Category Archives: Inspired by

Leave A Light On For Me…

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I was browsing through my general clever clogs emails this week and came across a bit of a gem from Springwise.com.  

Placelamp is a desk lamp which changes colour according to the owner’s status.

Image source: http://www.pixelonomics.com

You link the lamp with an app on your phone and you can program it to do all sorts of things – colour intensifies when you are closer and becomes a ‘reading’ lamp while at your desk. You can also set it to change to various colours according to your status eg. out of the office or even to reflect incoming emails or messages. Cool huh?

Anyway I got a bit excited and started looking at all of these other lamps and there’s some pretty amazing stuff out there.

This is the Titanic lamp from Viable London…


It was designed by Charles Trevelyan in 2005 and while it doesn’t seem like it’s for sale any more, it was such a great design that I just had to share it.

This next one’s the Martyr, a playful energy saver designed by UK design studio The Play Coalition in 2008…its sense of fun made me giggle.

And for the slightly morbid, here’s Hung – he (or she?) has been created by enPieza! and will set you back about €185…gulp! Game of Hangman anyone?

At the opposite end of the spectrum I found this cute cottontail on that most excellent of inspired-gift-giving websites, not on the high street. The Bunny lamp is available from All Things Brighton Beautiful for £69.95.

I meandered further and discovered an illuminating and spirited trio.

First, I found Whoopsy from Lumisource which reminded me of that deliciously intoxicating flow from cocktail shaker to glass – available in four fab flavours colours for just $24.95.

Next it was this upcycled Beefeater London Gin lamp from AfterGlowsbyStacey. She makes all sorts of spirit brands light up but I loved the mix of vibrant colour and London tradition combined with the whole upcycling vibe best. It caught my eye on Etsy for the bargain price of £20.

And the last in this alcohol-fuelled triumvariate was San Remo, an oriental inspired shade made from a whole load of paper cocktail umbrellas. It’s bottoms up from Zipper8Lighting and Etsy again for £72.34

This whole upcycling thing intrigued me so I mosey-ed around a bit further on this and got a bit excited about this recycled book lamp shade from the ‘make-it-yourself’ website, Instructables – you can download the instructions here for making this little beauty.

I wasn’t really sure how I could do that with my Kindle though so the last one I found was absolutely perfect. The Andrew Lang NOD has a slot for Audrey (that’s the Kindle for the Gidday uninitiated), a nook for my glasses and a third cranny for…well something else. It’s available from Emmo Home for $220. Yikes!

Strangely enough, all of this inspiration just reminded of an old favourite. 

I saw it in a store about 18 years ago in Melbourne, the store lights glinting invitingly off the glass beads. Struck by its classically elegant shape, I paid and took it home and it stood on the table near my purple reading chair for more than seven years before I lugged it across the world, added an adapter and found it a new home.  

It is the first thing I see when I open the front door. There’s a place for my bag on the table beside it and, when I turn it on, the beads tinkle gently as my hand brushes past before the room is suffused in a soft glow. 


But best of all? 

It tells me I am home. 

The F Word…

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This week my world has taken on something of a feminist flavour. 

Not that I am not a feminist – I am.

(I am also sure that there’s a better way to deal with that double negative. Go ahead – comment away!)  

I didn’t actually plan it that way but when I look back there has been a definite theme to the events I attended, the things I learnt and the conversations I had. Might be the planets aligning, might be a raising of my feminist consciousness. Might be my current musings about what my future might look like. Who knows. But over the last four days there has been a lot for me to consider about the future of women.

On Wednesday, I listened to some amazing women (and one man) explore women’s roles in our modern world at the Women in European Business Conference. It featured an excellent panel discussion, an interview with the always fabulous Joanna Lumley and a fascinating 45-minute presentation from Harvard associate professor and social psychologist, Amy Cuddy on shaping who you are – literally. It was an inspiring night and it was thanks to the ‘oh I’ve double-booked’ mistake of a work colleague that I got a guernsey. And what did I take away from all of this? That there are many, many choices about my future, many potential pathways to explore and a myriad of conversations to have. Oh and a potential place on the invitation list for next year’s event.

