I’m 100 per cent Neo-Pagan and 96 per cent New Age. So says the results from the Belief-0-Matic test on Beliefnet.com that I just did.

I’m only 16 per cent Catholic…which might horrify my mother. I was raised Catholic, but didn’t go to a Catholic school…thank goodness. Mum and Dad, mercifully, didn’t like the draconican style of schooling (and couldn’t afford the fees). I’m least of all a Jehovah’s Witness.

Try the test out – 20 online questions. Breezy 10 minutes.

It got me thinking a little more consciously about what I really believe in. Actually, I didn’t think. My answers came out immediately.

I don’t believe in goddesses and gods, nor karma, except in a very organic sense of the word. But my beliefs allow for goddesses and gods and karma.

I believe everything makes sense as an infinite organism that emerges from the same conscious soup. My eyebrow hair, that ant, the grit of sand under my nail, are all merely different cellular expressions of the same energy and flow. Even a gloomy thought or a breeze – all energetic expressions, as valid and necessary as my fifth toe. And my left ovary.

A stack of you have asked me how to go about buying a single-speed bike.  Here’s a little guide, based on my experience.

1. Be very sure you want a SS bike! They’re not for everyone. They have NO gears. Correct, none. So it means riding it like you did a BMX as a kid to get up hills – bum in air and waggling. I would say you have to be very bike-fit to enjoy one, unless you live in a flat area (Melbourne is SS heaven). The benefit of no gears, of course, is that it’s a more agile, lighter, flippier ride.

2. Be sure you don’t ask for a fixie. Many people mistake the two. A fixie is a fixed-gear bike. It’s a SS, but with no brakes. When you stop peddling, it breaks. Which makes them something of a kamikaze ride. My hub is a flip-flop – which means I can switch to a fix gear if I want.

3. You can build your own or buy off-the shelf. I did the former with a friend and there are some wonderful people about who can team with you and make it a fun, care-full experience. Because that’s what this caper called life should be about.

My frame and saddle are 50 years old and from Paris. The wheels were carefully selected. The chain perfectly calibrated.

The beauty of an SS is it’s agility and to really enjoy them it is best that they are a refined, light, perfectly calibrated thing.  And to treat them like an art project and build them with light materials and have them built by kids who know their stuff.

The Customised experience

This is all about finding someone fun to do the project with. Best idea: when you see a bike you like, nab the rider and ask who built theirs.

If you life in Sydney, there’s a very cute chick in Bondi called Lucy who builds custom bikes. She started building them when other cats around town couldn’t build the one she wanted. She runs her business Vamp Garage from a garage, refurbishing vintage pushbikes with contemporary design and parts and Brookes leather saddles. She even custom-designs the stickers to give your bike a theme (if you like!). Or can take your pre-loved wheelie and transform her.

Here’s Lucy:

Oh. Yeah. I’m quinoa obsessed. For now. So are many of you, it would seem, because EVERYWHERE I go people tell me they discovered the stuff on my blog and …blah, blah, blah.

So, here we go again. I came across this recipe for quinoa crumble on the New York Times website. Fills the gap in my baking repertoire.
It can be made into a berry-rose crumble. Or a plum and fig crumble. Or the one below.

* The crumble part – you can store it in the fridge for months.

* Or you can sprinkle it over porridge.

* And just a reminder: always rinse the grain SUPER well before cooking.

Quinoa-Oat Crumble Topping

This topping can be used to make any number of delicious, gluten-free crumbles.

1 1/4 cups gluten-free rolled oats

1/2 cup quinoa flour (grind quinoa in a spice mill to make the flour)

1/3 cup unrefined turbinado sugar

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon salt (to taste)

3 ounces (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with parchment. Place the oats, quinoa flour, sugar, salt and nutmeg in a food processor fitted with the steel blade, and pulse several times to combine. Add the butter, and pulse until the butter is evenly distributed throughout the grain mix. The mixture should have a crumbly consistency.

This is a random Monday factoid: there’s a perfect reason why your fingers and feet turn to prunes in the shower.

So says Mark Changizi author of The Vision Revolution and Director of Human Cognition at 2AI Labs in Psychology Today. Basically we prune-up because we’re former apes. And it saves brain power:

Pruney fingers are not an accidental side effect of getting soaked …but are, instead, highly efficient rain treads that help us primates grip the world when it is wet…

Without wrinkled fingers you would need to possess two categories of behavior, one for dry conditions, and one for wet. That would require more brain space than you can spare. Lucky for you, you can get by with just one set of behaviors (“all-weather-behaviors”) because your fingertips and feet “know” when to change from race-tire-smooth to rain-tire-wrinkled…

The strategy of “subcontracting” out brain responsibilities to low-brow reflex-like mechanisms is one of the oldest tricks in evolution’s book..

The rest of the article goes into deeper thought about the role of this subcontracting…and how much of our sophisticated behaviour (speech, writing) has evolved around it. Good. Stuff.

This occurs to me this morning as just wonderful. Everything fits in somewhere. Everything exists perfectly. Everything exists for a reason. Eyebrows – they protect our eyes from dust. Women living in drought-striken countries go through puberty later – to reduce the number of extra humans being born.

We, as humans, are creative expressions of inevitable patterns in nature.

But these patterns aren’t just random. They have a purpose and direction – they move forward, they move us toward “better” and “smoother”. Quantum physicists talk in this way – about consciousness dragging energy forward. And many describe this motivating force as “love”.

What do you think?

This week I test my cellular age

I’ve reached that curious age where you no longer look your age. Which is to say you look as old as whatever you got up to the night before.

When I sleep badly, I look like there’s a huge suck-hole at my feet dragging my fascia deep below the earth’s crust. If I have more than one glass of red at dinner, the next day I resemble a before shot in one of those psoriasis medication ads. A rut of eating too much sugar and I’m puffy and slow and I look….wan. I’ve never in my life had occasion to use the word “wan”. But right now it lends onomatopoeic appropriateness.

Conversely, when I live 100 per cent virtuously, I look – comparative to everyone else my age battling a one-glass hangover – positively pubescent.

Being such an age (and since we’re friends, I’m cruising towards 37), I’ve started noticing a lot of people obsessed with anti-aging. I’m sure it’s not just the creaky circles I mix in. It started with an antioxidant fixation a few years ago. Now everyone’s popping a cocktail of new supplements, such as Coq10, DHEA, EFAs and melatonin (a sleep aid with alleged age-reversing properties), and sharing their hormone specialist’s contact details. I know I use this literary device a lot in this column, but it must be said: longevity is the new skinny.

For folk in these circles, biological age (the number of years endured on the planet) is becoming redundant. Our cellular age is where it’s all that. This is essentially the health age of our cells, which can then determine our longevity. Extensive research has shown that genes dictate less than 25 per cent of how long the average person lives. The rest is up to us. Which you can take as liberating. Or daunting.

Of course, there are tests you can do to calculate your cellular age. And, of course, this week I tried one.

I haven’t been able to post so much lately. And for some reason I feel I need to explain myself!!? And make up for it. I’ve been a little caught up and out of internet range, filming. This is how I spend my mornings – 5:30 starts, driving to location looking like…THIS…

While I’m here…Me and Dr Buzz Aldrin below. I MC’d an event for OMEGA while he was out here in Australia. You might find it amusing (I did) to learn that Buzz’ mother’s maiden name is…MOON…

Have a great Friday…and thank you for all your kind comments…especially regarding Julie Goodwin’s post. I know it meant a lot to her…she had a very tough week this week and I reckon the general prayer vibe probably helped.