Dec 25, 2013

Merry Christmas


It's six forty-nine of the clock, in the morning, and here I am listening to Christmas Carols from King's College while the rest of the house hums in various states of somnolescence.

Ding dong ding. Ding-a-ding ding.

While I listen to the refrains of "In the Bleak Midwinter" the subtropical sun is shining in. I went out with Lyra to let out the chickens and walked beneath the huge lilly pilly tree, looking up to see if I could spot any of the raucous rainbow lorikeets which were raiding the flowers and raining the little petals down amidst the fecund buzz of insects unnameable that permeated the air.

No presents for the chickens other than freedom of the garden for the day, but their time will come when we sit down to our breakfast of croissants and toss the scraps from the deck into the garden for them to scavenge.

Lyra and I toddled around for a bit already, while Nicole slumbered on a little, but L has now returned to the folds of feeding flesh for some mouthfuls of mummy milk. Eloise's foot is poking from her top bunk, insensate.

Beneath the tree lies a gyre of presents. They appeared mysteriously as Eloise was at a play with her little chum. She had previously complained, as we shopped for cousins who are visiting for the new year, that - to paraphrase - she was being neglected and it seemed obvious to her how unfair life in general was when all this shopping was happening for other people and she wasn't allowed any of the legion knick-knacks and pieces of crap that she just happened to walk past or see out of the corner of her eye when it was as clear as day that no-one had done any shopping for her other than the overseas presents which were already forming a small archipelago around the base of the genuine, natural, if slightly wonky tree.

Well the sudden tectonic increase in the size of that tree's donative footprint certainly would have wiped the smile off her self-righteously indignant face if only she'd actually noticed it in her rush to get to her next parent-facilitated social engagement!

And the smile would have fallen dangerously without so much as a safety rope if she could have seen her little sister furtively waddle up to the tree, cast her speculative eye over the brightly bunted reefs of wrapping paper, pick an Eloise present, look around her, and make off with it to some distant secret recess of the house to investigate this wonderful object in intimate detail. Repeatedly.

However, qualities such as appreciation from the entitled youth are in short supply, as I suspect is and always has been the norm in this, the festival of receiving.

Oh hello, Eloise just got up, better go...

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