On Thursday, I listened to a lively discussion on the Pinkification of Young Girls at Selfridges as part of The Beauty Project. This was the last in a series put on in partnership with Intelligence Squared who always offer controversial topics and provocative panelists and with the future of the world’s female population firmly in their sights, Alannah Weston, Tiffanie Darke, Tanya Gold and Katie Hopkins launched into a litany of opinions about the dangers (or not) of a rose coloured world and the potential of a ‘princess’ generation. 

It seemed to me that we came no closer to any answers and whilst it was an interesting discussion, it meandered around for a while then finished all too quickly. In the end, it did transpire that encouraging a questioning mind, a breadth of choice and a sense of confidence in our women of tomorrow were the keys – and also some of the prevailing themes from my previous evening’s WEB Conference. How on earth this is going to happen, I have no idea but that the topic continues to raise in profile is generally deemed a positive thing. But is it enough?

On Friday morning I listened to a less-than-seven-minute TED talk from Dan Gilbert called The Psychology of your Future Self. (You may have noticed over the last few posts that I am having a bit of a love affair with TED talks at the moment.) Anyway, Gilbert postulates that we all under estimate how much we will change in the future and he uses some really clever ways of demonstrating that our heads really are buried in the sand when it comes to envisioning our future selves. Think about who you were, what you were doing and what was important to you ten years ago. Then think about how much you think you’ll change in the next ten years. Doesn’t it stand to reason that the rate of change will continue? Well, apparently reason has nothing to do with it but given my recent reflections about what might lie before me in the next 40 or so years, it seemed another fitting piece to add to my puzzle.

And finally yesterday, when I opened this week’s Mental Floss newsletter, I discovered that LEGO will release a new series featuring female scientist figurines this coming August. Hurrah! (Imagine hooray in the posh, clipped syllables of the English.) The LEGO Research Institute set will show women exploring the world from three different angles – chemistry, paleantology and astronomy. 

Image source: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/15401

And not a skerrick of pinkification to be seen. Double hurrah!

The concept was submitted by Dr. Ellen Kooijman, a geochemist from Stockholm who, despite entering her concept last year, may have tapped into the zeitgeist by encapsulating the sentiments of Charlotte Benjamin, a seven-year-old girl who wrote a widely publicised letter to LEGO in January admonishing the toymaker to ‘have more LEGO girl people who go on adventures and have fun.’ 

So while the rate of change might seem snail-paced to those of us who are firm believers in gender equality, it appears that all it takes are the words of a seven-year-old to create a little momentum. At this rate, just imagine where she could be in ten years time.

So as I sit here on the comfy couch, tap-tap-tapping away and reflecting on the week that was, I am definitely left with some positive feelings about the whole feminist issue. But it still seems like we still have one hell of a mountain to climb and while I lean towards the side of a bright future ahead, I think that the visibility remains poor and the path ahead uncertain. Not only for the women of future generations but also for those of us struggling with how to create a world of choice and equality now. 

And it leaves me wondering just who and where I might be in all of this in ten years time.

Bears some thinking about doesn’t it?

A Single Story…

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I had the enormous privilege of seeing Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie speak about her latest novel last week. I knew nothing about her except that she was Nigerian and that she had written a book I’d loved (Americanah 2014 #29 in The Book Nook). I left the event 90 minutes later inspired and wanting to know more.

Today I watched Chimimanda’s TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story. Throughout she talks about how limiting and how damaging a single story or viewpoint about a person can be, that it creates stereotypes that while not necessarily incorrect, are more often than not incomplete. That a single story creates presumption rather than openness, a potential wall of prejudice in our relationships with one another as human beings. She told of her own single stories, blown apart by having the opportunity to see things from a different perspective and also of the single stories about herself, experienced through the eyes of others.

