blue lace dress, autumn evening lightAnz Banking Internet

On Tuesday we had the most beautiful day – warm and sunshiny and really quite summery, if summery was a good thing, of course. It started off freezing, though, and I was up very early for work wearing layers of winter things and my big winter coat! This later gave way – it had to! – to summer dresses and sandals. While I wonder if saying so could have me proven wrong, I'll do it anyway: I think this was the last really hot day we'll have before the cold weather settles in, settles down and stays put, until next spring. To celebrate, I went for untrammelled girly-ness, wearing a dress with lace and trims and flounce – and sandals without socks! I love the socks and sandals (and tights and sandals/open toe shoes) look and have worn it for years, and love that it has become such a trend. Apart from liking how it looks, I like how it feels; shoes usually rub! I have a couple of pairs that don't rub, though, and these are one of them. I'd like to take this opportunity to show that there is isn't anything hidden beneath the socks or tights that almost always cover my sun-starved tootsies.

The late afternoon-early evening light was especially beautiful, in a way that only the early Autumn here can be. The sun is now so much lower in the sky, and, true to cliche, everything really was bathed in golden light. It felt warm like summer, but flowers had bloomed and fallen, and now curled up, tinged with brown. It feels so special when it is like this, and I tried my best to capture it on camera, elusive as it is. I wonder if I ever could do this? I was heading of for dinner at my mother-in-law's, and as we drove across town the light kept intensifying – it was all I could do to not insist we get out of the car to take more photos. We went along the Yarra at a particularly golden time. I think I might start taking pictures from the car, and slap loads of slightly blurry who-can-tell-whats on here, framed with the windscreen and the wingy mirror. Or maybe I won't ;)

I think this might just be the closest I can get to a candid pic of myself, when I am taking my own picture with the timer and tripod… I was playing to PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, and, having pressed the shutter and stood in the spot I hoped was in focus, I tuned out the beep-beep of the camera and was left standing, listening. It really is an amazing album. The best I have heard for years. It also really suited the afternoon and the light and the magic. I feel the need to watch Wickerman again this weekend! Feel the heathen goodness…

Oh, yes; I should add that I have been getting by on around 3 hours of sleep a night, and by this Tuesday I was feeling completely hollow, like having a hangover without the good times before it. I am wearing my supposedly awesome concealer – $90 at the shiny department stores, $30 at the bargain chemists with the alarmingly bright photocopier A4 print out ads – and, while it's good, it's not magical. I look like a racoon! Just without their fluffy stealthy cuteness x