A Sydney primary school has banned clapping in a bid to respect students who are ‘sensitive to noise’.
Instead, students at Elanora Heights Public School can silent cheer, pull excited faces and punch the air – but only when teachers say it’s ok to do so.
The new rule was introduced in a school newsletter, with claims it ‘reduces fidgeting’.
The newsletter reads: “The practice has been adopted to respect members of our school community who are sensitive to noise.
“When you attend an assembly, teachers will prompt the audience to conduct a silent cheer if it is needed.
“Teachers have also found the silent cheers to be a great way to expend children’s energy and reduce fidgeting.”
There are also other Australian schools that have banned hugging, celebrating Australia Day and the word ‘black’ in the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep”.
Shannen Doherty has been determined to raise awareness for breast cancer since her diagnosis with the disease in August.
And her battle has just taken a very personal turn, when she shared the moment she shaved off her hair with her social media fans.
In an intimate series of six pictures, the former Charmed actress revealed the emotional moments as she went through the process of chopping off her locks.
In the first photo, she can be seen looking extremely distressed and exhausted, being held by a friend.
Shannen tears up when talking about her diagnosis in the clip below. Post continues.
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Shannen was seen getting extremely emotional before the shave began.
Then she began, taking a pair of scissors to her tresses as her friends watched on and documented the whole thing.
Her friends continued to support her through the process, taking photos and assisting her with the cutting as needed.
She soldiered on, chopping her locks off first.
Shannen was determined to show her followers what she was going through to raise awareness of the disease.
The star had hinted she would be making the big change earlier in the day, posting a cryptic message alongside an assortment of seemingly mismatched objects.
“Cupcake pan, chocolates and a razor… Stay tuned. #cancersucks #thankgodforfriends,” she said.
Dr Oz explains why he things Shannen will beat her cancer in the clip below. Post continues.
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The Beverly Hills 90210 star is set to have surgery later this year, following drug treatment and chemotherapy to shrink the tumor.
“They’re just breasts,” the star had said previously. “I mean I love them… Mine, and everyone’s they’re beautiful but they’re just breasts.”
With their immaculate hair, carefully-pressed uniforms and lipsticked smiles, flight attendants appear pure and wholesome. But behind the cabin curtains lies a world of sex, alcohol and dirty tricks. An ex-hostie lifts the lid on what really goes on when passengers aren’t looking.
A light and a tampon for attracting attention
New cabin crew have initiation tricks played upon them, ranging from having the lifejacket whistle replaced with a tampon (awkward when you’re supposed to mime blowing into it during the safety demonstration) to the Captain ordering them to go to the middle of the plane and jump up and down to help get stuck wheels to come down before landing.
You’d be surprised how many people “do sex” on a plane.
Sex in the air
At the very back of long-haul aircraft, there’s a little door resembling a cupboard that opens into a tiny stairway leading to some in-built bunk beds. This is where cabin crew sleep on long flights. Some enthusiastic crew have been known to have sex in there.
Jungle juice
There’s a concoction known as “jungle juice” a potent combination of spirits and juice or soft drink that cabin crew make for drinking when they go away. If you see a flock of flight attendants swaying gently as they check in at a hotel, it may be an indication they drank it on the bus from the airport.
Getting too boozed on board is a big no-no.
Your room or mine?
Talking of hotels, crew may have room parties to decompress after a flight. This can include various drinking games, getting to know each other better and other shenanigans. Many a photo of a dishevelled hostie wearing a captain’s hat has emerged from such parties.
Are you going to eat that?
The cabin crew might not be eating the same food as you. On occasion, they might even be tucking into a spare lobster from first class or smoked salmon from business class. Perhaps some untouched posh chocolates re-appropriated from passenger trays. Official crew food, however, isn’t all that different from economy fare.