It made me think more about single stories and one of the most extreme and damaging of all time – the Nazi ‘story’ about the Jews. Scary stuff.

It also made me think about the single stories about me: each twist of my kaleidescope reveals a potential single story – laconic Aussie, 40-something woman, single lady, career woman, Dutch pragmatist just to name a few. Even so, the whole is so much more than just the sum of all of these.

Then there are my single stories about others and I began thinking about how this starts with our parents. We see them as Mum and Dad and then they become ‘people’ as we get more and more perspective about them. How my Dad went from the person I thought was my biggest critic to someone who was more proud of me than I ever knew. How my Mum continues to be one of the strongest and most inspiring women I know, rising to every challenge and finding strength of purpose again and again in making a difference. 

I was even thinking beyond people to my original single story about London and how every discovery I make about it both enriches my experience of living here and deepens my love for this amazing city. 

It made me think about my reading of Americanah as my first dip into ‘Nigeria’ and how much I loved it and took the story to heart. And how this was my single story until I saw Chimimanda speak both on Thursday night and today on her TED talk. 

And as I only read it three weeks ago, it made me think (not for the first time) that life has the ability to transform when you read.

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Memories of Nanjing

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Memories are funny things aren’t they?

We gather so many millions and millions of them throughout our lives and somehow they all get stored away in our mind’s filing cabinet. Some things we want to remember – a couple of mine include standing awestruck in the empty chamber in one of Giza’s great pyramids or for something more mundane, just remembering the name of the person I met half an hour ago. Others we’d rather forget. Most retreat and end up buried beneath the constant and never-ending deluge of our life. Yet sometimes, like yesterday, they pop up when least expected.

Blogger (and published author) extraordinaire Linda Janssen writes Adventures in Expatland and I was over there yesterday checking out the latest piece in her Expats A to Z series, C is for Committed. The post was pretty much what I’ve come to expect from Linda’s writing: thoughtful, insightful and generous. But what I didn’t expect was the evocation of a memory so powerful, it took me right back to a summer’s evening in a Nanjing street almost nine years ago.

I had been in my own version of expatland for about 18 months. It had been a hard induction – initial expectations of money, home and job had fallen well short and my family and friends watched from afar – concerned, helpless and confused – as I struggled with both the practical and emotional minefield of building a new life. And whilst I knew deep down that here was where I was meant to be, there was another little voice in my head whispering, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this to yourself? You had a good life, it would be easier/far more sensible to give up and go back to Australia.’

At this point in time, I’d found myself in a job that promised so much and fairly quickly became a huge disappointment but I did get a couple of amazing opportunities to travel in the ten months I was there and one of these trips was to Asia.

I’d spent a week with our local rep visiting suppliers in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. We’d managed a casual evening in Macau, another more digestively challenging evening as guests of a supplier in Shanghai, had visited villages and great cities and had been flown and driven around for six days. On the final day, we crossed the Yangtze River for our final supplier meeting and then spent the afternoon heading towards Nanjing in order to get on our respective flights home the following morning.

With the pressure of the week finally over, my colleague suggested a stroll through the city and a ‘local’ dinner so fortified by a drink at the hotel bar we set off. Nanjing was full of colour and life and my local took great care of me, showing me the sights and encouraging me to share several local dishes at a tightly packed restaurant filled with the curious clacketty-clack of Chinese chatter.

As we wandered back towards the hotel, I felt a whole world away from my troubles back in the UK.

We passed a few art and craft stalls and finally stopped where a small crowd had gathered. Drawing closer, I could see a young woman surrounded by rolls of bamboo parchment, an array of small ink pots before her: she was finger-painting these extraordinary Chinese scrolls and selling them for about £10. I stood and watched her for a while, fascinated by her complete immersion in her task, wanting to imprint the moment of simplicity, purity and happy endeavour firmly in my mind.

