That time of year again…
CHRISTMAS carols, blow-flies, garden sprinklers and the shopping list. The end of December approacheth, the yuletide is just around the corner and we’re doing that seasonal shuffle of winding down to a short festive break, and winding up for the biggest feast on the calendar. Part of me wants to shuck off the shackles of the working year and get ready to kick back for a couple of days of R and R. But another part of me is having a red hot look at how organised I am for Christmas and wondering if perhaps I need to get my finger out and start to do some prep. Presents perhaps? Should I be making puddings? Glazing a ham?
It’s just that it’s hard to contemplate that level of activity when we’re getting this beautiful balmy weather, these long summer evenings when the hot wind is still creeping through the house as I head to my bed in what feels like the middle of the afternoon. My early shift means I need to keep nursery hours at the best of times but it becomes ridiculous in daylight saving time when I’m in bed long before the chooks. And then I lie there and doze in my somewhat darkened bedroom and listen to the rest of world outside my door. I eventually drop off to sleep, only to waken an hour or so later, wondering if my alarm has gone off, surely I’m not late for work. Couple that with moonlit nights where the landscape glows and beckons, it’s a wonder I’m getting any sleep at all.
It’s the season of the fan; the white noise that cuts across all the other little noises that niggle in the night. The fan is great to keep you cool. It’s the best way to keep the mozzies at bay. But it’s chief benefit lies in the face that it provides a sort of audio hammock to rest your mind in, to allow your conscious mind to let go, so you can slip under the cotton sheet of a good night’s sleep. I’m a big fan of the fan.
It’s the season of the municipal swimming pool, the season of sharing lanes and negotiating free passage up and down one’s lane with a plethora of sunkissed children with the attention span of a gnat. Like seal puppies they’re cavorting in the water, ducking and diving in and around the lane ropes, occasionally bumping into you as you grind your way up and down the pool. Every so often they miss you by millimetres when they explode back into the pool, leaping from the hot concrete surrounds and arriving in an effusion of bubbles, limbs akimbo.
It’s the season of summer, of salads, of carrying cold drinks in the car.
The rich grass of spring is long gone. My fat rescue horse has done his mandatory sentence in m’father’s cattle yards, to keep his equine gout at bay. He’s truly a guts, that horse, he is a laminitis case just waiting to happen, so this season was a major risk for him. He’s been locked up in the yards for weeks now, making moon eyes at anyone walking by, sucking his guts in and looking as thin and bereft as he can possibly manage in the vain hope he can wangle his release.
But now, O Frabjous Day! Calloo! Callay! He’s had his visit from the farrier, the trimming of the hooves and the inevitable discussions about the perfidy of leaning all one’s weight on the proffered leg; that’s all done and dusted. Louis the Lip has been given the all-clear to head back to the lucerne paddock to hang with the cattle. As far as he is concerned, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
And as anxious as he has been to get out of the yards, the blowflies have been lurking and scheming on my back veranda, waiting with intent to get inside my tent. They soooo want to be in there, in the cool, in there where the food is, in there where they can be maximum irritant.
Because nothing will do them, once they find themselves inside, but to buzz incessantly against the window panes and the window gauze, in an effort to get back out again. That’s when they are not doing circle work over the top of my Christmas cooking, looking for somewhere to drop their filthy hoards.
Christmas lunch at my place anyone?