Rain for Christmas?

“Rain hangs about the place, like a friendly ghost. if it's not coming down in delicate droplets, then it's in buckets; and if neither, it tends to lurk suspiciously in the atmosphere.”
Barbara Acton-Bond

I wake early. I like beginnings. I like being alone, the house quite silent, the cat rubbing about my ankles...only it wasn't so quiet this morning. It was thundering & lightening & the rain was pouring over the house like a waterfall. Puddles; we have puddles like duck ponds all up & down the road.

The cat sat on my chest & just looked at me. He does not like the rain & he knows as well as I do the day will just steam up & there will be myriads of mosquitoes & sand flies biting.

The Geisha bush is sagging under its weight of water soaked blossom. I have more weeds than I have garden. Every morning I step outside & pinch weeds from the path but the whole garden smells fresh & clean. I finally feel as if I can think about Christmas: sort out Ditz's room so we can put her school things away & set up the tree; find the garland to hang our cards on: write the family newsletter & send out my cards; think about who needs what for presents. Ditz, who put her size 9 clodhoppers through her good bedsheets, will get bedding & maybe blinds but she is the only one who is easy. The others are working & far more capable than I am of buying what they need & I find it so hard to think of useful things they need.

Then there is the food. I hate thinking about food & I really need to. Cheesecake or trifle or do what my horde loves best & plan for both? Cold cuts or roast lamb? Salads definitely. It's too hot to think of anything else. Nuts & chocolate ~ lots of chocolate. Yikes. I so don't do this sort of thing well.

Christmas carols in the church hall on the 19th. The girls & I go every year & brave the tiny wooden hall steaming like an oven & home to every mozzie on the island but a truly wonderful night out minus the glitz & panache of the big mainland events. It is so nice & homey & when they sing *You better watch out* they waggle their fingers at Ditz & wink at her, Ditz being one of the few children in the audience. Which reminds me, time to study up on the names of Santa's reindeer. Every year the kids are asked & every year everyone knows one or two but no~one knows them all.

It is even starting to feel like Christmas. The kids are wandering about in their cozzies & towels dripping ice creams down the street. People are putting up their outside lights & there is Christmas music in the stores. Liddy has had her Christmas party for work & everything is winding up for the year. Soon it will be the holidays & the long summer days of December/Janurary, somnolent in the heat, ripe with mangoes, peaches, nectarines, dripping sweet seedless sultana grapes, sticky with tropical heat, pregnant with the turbulent rumblings of summer storms. The smell of barbequing sausages & onions will waft across the land.
Ooooh....
Dashing through the bush,
in a rusty Holden Ute,
Kicking up the dust, esky in the boot,
Kelpie by my side, singing Christmas songs,
It's Summer time and I am in my singlet, shorts and thongs .

Jingle bells, jingle bells..

Oh yes we have our own version of this song.

With translation if you need it lol.