And there it was...gone!

Well, it’s over for another year; the weeks of shopping, tidying, cleaning and general panicking, all over in a blink of the eye.

I hope you all had as lovely a Christmas break as we did. Christmas Day was fairly relaxed with lunch at my sister-in-law’s house. Then on Boxing Day, as I predicted when I wrote about our new patio, my whole family descended on us – all except the family of my younger sister whose little boy woke up on Christmas Day with a stomach bug, poor little man. So there were nineteen of us (rather than 24 for a full contingent). Ironically, it was way too hot to use the patio (about 38C) so we all squeezed into various rooms around the house and played musical chairs between courses, so that we got to talk to different people. We took turns to sit under the air conditioner vents, too.

Most stories about Christmas gatherings seem to include references to how someone got into an argument with someone else and had to be placated. It doesn’t seem to happen with my family or P’s family either. You’d think with all those people squashed in together, there’d be some friction, but it was just a happy occasion. Maybe some people avoided being near others for the day, but I didn’t notice it. Everyone brought something to share – carefully dealing with the vegetarian, gluten-free and diabetic dietary needs of various family members, so there was plenty of food. The worst thing that happened was the bottle of wine that my brother-in-law brought, which required a corkscrew. Do you think we could find one that worked? P ended up pushing the cork into the bottle – sending a good amount over the tablecloth. I expect we’ll be given four corkscrews for Christmas next year. Obviously, we’re not big drinkers.

The kids are still playing with their presents. They got enough ‘crafty’ things to keep them going for quite a while, I think. The ‘i-pod dock’ that I hinted that I’d like, turned into a 3-speaker sound system, which – if I turn it up to full-bore and flip the turbo switch – will probably be heard in the next shire. It does have an i-pod dock, but it’s slightly bigger and more sophisticated than I was anticipating. I’ll really be able to party while I’m making dinner!

Now it’s time to get back to writing. I’ve no excuse now.

Christmas Greetings

I don't have time to write a full post at the moment. I haven't even sent any Christmas cards this year - how slack is that? But I didn't want to let the chance go here, to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Or, if you don't celebrate Christmas, a Happy Holiday etc etc.

Don't eat or drink too much. Leave that to me.

What is this life...?

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

This poem by WH Davies, which I learned at school, has been going through my head a lot over the past few days. As I mentioned in one of my comments recently, our internet connection vanished the other night (much to Eldest’s horror). Unfortunately, in Australia all the internet and telephone lines are owned by one BIg Company, which rents them out to other providers. If there’s a problem, those providers have to persuade the Big Company to fix them. If you happen to use the Big Company as your provider, then you have a good chance of it being fixed within a reasonable space of time. But you pay for the privilege, as they charge an arm and a leg for their services. If, on the other hand, you use a different provider, you just have to wait till the Big Company feels like fixing it.

Anyway, in the meantime our service provider has kindly put us onto a free dial-up service, using our telephone line. I can’t believe, though, how slow it is. You can click on a link and go off to make yourself a cup of coffee before it loads. It’s aggravating. Yet it’s only a few years ago that this was the norm. That got me thinking about the ever-increasing pace of life these days. Think about it. When settlers first came to Western Australia in 1829, they could expect a message back to England to take months, if not longer, to reach its destination and be answered, if it ever got there at all. Now, we can type up a message and have an answer in minutes. We can phone a photograph through to someone on the other side of the world in seconds. We’ve come to expect it.

In fact, we’ve come to expect everything to be fast. We stand disgruntled in the shopping centre if there’s more than one trolley in front of us, we sit tapping on the steering wheel if the flow of traffic slows for even a minute, we live on fast food, we expect that publisher to answer our query right NOW. Patience is a rare thing these days and even Christmas time seems to have fallen into that raging river of immediate gratification. Everyone dashes about; shopping, visiting, partying. What are we missing while we rush from one thing to another? Perhaps I should ask the man from the Big Company, who has been standing, staring at the nearby telephone exchange without managing to fix our line, for the past two days?

I wish you all, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, time during this holiday period to stand and stare, to notice the good things, to savour the food, to appreciate your families, to soak in the laughter...to relax. May 2009 bring you peace in whatever way you seek it.

And thank you to you all for reading my blog.

There it was...gone.

Well, it’s all over for another year. The rubbish bin is full of wrapping paper, the refrigerator is full of leftovers and the house seems eerily quiet. I have to say though, that this was one of the nicest Christmases I’ve ever had.

I didn’t get a lot of presents - P and I had decided beforehand that we both wanted ‘non-wrappable presents’ (a year’s membership of SCBWI for me). But the children really seemed to be happy with what they got and Christmas Day was a great family day. For the first time ever, we had it as just a family of five. Normally we go to a big family get-together for P’s family or mine. This year P’s family were mostly going to their in-laws and my sisters were too, so we decided to stay home and have a quiet Christmas lunch together.