Thou shalt not fart
There’s an unwritten rule that crew must never break wind in the galley. In such a constricted space, that would be downright anti-social. Instead, there’s an unofficial long-haul manoeuvre known as crop-dusting, in which the offending flight attendant slowly releases the pressure from their gut while wandering through the cabin. This is not covered during training but learned on the job.
Sneaking up for an upgrade Bridesmaids’ style won’t work.
In the event of an emergency
If you hear the pilot say something like “will the senior cabin crew member report to the flight deck immediately” over the PA system, say a prayer read your safety card. This is an alert for an emergency, before the pilots brief cabin crew on a plan of action. Don’t start screeching and grab your lifejacket yet though — your best chance is to stay in your seat and listen to the crew’s instructions.
Feeling hot?
If you feel rather flushed on a night flight, it may be because the crew have turned up the heating as a way of getting passengers to go to sleep instead of ringing those damn call buttons with relentless requests for drinks. This is generally quite an effective technique.
Vomit and much, much worse
The job can be dirty for cabin crew: being handed bags of vomit or dirty nappies, for example. Or dealing with bathrooms that have been mistaken for squat toilets or thrown up in. There are stories of burst colostomy bags and violent gastro bugs. You get the picture.
The Mile High Club
Passengers do join the Mile High Club. Most often in the toilets. The giveaway is the flimsy door vibrating (plus occasional grunts and queue outside). On more than one occasion, I had to interrupt with a knock and innocent “Are you okay in there?” Sexy? Romantic? Hygienic? I think not. Get a room.
Fancy an upgrade?
You might slip through the curtain, sink into the back row and think you’ve got away with it. But trust me, you haven’t. The crew have a passenger list that tells them exactly who is sitting where. If you get an upgrade, that’s fine, but otherwise don’t take what you haven’t paid for. And beware the walk of shame as you’re marched back to your rightful seat.
**the author’s flying career was based in the UK and ended in 2000, so some of this information may be out of date/location.*
We’re all guilty of it: you get home and the first thing you do is peel off your bra before chucking it on the ground (or, ‘The Chair’ where all loose items of clothing live).
And then the day after, you pick up the same bra and wear it again.
The cycle goes on for days –sometimes weeks – before you finally muster the strength to chuck it in the wash.
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So how often should you really be washing your delicates?
“The need to wash your bra varies and depends on your personal hygiene and how often you wear each bra,” Carol Rashleigh from Bendon told The Weekly Online.
“In general, I think it’s ok to wear it a few times before you wash it.”
While we’re sorry to add another chore to your life, caring for your (often expensive) bras will make them last longer, saving you cash in the long run.
So what’s the best way to go about washing them?
“Cold water,” says Carol. “Washing your bra in cold water will help preserve elasticity. Follow the care instructions and for machine washable bras, use a delicates bag and fasten the hooks.”
“Also, don’t use strong bleaches or detergents and try to hand wash your more delicate pieces.”
Storing your bras is just as important as washing them.
If you’re guilty of just throwing them into your undies drawer, it’s time to break the habit.
“When storing contour or padded bras, don’t fold the cups into each other as this will ruin the fabric and eventually break down the pad.”
“It’s best to lay them flat in a drawer or hook over a hanger.”
Like most material goods in our lives, the more love your give it, the longer it’ll last… so start taking care of your bras!
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“My mother used to say, ‘I wish I could tell you, but it’s too distressing’,” says Janis.
“Ever last year, when she was dying, I said, ‘Don’t take it to the grave, Mum. Whatever it is, tell us, you’ll feel better’, but she would not budge.”
Janis, 64, her sister, Bev, 59, and the rest of the large and loving family now know what that secret was: they’re directly descended from Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of 10 children who was hanged for murder at Sydney’s Darlinghurst Gaol in 1889.
Louisa’s case is astonishing. She as a beautiful woman who was twice married and twice widowed, and she was at various times accused of killing one or both of her husbands. Although hanged for her crime, it’s entirely possible that she was innocent.
