Christmas Day 2006
Ever since I announced that I would be spending Christmas in Australia, people in the UK have been wondering what it would be like having Christmas day in the heat. Now I can confidently answer that question - I've got no idea, because Melbourne (hereafter to be referred to as 'Miserable Melbourne') was wet and pretty cold for most of the day.
Caillie had introduced me in the past to the idea of 'season lag', where the season does not tie in with one's expectation of the time of year, in particular where Christmas is concerned. By this I mean that Christmas has always been cold in our experience and it seems incongruous for it to be warm. I experienced this 'season lag' in the build up to the big day, in particular in the Cameron Highlands where I spotted an Indian woman wearing a santa hat behind the bar of the tea shop in the Bharat plantation. This 'season lag' did not prove to be a problem on the day itself though - it could easily have been an English autumn day.
This was my first Christmas away from home, and the first with a group of friends, so this made it interesting anyway. We decided to do some barbequing, by which I mean some outdoor cooking on the electric hotplate. We threw a number of shrimps onto the barbie, as well as some steaks and some kanga bangas (kangaroo sausages of course). And some normal sausages. And some chicken drumsticks. So we continued the normal Christmas tradition of eating too much.
The Eagle Vale shiraz was opened early on. Jules cracked open a four litre box of wine, which was more in the 'plum jam' bracket of wines. And there was beer, beer and more beer. Sadly it was Australian, but still beer. So that was another Christmas tradition successfully negotiated.
To be fair it didn't rain the whole day. There were breaks in the rain for some... hail! Plus there were also occasional glimpses of sunshine. During one of the long periods of rain interspersed with hail, a man set up a video camera a hundred yards away from us. We're convinced that if we'd watched local news that evening we would have seen the following story: "Today was the coldest and wettest Christmas day in Melbourne's history, breaking all the records, but there were still some people crazy enough to eat outside..." (pan across to the five of us cooking sausages).
We managed to find space in our busy outdoor electric hotplate-ing sessions to play some cricket in the park. Unfortunately Matt's sheer power broke the ball after two overs. Jules' hour-long search for a replacement proved fruitless, despite her offering a dog owner that she would buy the ball from his dog for ten dollars. So we played some cards and then made our way back to the hotplate.
The evening food session included some mulled wine and some mince pies, and there had also been some crackers, party hats, poor jokes and dancing, so all in all we did quite well on the Christmas traditions!
Caillie had introduced me in the past to the idea of 'season lag', where the season does not tie in with one's expectation of the time of year, in particular where Christmas is concerned. By this I mean that Christmas has always been cold in our experience and it seems incongruous for it to be warm. I experienced this 'season lag' in the build up to the big day, in particular in the Cameron Highlands where I spotted an Indian woman wearing a santa hat behind the bar of the tea shop in the Bharat plantation. This 'season lag' did not prove to be a problem on the day itself though - it could easily have been an English autumn day.
This was my first Christmas away from home, and the first with a group of friends, so this made it interesting anyway. We decided to do some barbequing, by which I mean some outdoor cooking on the electric hotplate. We threw a number of shrimps onto the barbie, as well as some steaks and some kanga bangas (kangaroo sausages of course). And some normal sausages. And some chicken drumsticks. So we continued the normal Christmas tradition of eating too much.
The Eagle Vale shiraz was opened early on. Jules cracked open a four litre box of wine, which was more in the 'plum jam' bracket of wines. And there was beer, beer and more beer. Sadly it was Australian, but still beer. So that was another Christmas tradition successfully negotiated.
To be fair it didn't rain the whole day. There were breaks in the rain for some... hail! Plus there were also occasional glimpses of sunshine. During one of the long periods of rain interspersed with hail, a man set up a video camera a hundred yards away from us. We're convinced that if we'd watched local news that evening we would have seen the following story: "Today was the coldest and wettest Christmas day in Melbourne's history, breaking all the records, but there were still some people crazy enough to eat outside..." (pan across to the five of us cooking sausages).
We managed to find space in our busy outdoor electric hotplate-ing sessions to play some cricket in the park. Unfortunately Matt's sheer power broke the ball after two overs. Jules' hour-long search for a replacement proved fruitless, despite her offering a dog owner that she would buy the ball from his dog for ten dollars. So we played some cards and then made our way back to the hotplate.
The evening food session included some mulled wine and some mince pies, and there had also been some crackers, party hats, poor jokes and dancing, so all in all we did quite well on the Christmas traditions!
posted by Gaz man at 11:01 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home