Christmas

The lead up to Christmas was busy. These days, I breathe on a different level when I have a lot on my plate. I pinpoint that difference to September 2000 when I hit a metaphoric brick wall and, instead of scaling it, found myself buried under the rubble. I have never been quite the same as I was back then. I started to back off a bit, unable to take on 20 projects and juggle them all – now I can only do 15.

I had 5 separate lists happening – staff bbq, present shopping, Christmas Day food shopping, Boxing Day and Beyond food shopping and a long list of household jobs that needed doing. As well as working. Somehow it all happens, everyone gets fed, everyone gets a present and the house gets cleaned. If I’d lost the stapled together pages I’d have been in a mess; they lived in the back pocket of my jeans and were creased and worn by the time it was all over. I love lists. I make lists for everything.

Mum came out on Christmas Eve. She loves Christmas more than anyone else I know. I had only put two presents under the tree – a bottle of port and a beer mix for my father – all the other presents in the photo are Mum’s! I wrapped our gifts that night and added them to the pile but I didn’t put Gibbo’s under there as I thought he’d guess what it was. I was up late, cooking – getting the pork just right so that there’d be crackling to sneak, marinating chicken wings, boiling eggs, making mini quiches and then individual sticky date puddings. Mum stayed up with me and we went to bed after 11pm.

Gibbo and I were woken at 5 o’clock on Christmas morning – we opened our eyes to find three sets of other eyes peering at us. I cooked the wings and stuffed the eggs and my Dad and Peter arrived about 8-30. We exchanged presents (it takes a while to get through Mum’s pile). It’s all good fun. Drew gave me a fantastic metal bird, a brolga, for the garden and Megs gave me a very thoughtfully chosen gift of a pink striped scarf and a Guatemalan Worry Doll bookmark (from my favourite shop, The Tree of Life). Gibbo also gave me a bird for the garden, a crane. I gave Gibbo a framed, limited edition print of “Old Jock 1”, the foundation sire of the Angus breed.

We had a wonderful lunch as we always do – pork (with crackling), chicken, ham and all the accompaniments. It has been tradition in our family for a lot of years now that I make the stuffed eggs using my Grandmother’s recipe. I’ve started my own tradition of chicken wings, mini quiches and sticky date puddings with caramel sauce. Mate and Peter wait all

year for the wings and puddings and eggs! Mum makes her special salad dressing and the beetroot and onion. We also had coleslaw and pasta salad. Even just having a taste of everything on the table means your plate is piled high. We pull the bon-bons and all wear the paper hats and Mum keeps the trinkets.

As always, it was a happy day.