The case against Louisa was circumstantial. Nobody ever saw her do it and there was nothing concrete to tie her to the case.
Worst still, some of the key evidence used against Louisa came from her only daughter, May, who was just 10 years old when she was asked to take a Bible in her hand and testify against her mother.
Little May – described in court as pretty and particularly intelligent – told one of the judges she had seen a box of Rough on Rats (essentially pure arsenic) in the kitchen of their home. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get a conviction.
Louisa protested her innocence all the way to the gallows.
I came across Louisa’s case by chance.
About five years ago, I was working on a different murder trial for The Australian newspaper. There had already been one mistrial, so one of the editors asked me to find out whether anybody had ever been tried more than one for murder.
I had a look in the archives and up came Louisa’s case. She had been tried once, not even twice, but an extraordinary four times for the Crown managed to get a conviction.
The case began to trouble me: how compelling would the evidence against Louisa have been? Who in the annals of English law had ever had to face four trials before being hanged?
I went looking for the original forensic reports, not really believing I would find them.
Yet there they were, stored in an old and dusty box at NSW State Records, which is a cool building under the gum trees in a lovely paddock more than an hour from Sydney.
Some of those records were more than 120 years old, but had been preserved, as had some of Louisa’s letters from jail, in which she begged for her life.
From there, I went looking for records from the old Supreme Court, for whatever notes had been taken by police and for original statements from witnesses who lived in Louisa’s street.
Some of the evidence was strongly suggestive of Louisa’s guilt, but I had doubts.
The case was full of strange tics and annoying coincidences. Before long, some of the characters, including the ghastly hangman, began to haunt my dreams.
After five years obsessing about the case, I took the results to HarperCollins, who agreed to publish Last Woman Hanged, the first full-length examination of the case, so readers could make up their own minds. Yet before I could publish the book, there was one more thing I needed to do – track down Louisa’s descendants.
I didn’t know where any of them had ended up, or whether there were any of them alive, but I knew I couldn’t in good conscience publish a book about Louisa without trying to find them. I also knew readers would want to know what happened to Little May, after she had been made to take the stand.
The task of tracing Louisa’s family tree was at times deeply frustrating. There were so many red herrings and dead ends.
I knew from searching the archive at the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages that Louisa had given birth to 10 children, seven of whom were still living when she died. What had happened to them?
A report from a 120-year-old copy of The Sydney Morning Herald suggested that three of Louisa’s children, all with the last name Andrews, were allowed to see her on the evening before she died, so they – and she – could say goodbye. Her eldest son, Herbert, who was in his 20s, took May and another son, Frederick, to Louisa’s cell in
Darlinghurst Gaol, where they all wept and prayed.
In the days after the execution, Herbert and Frederick went north to Adamstown, near Newcastle, where Herbert found work as a butcher. A search of the records turned up an old certificate that showed he married his sweetheart, Annie Henry, in Adamstown in 1893.
According to state archives, Herbert and Annie had three children: Frederick was born in 1897, but he lived for just two years. They had better luck with their daughters: Mabel and Pearl survived their childhoods, but then married and changed their names.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks when researching a family tree is that Australian women, upon getting married, almost always change their names. From then on, their children appear in the records under their father’s name. Some digging through The Newcastle Herald turned up the fact that Mabel had married Tom Civill in
1918 and had a son, Douglas Civill. He had gone on to have two boys, twins Howard and Arthur.
Howard Civill died a few years ago, but a search of the White Pages turned up the fact that Arthur Civill – Louisa’s great-great-grandson – was alive and living in the Newcastle area.
The temptation was to immediately call him, but how much did he know about his family history? Had anyone ever told him his great-great-grandmother , Louisa, had been hanged for murder at Darlinghurst Gaol?
I nervously called, introduced myself and asked, “Mr Civill, has anyone ever talked to you about your family history?”