Eventually, I asked for one to be painted for me and as I looked on, a delicate picture of ebony branches with tiny bright red flowers came to life beneath her deft fingers. It was beautiful and I was so delighted at the prospect of taking this little piece of Nanjing home with me. But even more poignant was her explanation as she presented me with my finished scroll – the tree she had chosen to paint for me was one that slept and struggled through the cold dark months of winter and then would blossom in a vivid testament to its commitment to both survive and thrive in spite of the elements.

It hung on my wall in my tiny Kingston flat for six years before getting irreparably damaged during my move to Finchley. But Linda’s post yesterday brought it back to me, as vivid and delicate as the night it was created. And when I shared this story in response to her post, she asked me to share it with you.

I’ve built a life I absolutely love here in London and it feels like the seed that was planted ten years ago has finally blossomed. But I will never forget that moment in the dim light of a Nanjing street when, in fractured English, I was inspired by the recognition and acknowledgement of all my heart was feeling by a complete stranger.

 

Hanging A Right…

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I am lucky enough to work right near Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament and my morning walk to work from Charing Cross Station takes me along the bottom corner of Trafalgar Square and straight down Whitehall, past 10 Downing Street and through Parliament Square. With so many beautiful buildings and breathtakingly famous views, I am constantly whipping out my phone to capture a moment that makes me catch my breath and say ‘Wow!’. But this morning I turned right out of the station exit and discovered an entirely different source of snap-happy inspiration, Whitehall Garden. 

The Garden forms part of Christopher Wren‘s original vision of a continuous series of public gardens along the river bank back in 1666 – Whitehall Garden is one of four gardens and stretches along Victoria Embankment from the Golden Jubilee Bridge towards Westminster Bridge. It was laid out in 1875 along the river side of Whitehall Palace (which to this day still contains the Banqueting House with its exquisite Rubenesque ceiling). 

Compared with the hustle and bustle of Whitehall, the lush green landscape before me offered a more serene and contemplative space than usual for the last leg of my commute. With today being ANZAC Day, it also seemed appropriate that my decision to beat a different path to the office took me past the RAF Memorial. And I loved the opportunity to finish off my commute with a different perspective of Big Ben…

I didn’t expect to find so much that was interesting along the way, expecting a spot of vague strolling but upon crossing Northumberland Avenue, having a Monopoly moment and entering the garden, I stumbled across a fabulous little piece of history.


These are Queen Mary’s Steps and were discovered in 1939. They were built by Wren in 1691 as part of a riverside terrace for Queen Mary II in front of the original Whitehall Palace (one of Henry VIII pads) and the curving steps provided access from her Royal Apartments to the State Barge. *snap snap*

But the serenity of the gardens (and more ‘peaceful picture’ opportunities) beckoned…






And soon I was turning right and crossing into Parliament Square beneath the gothic gilded clock tower.

I do love this city…what a great way to start a Friday…and all because I had a whim to hang a right.

Yellow Peril…

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In my last post I mentioned that I’d been travelling in the USA and one of the rare delights of hanging about (for hours!) in airport terminals is browsing through the local portfolio of magazines. The New Yorker is a bit of a fave so that’s found its way into my reading pile again. But I’ve uncovered a new candidate for my affections – Mental Floss – and having recently discovered their witty snippets on twitter (@mental_floss), I was delighted to find the magazine on the newsstand and spent part of my time Seattle-bound, devouring its pages.

Anyway this leads to the point of this post – flowers. In particular, yellow flowers. And not because it’s Valentine’s Day. 

(I’m a bit bah-humbug about Valentine’s Day and would much prefer to receive protestations of love all year ’round.)

No, it’s because I have just purchased my first daffodils of 2014.


This is a bunch from a prior year as mine haven’t bloomed yet. However I expect to get up tomorrow morning and seeing bright bobbing blossoms emerging from their green buds.

Sigh!

I do find such happiness in a simple (and inexpensive) bunch of cheerful daffs.

But according to Mental Floss, when it comes to a splash of golden colour, it’s not always sunshine and roses daffodils. In fact it could be downright perilous.

