MERRY (WINDY) CHRISTMAS

It might be time to move the bed.

I’ve got us under the open window where it was once a delight to sleep with the cool night air wafting up from the vale of Annandale and animating our dreams.

Now the perishing winds of climate change howl indoors all night, tilt the pictures, scare the cat mad and exacerbate our bed hair. It’s freezing at 3am. It’s always windy in Sydney now, the worst it’s been in our 25 years here in a cottage built for workers but now home to retired sooks.

I suppose we could just close the window, or wear pyjamas, but everyone knows I need no excuse to start moving things around to get a new look at our lives.

And look over there! There goes another year.

We still haven’t caught covid, so far, and feel like we’re in a diminishing minority. Maybe an idle life and a glass of red is a shield against the ravages of a windy planet? I hope so. I’d certainly prescribe it.

It’s not as though we’ve been isolating. We bought a new car and had a road trip up north and a couple of road trips down south. We can’t afford to fly anymore. We’d prefer to sit in a car, with white hair, waiting for the lights to change. Possibly eating icecreams.

This year we went to comedy shows and bars and book clubs and on busses and to Moulin Rouge and the opera house and the football. I volunteered every Friday afternoon and shared in the lives of hundreds of people every week.

I mostly wore a mask, and frequently drank red wine. I’m just saying. A tip in the race of life.

Geelong won the flag again! I planted my own facsimile of Kardinia Park in the back garden to celebrate. It looks patchy and shithouse but when you’re on that little bit of green turf all your dreams come true.

I published my novel – The Dead Bed – to limited (so far!) but enthusiastic critical acclaim. There’ll be another book next year, now that I have a clean slate to write upon.

We had our neighbourhood street party on the weekend so it must be Christmas. A wonderful roll up of friends and neighbours old and new, dogs, kids, food, wineglasses blown over in the wind, napkins wildly asunder, and then light rain to send us all home at a sensible hour.

Sydney weather is becoming unliveable (he said in tears) – though a lot of those covid expats are reportedly coming back, forced into the office again for a couple of windy days a week.

Maybe we did the right thing to stay.

Thanks for reading Abloke Abroad for another year. Thanks for joining in. Thanks for buying my book. Share the love and the link if you enjoyed it. Any tips on how to promote it in the new year will be clumsily received.

This time, in the new year, I really am going to clean up my desk! Merry Christmas everyone.

I’m not sure you can tell but that is windy as buggery.