“No,” he said, “I can’t say they have. Why do you ask?”
“Would you mind if I wrote you a letter?” I said, coming over all shy.
“A letter?” he said, “I suppose that would be alright.”
So I wrote it all down and then I waited, wondering what Arthur would think. By chance, I was in Queensland visiting my own family when he telephoned.
I braced myself, thinking, now he’s going to say, “We don’t really want to be connected to this story”, but happily, wonderfully, he said, “You’ve certainly got
everyone talking, haven’t you?”
I was so relieved. We laughed and talked about the case, and then Arthur dropped a bombshell.
“Now, you won’t believe what I’ve got in front of me. It’s an old family photo of Herbert Andrews. Would you like to see it?”
Would I like to see it? Oh yes, I would love to see it!
“I’ll see if we can’t get a nice copy,” Arthur said.
Less than a week later, a copy of that photograph landed on my desk at The Australian Women’s Weekly and I couldn’t stop looking at it. There was Herbert, son of
Louisa Collins, all grown up with his wife, Annie, and their two beautiful daughters, Mabel and Pearl, dressed prettily in white dresses.
“I have strong memories of those two ladies,” Arthur said, “I spent a great deal of time with them when I was a boy, but I had no idea about Louisa. I suppose it was the kind of thing people used to cover up, like having a convict in the family. I remember Aunty Pearl saying a few things and I wonder if she knew, but as children, we
were never told.”
Arthur has now read Last Woman Hanged and “it was like a pendulum for me, thinking, at first, she’s guilty and then she’s not guilty. But, to have four trials, that’s not justice. The last jury, I think they just gave up and gave everyone the verdict they wanted.”
His wife, Barbara agrees, “To think they put that little girl on the stand to testify against her mother… I suppose things were very different in those days, but it seems very cruel.”
Like everyone, Arthur was curious about what had happened to Louisa’s other children and to May in particular. The search had proved frustrating.
The newspaper archives had turned up one article, dated Saturday, January 12, 1889 – that is, just four days after Louisa was hanged – in the old *Richmond and
Windsor Gazette*, which said, “We understand that Mr James Geehan and his good wife has determined upon adopting the little girl, May Andrews, daughter of Louisa Collins. The child is pretty and intelligent, and Mr and Mrs Geehan are to be compliments on (their) kindness of heart…”
May had been adopted out, in other words. I didn’t doubt the accuracy of that story. The Geehans lived at Freemans Reach and the Richmond and Windsor Gazette had carried a number of stories of the family over the years, including the fact that nine of their 10 children had died before they adopted May, but what happened from there?
I searched all the available records, even checking with the Catholic Church to see if May had perhaps become a nun – but I kept hitting a brick wall. I knew May might have changed her name from Andrews to Geehan, but there was no record of either a May Andrews or a May Geehan getting married, or having a baby.
There was nothing to suggest that she had died, so I was stumped. How could a little girl simply just disappear?
Then, from an old court report dated 1894, came this, “On the 3rd of April, Beatrice Tierney did beat and assault Mabel Andrews at Freemans Reach… Mabel deposed that she resided with Mrs Geehan at Freemans Reach; on the 3rd of April, [the] defendant came to the yard of Mrs Geehan’s… and beat her on the face with both hands, blackening both eyes…”
So May had changed her name to Mabel Andrews. That made things easier. I began my search again and discovered that as soon as May – or Mabel – tuned 18, she moved away from Freemans Reach to be closer to Herbert and, in 1898, she married a fettler on the railways, John McGuiness, and begun having his children.
The first of them was a little girl. Achingly, May called that child Alice Louisa. She also had a boy, Edward, but tragically, both Alice and Edward (and possibly a third child, John) died when they were infants, leaving May with no living children until 1909, when she gave birth to another daughter, Thelma.
It would have been lovely to leave the story there, with May happily married, the mother of a healthy little girl, but I knew I would have to keep going.
