It's somewhat ironic that Sarah Jane Adams' unorthodox memoir is called Life in a Box for she's a woman who's never been constrained by anything.
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At 64, the antique jewellery dealer is one of Australia's most in-demand influencers and models. She has more than 200,000 Instagram followers, is an ambassador for Priceline Pharmacy's Festival of You, an astute businesswoman and a style icon for women of all ages.
Without knowing much about her, it would be easy to dismiss her as nothing more than a well-dressed older woman who found a niche on social media at the right time. But how very, very wrong you would be.
"I've been misjudged all my life," she says from her home in Newton, Sydney.
"Since I was young I've never given a second thought to what people think about me. I know a lot of people think I'm an old bag, a lot of people think I'm arrogant, a lot of people think I'm rude.
"But I really don't give a shit about what anyone thinks of me."
She's somewhat embarrassed by having to promote her book, she's never been one for marketing or advertising, so instead we talk about risk taking and family and how being a certain age gives you a freedom that younger people might not understand.
It's early days in the coronavirus pandemic, we're all starting to adjust to the new normal. The situation has her fired up.
"I don't believe in accidents, I don't believe in coincidences, I believe everything happens for a reason, even this corona thing," she says.
"If the bushfires and the drought didn't bang us into consciousness, I'm wondering whether this will and I don't know if it will.
"The economic crisis after lockdown will be so major for people, worse than the deaths I hate to say it, people won't be able to afford to live.
"I do believe it's going to get a lot, lot worse, people out on the streets fighting for survival because they can't get stuff. If people in Australian supermarkets are already fighting over toilet rolls, when really essential items are no longer available that's when the shit is going to hit the fan."
She's keen to wave the flag - albeit perhaps a vibrant woven flag that was once a skirt or a jacket - for revolution.
"Anyone who knows me well will understand while there's this part trying to be spiritual, I am actually a f**king street fighter and when push comes to shove I'm in it.
"I've said to my kids I will die for this because I firmly believe we need a reset. I am ready to pass, ready to make that next move because I am so sorted."
And part of that is what Life in a Box is about, getting herself sorted. It reads like the catalogue of an auction house. Lot by lot, from birth to current day. Lot 13(3), a photograph of her and her mother in hospital on the day of her birth. Lot 89, various concert tickets from 1978 Public Image Ltd, to Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2019. She attended most of them alone. Lot 161, a vintage first aid box that was hers as a child, one which her own daughters Olivia and Natasha played with decades later.
"This book is my release," she says, a life documented.
"This book has only been written for my children for when they have to deal with my crap. I've said to them anything in this house just put it on the street because nothing is of any great value. Obviously they want anything or my friends want anything, but there is nothing here of any value.
"I have a couple of suitcases with a whole lot of random shit in them and I have written a book about a load of old rubbish."
Even so, it's a fascinating insight into a fascinating life. Born in England on April 16 1955, her twin sister was stillborn. She admits to being a difficult child, she says her relationship with her mother is still estranged.
She went to university in Sheffield, discovered art, music and film, fell in and out of love, moved to London, and began making jewellery, inspired by the odds and ends she would collect in the markets.
In 1978, a Monday in September she remembers, she launched her business, one of the inaugural stallholders in the new markets on the old Convent Garden site.
The following years were full of travel, mischief, adventure. Along the way she collected objects, buying and selling and swapping, eventually landing in Australia in the 1980s.
"Being in Australia is something I never would have predicted, that was a curve ball," she says.
"Nothing I've ever done has been planned, making a plan is the biggest mistake you can make in life.
"You just have to follow your gut and that's what I've always done in every aspect of my life."
She believes we can, in some way, control our own destiny and that comes from having an open mind and an open heart.
"I don't block myself from anything, I actually clear blockages, get rid of situations.
"For donkey years in business I called it self sabotage but I've realised it's self reinvention. I'm highly critical, in terms of my thinking and on myself, and I am a very harsh judge of myself but I'm also fearless."
- Life in a Box: An unorthodox memoir, by Sarah Jane Adams. Murdoch Books, $39.99.