That’s not to say we didn’t do anything with the extended family. Boxing Day brought the onslaught. I’ve just spent two weeks scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming and de-spidering my house, because this year was my turn for my family's gathering. Just because they all went to in-laws on Christmas Day, didn’t mean they weren’t going to get together. Mum, Dad, three sisters, brother and all but one nieces and nephews (and one girlfriend) expecting to come and share lunch. But I only realised that two weeks ago, so it was a mad panic.

I have to admit that I am not the world’s greatest housewife. In fact I'm abysmal! I hate cleaning. I hate cooking. You can spend hours doing both and see both undone in five minutes. My mother used to tear her hair out trying to make me clean my room, to no avail. So I'm a bit the opposite way with my kids, figuring I'd rather they were messy and happy than tidy and hen-pecked. But I do like to have it spick and span for lots of visitors. Hence, this five-yearly turn at hosting the family Christmas gathering is quite an event for me.

I was decidedly frazzled by the time we went to Mass on Christmas Eve and I was glad of the quiet on Christmas Day. But the twenty-two of us had a great time in the end, despite the 44C heat. There were no major catastrophes, if you don’t count the bowl of fruit salad all over the kitchen floor and the raspberry jelly walked up the hallway. Everyone went home looking happy.

It was my eldest sister who really made my day though. She sat next to me during lunch and said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I haven’t seen your house looking so clean and tidy for a long time. You must have really worked hard over the last two weeks.” From anyone else that might have offended me, but from her I took it exactly as she meant it – words of appreciation. That’s something you don’t often get for housework.

Now the question is, how long will it stay this way? Not long, going off the kitchen table, now covered with Barbie and her clothes and pretty horse
(no remote control car, though), and the DVD boxes on the floor near the TV. Mum the Grouch is going to have to stay around a little longer…

The Annual 'Christmas Tree'

We received our annual invitation the other day to the local ‘Christmas Tree’, a gathering of all the locals at the nearby Hall to celebrate Christmas. We’ve received an invitation every year for the past 18 years, even though we stopped going twelve years ago.

The Christmas Tree is held as close to Christmas as possible, after school is finished and hopefully after harvest, though it doesn’t always work out that way. Everyone descends on the hall in a cloud of dust at around six-thirty, bearing a salad and a dessert to share. Presents are secreted away from the kids, for Santa to give out later. The food is deposited on the tables in the kitchen and they move to various places according to who they are.

The farmers stride outside to where a lamb is roasting on a spit. They crack themselves a stubbie and rest it in one hand on their stomach while they yarn to their mates about the harvest and swat the flies with their other hand. They only move when the stubbie empties of beer and they find they’re still thirsty, or when they’re called into the hall to eat.

The hobby farmers and their wives move into the hall and sit in companionable groups, catching up on all the gossip while they drink their fill. They sit there the entire night, being bombarded by the brown Christmas beetles that are attracted to the hall lights. Gradually their eskies empty and their cheeks begin to glow.

The children charge outside and, no matter how hot it is, race around the hall screaming and chucking water bombs, tennis balls or worse at each other. Occasionally they puff red-faced into the hall, knock back a glass of cool drink and -recharged with sugar - race back out to start again.

The farmers’ wives toddle quietly around the kitchen, taking the plastic wrap off the food, swatting flies, digging Christmas beetles out of the bean salad and making sure the urn is hot for later. Then they stagger through to the hall with the food. One of the farmers slices the lamb and someone yells ‘Grubs up!’ The neighbourhood descends like a swarm of ants and strip the plates clean, carefully avoiding the Christmas beetles, leaving a few limp lettuce leaves and a couple of scrawny chicken legs for the hapless farmers' wives who are still in the kitchen trying to get the urn to boil.

Having eaten, everyone resumes their previous positions. The farmer’s wives now wash dishes – if they can get to the detergent in the cupboards without finding any red-back spiders. The hall is only used once a year and the spiders object to being disturbed.

As the sun goes down, the children are called back into the hall for a half-hearted sing-along around the wilting branch of a jam-tree covered in tinsel and assorted baubles. Meanwhile, one of the farmers disappears into the decrepit toilet block out the back, carrying a plastic bag. Five minutes later, Santa struggles out of the same toilet block, beard askew, carrying a woolpack full of presents. He enters the hall by the back door shouting a slightly drunken ‘Ho ho ho!’ in a voice that’s unmistakeably Bruce from down the road. The kids tear the paper off the presents he hands out, thrust them at their parents and run outside again.

In the kitchen the farmers’ wives scurry like mice, making luke-warm cups of tea and coffee and cutting the cakes. Balancing loaded trays, they make their way amongst the discarded wrapping paper and empty eskies serving supper, then whisk back to the kitchen to more washing up.

At last the children start to flag, the farmers have run out of beer and their wives have run out of dishes to wash. Everyone agrees it’s been a great night and drive off into the night with shouts of ‘Merry Christmas. See you next year!’

The hall is empty at last, except for the wrapping paper, empty bottles and half-a-million dead Christmas beetles.

Tomorrow the farmers’ wives will come back... to clean up.