What, ultimately, happened to her and her daughter?
I searched for a year, finding no trace of any other descendants.
Then, in July 2013, just as I was preparing to write the final draft of Last Woman Hanged, a death notice appeared in The Newcastle Herald, giving me all the information I needed.
Thelma had grown up and married, and there were descendants. Some were called Cairney and some were called Thompson.
They were inviting people to attend a wake for Mabel Thompson, Louisa’s great-granddaughter, and so I contacted Pettigrew Family Funerals in Newcastle and they agreed to pass a message onto the family.
It was Janis who got in touch and I’ll treasure her letter forever.
“Dear Caroline, firstly, let me thank you for tracking us down… it’s very exciting to finally read some background on the history of our dear grandmother [Louisa’s granddaughter, Thelma], who was much loved by us all.”
“I’ve shared this story with our Aunty Margaret and her younger brother, Victor. They had no knowledge of Louisa, but I’m not so sure about my own mother. She once told us she knew a family secret, but wouldn’t share it with us because it was too distressing. Even in her later years, she wouldn’t tell us and I can’t help but wonder
if Louisa was indeed the secret… You have created great excitement in our family so it would give us enormous pleasure to meet some more of Louisa’s descendants.”
Caroline Overington’s book on the story.
And so, The Australian Women’s Weekly invited Louisa’s descendants – the Thompsons, Cairneys and Civills – to lunch in Newcastle so they could finally meet each other.
No words can describe the moment they all came piling through the door. There was no awkwardness.
On the contrary, there were hugs and tears.
By the end of the lunch, it was like they had known each other for 100 year – which, in a way, they had. All were related and yet knew nothing about their fascinating family history.
Hours went by in what seemed like minutes, as three families shared their stories. The Australian Women’s Weekly team stood back as much as possible, to allow everyone time to come to terms with their emotions.
From the outside looking in, what was most apparent was how far the Andrews family had come. Just over a century has passed since young Herbert departed Louisa’s cell, knowing she would be hanged. Hundreds of women protested the execution, but their plea for mercy had fallen on deaf ears and there was no longer anything that Herbert or anyone else could do to stop the hanging.
Herbert and his brother went North to Newcastle, probably on horseback and with no more than his swag and the tools to light a fire to keep them warm at night.
They returned to work: Herbert qualified as a butcher and Frederick worked as a miner. Herbert also built his own house in Newcastle, by hand.
As tough as it must have been surviving the loss of their parents – one apparently murdered, the other hanged for the crime – there were moments of great joy.
Herbert married and had children, and so did May, and the family stayed tight in those years after their mother was executed, working hard and supporting one another into the new century.
All knew the secret, but kept it from their children, choosing to forge on, as they determined to make life easier for generations to come.
Four generations on, Louisa’s descendants stood proudly for these photographs, celebrating the lives of their shared ancestors and the rich and fulfilling lives they made for themselves.
“The emotion of this day will never leave me. I feel that the gaps in my past have been filled,” said Vic Cairney, 69.
“My grandmother was a lovely woman, a joy, but there was a sadness in her sometimes and I never knew why.
“This helped me put a picture together and I feel more complete. The women in my family tree, they were wiped from the history books, but they are home now and we can honour them.”
If you’ve ever been inside a women’s change room – be it at the gym or in a store – you’ll know it’s an interesting place.
The name says it all: it’s a change room.
A room to get changed.
However, it’s not nearly that simple.
Here are some of the craziest/weirdest/funniest things that have happened behind closed doors.
1.“I was blow drying my hair (I was fully clothed!) when I girl decided to stand right behind me. She was completely naked (no pants, no bra – nothing!) except for a mitt on her hand. She started rubbing the mitt all over her body. That’s when I realised she was fake tanning right behind me.”
2.“A woman at my gym sits on the floor and eats her lunch, picnic style. She’ll still be in her gym clothes and will just casually start eating. There’s a kitchenette and table downstairs she could sit at but no, she eats in the change rooms.”
