Sandy Jeffs grew up and went to school in Ballarat. She has lived with schizophrenia and all its moods for 33 years. She has published many articles and five volumes of poetry, concerned with the disparate topics of madness, domestic violence, the trials and tribulations of playing midweek ladies' tennis and the mad world in which we live - and some of these have inspired other artists to compose music, libretto and dance. Sandy has also become a community educator who speaks to school kids, university students, community groups and clinicians about what it is like to live with a mental illness. Her home, with friends human and animal, is at Christmas Hills, in the country near Melbourne, 'where it's Christmas every day'.