Friday 24 July

Today I forked over EIGHTEEN DOLLARS for two loads at the Laundromat. I think from now on I will do as Yasmeen advised, and just swirl my clothes around the bathtub with a bit of detergent. If you love me, you won't mind the smell.

I visited four or five secondhand furniture stores, and came away with a despairing little notebook full of entries like "red wood, the man says it's antique, missing center leaf, $565." I was even depressed by the kitchen stools I looked at, because one was painted white with a little posy in the seat and weighed in at $199, and another was pinkish plastic with rusty metal cross bars and looked like someone had tried to paint it, maybe in the 1980s, and was even scarier because they were asking $95. I called Alice and she said she would loan me one of her kitchen stools. To console myself, on the way home I bought a ladle, a wire fruit bowl, and a candle, and made a fancy dinner of beef bourguignon.

There are palm trees here, and the birds of paradise and Japanese magnolias are blooming. I, however, spend my nights swaddled in blankets, toes enclosed in fur-lined boots, curled around my space heater. Right now I am trying to acclimatize, so I am bravely typing away with stiff fingers, in sweatpants and sweatshirt and thick socks, in the kitchen with the cold sea breeze breathing in through the windows. The Aussies are prancing around outside in shorts and t-shirts. Well, these are the same nutters who don’t install heating OR air conditioning in their homes. I have acquired a knitted hat and gloves and they see frequent use.