ALISON BELL
Alison Bell thought all her Christmases had come at once when a luxury holiday home was booked for a recent festive season. Even though the escape ended up echoing the chaos depicted on her television show The Letdown, she still found the silver linings.
started in March. Christmas plans take some forethought, particularly if you’re the family organiser, as my sister is, dealing with a frazzled nomad like myself. She made a compelling case on my behalf: “Every year Alison, Johnny and Augie travel from Melbourne to be with us for Christmas in Canberra, on top of all the travel they have to do for work. So let’s have it in Victoria this year and rent a place close to them.” Oh tidings of comfort and joy.
I felt like crying when I read this. My little family is like a ye olde travelling theatre troupe, only loaded up with toys and luggage rather than lutes and whatnot, always in transit. I long to stay put, and this Christmas my beloved sister was going to give me the next best thing: one close to home. Hosanna in excelsis.
The Bells love Christmas. We built traditions over the years, as everyone does, traditions that can only be shamelessly practised within your immediate family – like harmonising with Marina Prior and Silvie Paladino as they sing out from the Sidney Myer Music Bowl into our lounge room. Or eating our body weight in chocolate scorched almonds every day of the season. Our traditions could easily be transported to Victoria. And maybe there we could shed a few of the problematic ones – the regressions into childhood dynamics; some people doing more of the cooking and cleaning than others, and the accompanying Christmas crankiness. This year we’d all be under someone else’s roof, equally responsible for the mess and clean-up, equally fatigued by travel (us from a year of it, everyone else from an eight-hour drive). Pa rum pum pum pum.
Money was saved. Accommodation was booked. For the first time in history, all 15 of us were going to spend Christmas under the one fancy rented Victorian roof with beds for all, multiple bathrooms and enough room to escape one another! This was the stuff of Christmas miracles. Glor-orrrrrrr-orrrrr-orrrrria. We were all locked in by June.
In July I learned that I’d be working in Sydney from September to February. Which meant Johnny, my son Augie and I would be travelling the furthest, 12 hours from SYDNEY to the VICTORIAN PENINSULA for our ‘close-to-home’ Christmas. Ho ho ho, how we laughed. But that wasn’t going to ruin this gesture of kindness from my family. There was still the silver lining of an oversized house near a beach, the family and all that seafood I’d ordered.
Come December, I’d just returned from a work trip to Atlanta and had a few days back in The Letdown edit suite in Sydney before we packed our car and embarked, jet-lagged but excited, on the journey.
After about eight hours, and poor Augie’s third projectile vomit all over the back seat, we called it a day. We needed more wet wipes and the stench of carsickness and sanitiser was getting to us all. Like
2018. THE EMAILS
Mary and Joseph, Johnny and I searched for an elusive room in an inn, any inn. I have no memory of where we stayed. It wasn’t a stable.
The following day, a merry party of Bells greeted us upon arrival. We settled into the over-styled bedrooms, released Augie to his beloved cousins, loaded up on chocolate scorched almonds and the world was perfect. That night, Champagne in one hand, almonds in the other, we harmonised to the TV carols. We managed to get all seven kids to bed without too much threatening. We adults stayed up late, stuffing stockings, eating, drinking, laughing, breathlessly catching up. O niiiiiiiight … Divine, O night, when Christ was born.
At 4am we woke, not to sweet Christmas morning sounds of excited children, rather to the sound of aggressive retching in one of the many bathrooms. “Who overdid the Champagne?” Johnny and I laughed, rolled over and went back to sleep.
Proper morning came and the news was mixed – yes, Santa had visited but so too had some sort of virus. My brother and his youngest were at the hospital, having spent the night vomiting without pause. Okay, not good. But we rallied, tried to keep it joyful for the kids. Until my father started vomiting, then a nephew, then another. Everywhere we looked someone was lurching violently towards a receptacle – or not. The little ones just vomited wherever the devil took hold (expensive rug, plush couch). One by one we fell. On Christmas morn.
There was a half-hearted attempt to open presents. No more chocolate almonds. The bulging fridge, full of seafood stayed shut. All but four of us were back in our beds. Christmas lunch was a feast of anti-nausea tablets and Hydralyte. My brother-in-law, virus-free, kept quietly asking when he could crack open the prawns. The answer was never. (Well, I think he had some in private.) But the rest of us were unable to eat in the following days. The only thing we seemed capable of was gentle paddles at the beach, short walks and hollow-eyed conversations. Then we packed up and left. It was the most appalling Christmas holiday we’d ever known. And yes, Augie was likely patient zero. (Remember the car trip?)
When I think of this time, I can’t help but smile – because we Bells like to laugh at our own misery, thankfully. But even in the moment we could see some silver linings: the house had multiple bathrooms! We got a cracking Christmas anecdote, plus a head start on rigorous sanitisation practises, ahead of 2020. And at least for this shocking tale of Christmas hell, we were together. All 15 of us. Silver Bells.
2020 has been a rubbish year. The worst of years for many. May a Christmas shared with your loved ones be a silver lining. This year, I can’t wait to pack the car and drive eight hours across the border to be with my lot. Whatever happens next. Falalalala-lala-lala …
We built traditions … like eating our body weight in chocolate almonds every day of the season