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My teaching week ended a couple of hours ago and on the way home I picked up all but 2 of the ingredients for cocktail testing. This was perhaps a slight error of judgement. You can trace my progress on my food blog. I decided at the outset I would not test all eleven recipes on the one day. Wasn't that wise? So why am I already up to the second drink? The second post on my tipsy progress will have to wait, because I suddenly feel a nap coming on, but it might be worthwhile watching for more posts and wondering why history at school was never quite like this.

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There is a reason for racing into cocktail testing after teaching today. I was putting off thinking about the death of a favourite aunt. I stopped testing for a bit and the memories have flooded.

I want to go to her funeral and I can't face it. Too many deaths recently. I guess I don't want to face this one quite so immediately. My sister rang me to talk about it, because she knew how I would feel and I wasn't ready for that, either.

My aunt was the youngest in a vast family, kid sister to my mother's mother. I knew her best in the 1980s, when we became quite close. I would go to afternoon tea in Bondi and she showed me her latest frilly skirt for square dancing and I admired her enviable talent for indoor gardening.

I would often bring a friend to meet her, usually an international student. We got on extremely well and bubbled at each other brightly. I didn't realise just how far our politics and views of the bigger world differed until she gave afternoon tea to myself and one of my closest friends. She couldn't forgive the war, but she liked Kazuko, who was welcome anytime.

We were at opposite ends of the political spectrum (I'm rather leftish and Auntie Nyn must have been the only Australian Jew who voted for Pauline Hanson), but Auntie Nyn was so adorable (I'm having an extraordinary amount of trouble with that past tense) that it didn't matter. I'll remember her - not for her political views - but for her forever-sparkle and her deep enthusiasm for life. She truly understood how to live in the here and now, and persuaded me into folk dance. One day I will obtain a big frilly square dance skirt in the brightest of colours and I will wear it and dance with joy in her memory.

Auntie Nyn taught me a lot, she sparkled almost always and she was entirely loveable. I will miss her so very much.