3.“I once went for a shower after swimming to find a huge, used bloody tampon casually sitting on the shelf where you normally put your shampoo. Apparently, she couldn’t be bothered to walk the few steps to the toilets to change it there.”
4.“I used to work in retail and once walked in on a couple going at it. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
5.“I was cleaning the change rooms at the clothing store I worked at and found a pair of soiled undies one day. And another time, someone had peed in an empty, family-size bag of Maltesers.”
6.“I saw a lady brushing her pubic hair just out in the open AFTER she blow dried it with a hair dryer. She then used the same brush on her head.”
7.”At the gym, I saw a woman remove her used pad and place it on the bench in the COMMUNAL changing area. Then, she put on a new one.”
8.”The most ridiculous thing I’ve seen is an overflowing nappy in the Myer change rooms. That’s followed closely by snot smeared on the mirror in Top Shop.”
9.”Just the fact that a sign like this needs to be made is concerning enough:”
Single mum Alex is on the Bachelor looking for love – and it’s something she tells OK! she’s only ever experienced once before.
‘After my divorce, I met Tom and he was probably the first person I ever loved,’ shares the 24-year-old.
‘He’d been in a really severe accident on a construction site, where he’d fallen nine metres and severed his spinal cord, but we fell madly in love and I renovated my house so he could move in with me.’
A mum to five-year-old Elijah, Alex says the relationship – which began shortly after she divorced two years ago and ended last year – taught her a lot about love.
Once there was a little boy who grew up with two Australian parents who loved him very much. They gave him his own bedroom and filled it with toys. At first it was rubber dinosaurs and action figures, and then it was a train set, and as the boy got older, the gifts got more expensive: he even got a flat-screen TV so he could play his new Playstation in his room.
He had everything he could possibly want in other words, and for a while there, it worked brilliantly. His parents would pick him up from child care, and he would come barrelling down the hallway, saying: ‘Mummy’s here!’ and ‘Pick me up, Daddy!’
Life was bliss.
But then the boy got older and he grew more sullen. He took to throwing tantrums, and slamming his bedroom door, and his parents began to say things like: ‘Go to your room!’ and ‘You’re grounded!’ Before anyone knew it, the teenage years were looming, with a defiant child on one side, and dismayed parents on the other. What on earth had gone wrong?
“It’s a very common scenario,” says Dr Karyn Purvis, a world-renowned expert on child development who visited Australia last month as a guest of the actor, Deborah Lee Furness.
“All around the world, we are struggling to meet the needs of our children. Not their physical needs – there is no question that most of us in the West can meet the physical needs of our children – but what about their emotional needs? Are we really all that well connected to our children? I don’t think we are.”
Dr Purvis, who is director of the Institute for Child Development at the Texas Christian University, is herself a mother of three sons, plus she’s a grandmother, and a foster parent (she can’t say for certain how many disadvantaged children she’s taken into her home over the years because, she says, “they were never numbers to me. They were little people.”)
For more than a decade, since returning to college to get her Phd at the age of 53, Dr Purvis has also worked with what she calls “children from hard places” – meaning, kids who have been abused, neglected, or adopted out of orphanages, or whose mothers abandoned them, or were imprisoned.
She is recognised around the world for research into how to reach these troubled kids, but much of what she’s learned along the way, particularly about how the brain develops, can be applied to ordinary kids in affluent homes.
“When you think about it, an infant is designed in the most perfect way imaginable: they are just the right size to fit into the crook of your arm,” Dr Purvis says.
“They smell sweet and they look vulnerable – you want to take care of them.
“They cry out, and somebody comes and soothes them. But a child from a hard place doesn’t get held. Their cries go unanswered. And what we have learnt over the years is that this causes actual changes in the brain.
