where have you been, my darling young one?

I consider myself a deeply devoted follower of Bob Dylan. His music has been the soundtrack to many of my life's great joys and dramas, and even the inconsequential moments in between. His words still, and will always, make me cry. But I had not, until recently, seen any of Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home. This probably makes me a very pale pretender in the eyes of Dylan diehards, but I'll put it down to the fact that I haven't watched anything feature-length that doesn't involve animation for at least five years.

I still haven't watched No Direction Home in its entirety. But I have seen enough to realise that my love for this man's poetry was just scratching the surface. Seeing the young Bob Dylan, the kid prophet who everyone wanted a piece of, I fell under his spell. His grainy black-and-white, before-I-was-born spell. Sexy doesn't even come close. It was love on a whole new level.

don't hold your breath

Bellingen. You can't actually say it without emitting a deep sigh. I've tried.

I've also tried to imagine a reality that involves me living there, raising barefoot blissful children, communing with nature and seriously not giving a flying fuck what anyone else thinks, says or does. I'll let you know how that works out.

perfectly balanced

I love dragonflies. In my own personal ranking of beautiful insects, they're second only to cicadas. This is largely because their very long tails are a little bit freaky and they make that click/buzz sound when they fly, whereas the dear little cicada has a very slow, considered way of walking around that makes you feel sure they're not going to do anything rash. But dragonflies, when they are perfectly still, are so perfect and so still that you can't help but marvel at them.

Which brings me to this little chap, another Bellingen purchase, handcrafted so that when you place its head on the tip of your finger, its wings provide perfect balance and it will sit there all day without falling off. You can even zoom it around if you feel so inclined. Although I think zooming might defeat the purpose. It's really all about the stillness. No sudden movements. Don't do anything rash.

the rainbow connection

I served up two bowls of pasta to the six-and-under set, for whom eating is not always a priority. It was a kind of pasta we'd never had before, which prompted Freya to ask exactly what kind of pasta it was.

Me (reading from packet): They're called macaroni elbows.

Freya (without pausing for thought): No, Mum. Not elbows. Rainbows.

And who am I to argue with that.

five grey elephants

The other day I was sitting at my computer, looking at this and that, when Freya came into the room to see what was happening and why she wasn't involved. She was holding a hair elastic, stretched between two fingers, and she started singing a song that's often on Play School - five grey elephants balancing, step by step on a piece of string - actually those weren't her exact words, but I got the general idea. Then she realised the computer was on, which led a split-second later to the realisation that she had direct access to YouTube, her new favourite thing which allows her to watch ''the Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang song'' and funny cat videos for hours on end (probably only minutes, but it genuinely seems like hours). So she asked to hear the elephants song, and as I know the infinite resource that is the internet, I googled it. We did not immediately get the song we wanted, but something much more intriguing and wonderful, called the calm space which on that particular day in this particular life could not have been more perfect. I marvelled at the sheer serendipity of it all for several seconds, before being sternly prompted to find the five grey elephants. Bal-an-cing.

good for the soul

These little red shoes were waiting for me, very patiently, with all the other good little Naots, at a shop in Bellingen. I don't know how long they had been waiting, but I can tell you my feet had been waiting what seems like a lifetime to find shoes so deeply, blissfully comfortable. And on the very day that I turned 36, there they were. Like a beacon. Sensible shoes. The time has come, the universe decreed, to turn your back on articles of vanity and embrace your inner librarian (I have always longed to be a librarian, but that's another story). My beloved paid the kind lady and handed me a gift wrapped in my favourite fashion statement -to thine own self be true. My soles, and my soul, were immensely grateful.