Meet my Nanna, darklings. This is the inimitable Nancy and today would have been her 109th birthday. An ultra Aries journalist, shrewd operator and my very first Bohemian role model, a reporter and then a publican at The Australian Hotel where my Mum ran up and down the stairs as a kid. The stories of her heyday are legendary.

Today would have been my Nanna's 106th birthday. This ultra Aries woman was my first Bohemian role model and I can still see her cheeky wink and knowing smile. She lived well beyond the dictates of the time, raising her two girls in The Australian Hotel - one of our oldest pubs in The Rocks in Sydney - as a solo mum in the 1940's. It is her blood that leaps in my veins every time I defy convention or stand my ground.