“Children from hard places are wired differently: withholding love, or failing to nurture has an actual, neurological impact, and it can take years to repair the damage.
“But it is the same with any child. I always say: any misbehaviour is a sign of an unmet need. So if your child is misbehaving, maybe it’s because we’re not connecting with them, and truly understanding their needs.”
Dr Purvis says that the lessons she’s learned, trying to heal damaged children, can be applied to ordinary children in affluent homes. For example, Dr Purvis says: instead of ordering a time-out, how about some time-in?
“We say to our children, ‘go to your room’ which is the same as saying, ‘go away from me, and come back when you can behave in a way that doesn’t offend me,” she says.
“What if we said, let’s have some time-in? Cuddle up to me, and tell me what’s wrong? Why are you yelling? What can I do to make you feel better? Let’s use our words to find out what is wrong.”
Countless scientific studies have shown how infant massage stimulates not just the body, but the brain: 30 minutes of baby massage has been shown to improve sleep patterns and ease crying. It’s the same with older children. Don’t be afraid to give them a hug.
It’s tougher, and it takes longer, but Dr Purvis says a child who is banished, or sent to their room instead of being bought close may well end up feeling more isolated.
Good, healthy food is also crucial: a child that has been eating junk food, high in sugar, salt and fat, will be bouncing off the walls as their blood sugar rises, and they’ll be ratty as it collapses.
“Small meals, six or eight times a day, of good, nourishing food is key to ironing out the peaks and troughs in a child’s moods,” Dr Purvis says.
“That’s true for young children, and it’s true for teenagers.”
Controversially – and working parents won’t like it – but Dr Purvis gently suggests putting ambition – and the desire for more material goods (bigger house, newer car) – on the back burner while the kids go through their various stages.
“If you’re looking at putting very young children in child care, could you delay going back to work?” she says.
“Ask yourself, can I work part-time? Because even a very good nanny is not a solution, not if you change nannies every three or six months.
“The human brain is still forming when a child is little, and nobody is going to meet your child’s cries as you would.
“But it’s true when children are older, too. I see parents coming to pick up their children from school. The first thing they do is take out their phone and walk off, with the children following behind, like ducklings.
“What about taking their hand, and saying how was your day? And really listening to the answer? And when your children are older, how about working part-time, or not talking calls after 5pm, and what about getting up half-an-hour earlier, and making a cup of tea, and sitting in the kitchen, just being there while the teenagers have their breakfast, allowing them to feel your presence?”
The Connected Child by Dr Karyn Purvis was written with the parents of adopted children in mind, but it’s relevant to everyone, and you can buy it here.
This article originally appeared in The Australian Women’s Weekly.
And Queen Elizabeth’s birthday has finally come to an end… we think.
Her Majesty held one final party to celebrate her 90th for her family and friends at London’s Drapers’ Hall.
In what seems like the longest birthday celebration ever, the party was attended by some of the Queen’s nearest and dearest, including Prince Philip, her granddaughter Princess Eugenie, and her daughter Princess Anne.
The royal was beaming from ear to ear when she arrived at the venue, no doubt thrilled to be continuing all the fuss over turning 90!
The Queen’s birthday celebrations have been going since April.
She wore a blue, floral knee-length dress, accompanied by her signature handbag and black shoes.
Other than being an excuse to pay tribute to her day of birth once more, it’s thought the gathering was a chance for Queen Elizabeth to catch up with everyone before she goes to Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she will spend the rest of the summer.
Watch Queen Elizabeth’s hilarious quip about her never-ending birthday, then post continues.
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One does get rather weary when one has so many parties for oneself.
Her Royal Highness certainly knows how to celebrate a milestone birthday; celebrations for her actual day of birth kicked off in April, before her “official” birthday in June.
Even she couldn’t help but make a crack at how many parties she was getting.
Speaking at the Patron’s Lunch, she said: “How I will feel if people are still singing Happy Birthday to me in December remains to be seen.”
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