In Japan, a bunch of yellow flowers means ‘I’m jealous’ so green with envy seems not to apply in the land of the rising sun. In Peru, it’s a declaration of hatred while in Russia, the message is ‘let’s break up’, not exactly what you’d want to receive at any time of the year let alone on the 14th of February. 

But yellow flowers need not always be a declaration of your lack of affection. According to Mental Floss, if you are in Mexico, scattering marigolds over someone’s grave means ‘come back to Earth and visit me’…

Marigolds decorate this grave to encourage the soul to rise again

So on this St Valentine’s Day, if you’ve planned to say it with flowers, choosing yellow may not be the floral tribute your heart’s desire is looking for.

However, my source informs me that daffodils mean rebirth and new beginnings, regard and chivalry and ‘you’re the only one’.

So if I’m your ‘one’ – or even one of a special ‘few’ – you can feel free to send me some of these golden yellow trumpets any time of the year.

Heady Stuff…

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Over the last few weeks there seems to have been a theme emerging from my inspired meanderings. Whether it’s being prodded, protected or paying its way, it would appear that the head is making …well headlines. 

You see it started for me with my first haircut with a new hairdresser. The previous one returned to Hungary via the magic carpet of love and while I am happy for her, it sucks for me. Quite frankly, it’s ALL about my hair and a poor do does not a happy girl make.

Anyway Springwise.com also started off 2014 with a review: of the top ten business ideas that they thought stood head and shoulders above the rest. Among these were a folding bicycle helmet from the UK, an invisible one from Sweden and some face-recognition payment systems from Finland.

Then I found out about the Science Museum’s latest exhibit called Mind Maps: Stories in Psychology which has made it on my 2014 list of things to do. (I’ve got until August to see this one.) And then both TED talks and Upworthiest posted about depression and The New Yorker ran a piece on anxiety. 

These heady reflections might sound timely – post Christmas/New Year blues and all of that – but we in the northern hemisphere are already lacking a few happy hormones (via Seasonal Affective Disorder) and sunshine-y daylight hours so I vote for focussing on the things that put a smile on your face.


Like the Little Rooster.

Little Rooster is an ‘alarm’ for the ladies. It’s a small vibrating device that is popped in the underpants before going to sleep that promises to transform your first waking moments. Delivery to the UK takes only 2 business days so for UD$69, you can put a smile on your dial every morning…by Wednesday.

Now THAT’s heady stuff! 

A daring adventure

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Ten years ago today I arrived at Heathrow Airport. I had two large suitcases and a visa in my passport. There was no-one to meet me (he was late). So I sat in the large grey Arrivals Hall, jetlagged and scared and certain that this – whatever ‘this’ was – was what was next for me.

How ever much pre-work and planning could have helped me in my new and daring adventure we’ll never know because I had leapt. Leapt straight out into the wilderness, albeit an English-speaking one, with not much more than two months elapsing since my decision to pack up and go. I remember thinking to myself, ‘little ol’ me against the world. What will I do if he doesn’t show?’

Well he did, but not for long.

So I picked myself up and built a life. And as with all daring adventures, it is never a straight trajectory. Each time I thought I was within reach of that magical brass ring (the great job and happy living situation being the two early contenders for this honour), it contrived to slide away, slipping through my fingers to shatter cruelly before me or disappearing into the ether leaving me wondering whether I had ever been close to it in the first place.

But there’s more to life than brass rings.

So I snatched moments for careful consideration. Joyful ones, sad ones, frustrated ones, peaceful ones, excited ones and lonely ones. Scrutinised each one to find the clues to happiness, success, contentment and power in this new and daring adventure.

I took chances and bottomed out. Made friends, unmade them again and kept the ones that mattered. Thrust myself into the thick of local life both past and present and grew to love my new hometown. Took steps forward – many of them small and unplanned – and some large ones back. Struggled with why I wanted to be here when it was just so damned hard. Laughed and cried and celebrated. Lost the love of my life and got the job of my dreams.

In ten years I built an extraordinary life.

