We can all start again and celebrate a new beginning

DON’T want to talk anymore about kids and crime It really takes up too much time, Don’t want to think any more of losing power Or if we’ll ever enjoy a shower Don’t want to talk of stadium costs or an election win And if someone’s nicked my wheely bin Don’t want to think of where my lawn had been I may just have to paint it green! For now is the time of smiles on faces And messages of love from far away places Of hugs and tears and lost stories told Family together, young and old Our Bishop once said ‘ It’s Christmas, it’s that time when we all believe we can start again.’ IT WAS our late Bishop Michael Putney, while waiting to go on stage at Carols, was cornered by a strange- looking Christmassy person, me, and interviewed.

I guess it was the way he said it, but I’ll never forget the moment.

“When we all believe we can start again.”

It’s true, really, we are celebrating a beginning.

I’ll be spending Christmas with my mum, and she’s seen 91 Christmases, so every one is a blessing. I wonder how many are alone in their latter years?

A great mate told me 50 per cent of the elderly in our wonderful country are not visited at all, at Christmas.

Now that’s a disaster. I’m not saying the staff at our resorts for the well- lived are not fantastic, they are, I know. But is there a way we can do more outside?

I do my bus convoy, taking them to the lights. Can we do it the other way and take some light to them? A job for us next year, whadayarekon?

I like an extra chair at the Christmas table for a mate we haven’t met, and the money spent on the dinner, goes to the Salvos or maybe Wee Care the Women’s Shelter, or any of the great charities who look after those who are not at a Christmas table this year.

Well, here we are together, Christmas in paradise, and it will be warm. No rain to dance in, no water from a hose through the fork of the mango tree to play in, but I hope for you plenty of family to laugh with.

There are a few LOCAL shopping days to go, thank goodness, as there are more gecko droppings under my tree than pressies, so I better get to it.

May you have a glorious Christmas, whatever you conceive it to be, with much laughter and silliness … and few gecko droppings.

Remember kids, geckos are Santas Spies, they watch you from the roof to see whose naughty! True.

Happy Christmas.