 1946 reach that very age of 64. And 
surprisingly, life is rolling right along happily in a state that cannot be denied anymore – as older men and women.
The horror is that the woman who stares at me from the mirror these days looks remarkably like my dear late mother.
This shocking revelation could grow even more distressing if, deep down, I didn’t still regard myself as a perpetual 30-something. I still feel like Aphrodite inside. But one must keep that Greek Goddess of beauty in our mind’s eye because just the other day I saw a very middle-aged Princess Anne and she is about to turn 60 – and younger than me! That’s a fact one cannot escape because I remember dancing in my bobby socks to welcome her mother, the Queen, on the Adelaide Oval.
So, we are no longer young, or even middle aged, because despite latest social research which reflects how people’s attitudes to the term “middle aged’’ is changing by pushing it further back from 40,to 50, then to 60, we need to accept that 60-something is not 50-something. The big 6-0 birthday is a reality check. There is a big divide and iconic Maggie Tabberer was the first to alert me to this fact at a time when I hadn’t even hit 50. “It is a passage of time which changes you,’’ she had said. Read more »
SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010.
It is Saturday morning I rise early and I prepare my home for a Red Letter Day – the signing of the film options papers for my debut book From France With Love. I notice the dead gladioli in a vase and whip them out into the rubbish.
“We need new flowers for today; dead flowers are a bad omen,’’ I call out to my husband, Olivier .
I drive to Amanda’s florist and buy lilies and irises and a posey of pink flowers for the table. Next door I buy a slab of Kucken from Akkerman’s bakery. Mum would whip up kuchen and sit it on the open oven door to rise, then mix butter, flour and sugar into the crumbled topping. Its sweet yeasty aroma would fill the kitchen when she would take it piping hot out of the oven, its crunchy topping a honey gold colour. Yes, mum would be pleased with my choice. Read more »
My life in this Golden Age of recent retirement is such a bowl of cherries, that each 
day I choose some other delicious adventure or activity. While a new fitness routine is the biggest challenge, my time is dominated by “cocooning’’ a return to hobbies and interests of my 20s and early 30s. This evidently is a trend for baby boomer women to return to handiwork, in my case, triggered by the arrival of the first grand-daughter. As a young woman, I was a good dressmaker and made many of my own clothes and those of my young daughters. I have had framed the tiny baptism gown I made from left-over bridal lace for my first baby, Serena. As a housewife and mother, I enjoyed cooking and entertaining and gardening, but all of these pleasurable pursuits were swept aside for the past 28 years of my professional life as a mature-age tertiary student (8 years) and newspaper journalist for the past two decades. I sold my Necchi sewing machine years ago. Feminism replaced the familial, and I thumbed my nose at a woman’s homely role, a fact which irked my mother.
Retirement was justifiably a risky time after an exciting work life, but I planned to do something different each day – and adopting a much healthier lifestyle involving gym fitness two or three times a week was a vital factor. Despite a top-flight gymnasium in-house at The Advertiser I had never used the facility more than a half a dozen times a year, so building a new lifestyle would be a challenge. I had written so many articles linking fitness and agility with longevity that now I must walk my own talk. Read more »
my journal | nadine 23/05/2010 | 
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