And when I walk down Whitehall to work each morning, with Admiral Nelson at my back and Big Ben peering over the rooftops ahead and beckoning me towards the office, little ol’ me says quietly to herself, ‘look what I did’.

And smiles.

Bourne again

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I’ve been enjoying a little staycation for this ‘week between’ Christmas and the start of the New Year. It’s been a week of pottering about at Gidday HQ: literary lie-ins (aka indulgent reading in bed until somewhere around 10am), comfy couch sessions and bouts of cleaning with a few dips into some local delights – a trip to the Phoenix Cinema to see Gone With The Wind (all 4 hours of it – at last) and a fab girly catch up over cocktails & lunch at Skylon – in between.

After a couple of brisk, blue-sky days, the weather is wet and a bit dismal today so amid continued bursts of cleaning up, I’m aiming to tick a few more movies off the I-haven’t-seen-it-yet list with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes already under my belt this morning.

Speaking of ticking things off my list, I want to tell you about my Boxing Day. You see, I went to Sadler’s Wells to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake as a Christmas present to myself. Yes peeps, Happy Christmas to me.

I first saw Matthew Bourne‘s work in July last year. Play Without Words left me thrilled and awestruck and his take on Sleeping Beauty was clever and fun and brilliant. His Swan Lake, which premiered in 1995 with an all-male ‘swan ensemble’, has something of a reputation. So even though my previous experiences of Swan Lake had left me bored and wondering what the point was, I took my seat just before 2.30pm feeling quite excited.

The first familiar notes of Tchaikovsky’s score swelled from the orchestra pit soon after, the curtain rose and I was riveted.

It was theatrical and dramatic and witty, filled with light and shadow and the most extraordinary dancing I’ve ever seen. And for the first time I really felt the story. It was visceral – I could feel the fear and liberation in the prince, the reined-in majesty of his mother and the sycophantic expectation of his subjects. But most of all I felt the magnetism and menace of the swans. Their flapping fury, their drooping necks and piercing eyes, the muscular ebb and flow of sweeping, swooping limbs that were, it seemed, inseparable from the music.

Images sourced from http://www.sadlerswells.com

It was an amazing show and for me, it was if Tchaikovsky’s powerful score had finally met its match in the powerful movement on the stage. I felt incredibly emotional and as the cast took their final curtain call, I was on my feet applauding furiously.

Thinking back, I can still feel the moment that the final note evaporated into the air and the curtain fell. The slight prickling of my skin, the full feeling welling in my chest and the profound sense of being touched by something extraordinary.

 

The Answer To Virginia…

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Many years ago, Mum gave me a Christmas card. You might be thinking that this was not an unusual thing for a mother to do, give her 11 year old daughter a Christmas card. But this was a special card.

You see this was our first Christmas since Mum and Dad had separated. We’d moved to Melbourne 6 months before, were living in a small flat which backed onto a cold and windswept beach and had struggled to settle. Our new school was fraught with assessments on things I had never been judged on before (my prior record of scholarly success undermined by my ‘chicken scratchings’ hand-writing) and for the first time in my life, I was teased mercilessly by the ‘in’ crowd and found it hard to make friends. 

So Christmas rolled around. For several years I had known ‘the truth’ about Santa and yet the season had still been magical – the lights, the tree, the carols. But in 1980, the magic was missing for me.

And then I read about 8 year old Virginia O’Hanlon, a little girl whose friends had tested her belief in Santa and who wrote to New York’s Sun newspaper in 1871 to ask for the truth: Is there really a Santa Claus? The unsigned response (later attributed to newsman Francis Pharcellus Church) was printed on 21st September that year and it was these words that I found when I opened my Christmas card over a century later…

The answer to Virginia

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. 


Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.


No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
And while it didn’t make me believe in Santa Claus again, I still have this card 33 years later. So perhaps Church was right – Santa Claus does live forever, albeit in the child-like heart of a 44 year old. 

So for you my marvellous Gidday-ers, I wish each of you a little sprinkling of child-like hope and wonder this Christmas.