A Kind Of Christmas Tree

We got into the car and went in search of a Real Christmas Tree. It had been raining for three days solid. We didn't know what to expect. The Australian had warned me not to get my hopes up. The Boy was articulating his extreme displeasure at being in the car by screaming. The Girl was shouting over him that she wanted THE BIGGEST TREE EVER IN THE WORLD. I just wanted to feel Christmassy, that's all.

There was a sign: XMAS TREES. It looked promising, mostly because we'd only been driving for three minutes and the screaming wasn't abating. A surfy-type sat nonchalantly on a chair with five Christmas trees around him. "Not many to choose from," said The Australian. "THAT ONE!" said The Girl. The Australian looked my way nervously. I was breezy: "Sure, why not? Great!" As the tree was forced into the boot I gave it my best false smile and fingered its long, feathery needles. What kind of tree are you? I thought.

We got home, but then waited for hours and hours while The Australian nipped out to buy a suitable pot for the "tree". Or it may have been only twenty minutes but I was anxious to get the trinkets on the "tree" as quickly as possible, to disguise it's true identity.

"It's a bit wonky," said Super House Guest (kind of like our third child, 'cept he cooks).
"It's fine! I don't mind!" I said, nudging him out of the way.
"But I could fix that," he implored.
"I SAID IT'S FINE!"
I banished him to the sofa so I could hurry up and get those trinkets on.

I tried my best not to stop The Girl from putting all the decorations at her eye-level. But when she wasn't looking I moved some of them. As a small consolation we went with her idea of putting a giant sparkly snowflake on the top instead of the traditional star. I'd always believed that less was more when it came to real trees, but I was even starting to think that *gasp* TINSEL might be an idea (sorry, Mum).

The Australian mainly kept his head down, but when we'd finished he looked at me sheepishly and said: "I think it's a fir tree or something."

I smiled, and put a little extra in the eggnog.

Merry Christmas from my groovy household

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Faking It

It promises to be a very different Christmas for us this year. As usual I am syphoning out the doom and gloom of the situation and gargling with it.

For a start, the unofficial weather prediction for Melbourne is fine and 30 degrees. Does that sound like Christmas to you? How does anyone have the energy to pull crackers and argue about politics in that kind of heat? Even more bizarre is the thought of putting up all the wintery Christmas cards and decorations - and then switching on the fan to cool the stifling air and watching them blow all over the bloody place.

More serious is the fact that I cannot find any clementines. Clementines always put me in the mood for Christmas. Watermelon just doesn't do the job. Even seedless, despite the obvious joy that brings.

I am insisting on a real tree, though The Australian tells me I must brace myself as it will not be what I'm used to. But there will be no turning on the fairy lights for the children when it goes dark in the late afternoon, or sitting around it with hot chocolates, counting the sleeps until Father Christmas comes down the chimney. We'll be too busy applying factor 60 and swatting mosquitoes. We could hold Christmas in the under-the-stairs cupboard, I suppose; it's pretty dark and cold in there.

The other problem is my legs. I always looked deathly pale during a British summer but at least they were mercifully short. My arms and chest go a funny sort of reddish colour overlaid with freckles which almost looks like a tan, but my legs will not budge. I don't think they contain any pigment. They are alarming. They've got to go.

I will be attempting to solve the hot Christmas / white legs issue with two purchases guaranteed to help me Fake It: 1. body lotion which claims to build up a gradual tan (so far my legs look a little jaundiced but we are only 3 days in, give them time); 2. about enough fake snow to fill a bath tub.

So where will you find me this Christmas? Yes, in the fake-snow-filled bath, admiring my yellowish legs, with the lights out.

The Wet Shoe Shuffle

I can't remember when it was that I became so hopeless at the basics. I was always a capable girl - irritatingly so, even. But now I struggle. We're talking Mr Bean territory here.

As you may know, I could write a book entitled Inappropriate Adventures With My Ugg Boots. Or a pamphlet at least. And then there was the incident with the size 9s and my plan to stuff them with cotton wool to get over the sizing issue. And then there were the 70s platform sandals, which were fortunately easy-peasy to walk in once I'd had seven glasses of wine.

In London I fared no better. A few days into our trip, the non-stop rain had revealed a slight fault in my trusty sneakers. Holes in the bottom of both shoes. When the day of my first meeting with my publisher arrived I was frantic because it was raining and the only other shoes I'd bought over from Oz were black patent high-heels (which, incidentally, The Australian chose and paid for, and bizarrely they are now my only 'sensible shoes'). Do black patent high heels say 'successful teen fiction writer' to you? My only option was to borrow my (young, beautiful, slim, young, we'll talk about this another day) sister's slouch boots. And then all I had to do was curl the toes of my right foot for the entire tube journey and 3-hour meeting, as her feet are a size smaller.

Surely the meeting with my agent the following week would hold no such problems. The morning was fine - great, I popped on my sneakers! Five minutes down the road - pissing down. I'm talking sheets of rain. By the time I reached the tube station both socks were sopping wet. The carriage was full so I couldn't take them off and wring them out. Surely the rain would stop once I reached Tottenham Court Road.

Nope! Soon there were sizable fountains squirting out of each sneaker with every step I made. My socks could not have been more wet. My toes could not have been more cold. I didn't want my agent to feel that the advance she'd got me for my novel was so low as to make it necessary for me to dress like a vagrant, so I decided to pop into the nearest shoe shop, make a quick purchase and change before the meeting. With five minutes till the meeting was due to begin. The resulting purchase was a little bit less than sensible. Like buying flip-flops for a skiing trip, say. Later on my father would say: "Why didn't you just spend longer looking for the shoes and turn up a bit late for the meeting? Aren't authors notoriously flaky with time-keeping?" Honestly, I would like to be able to turn up late, but I have a built-in mechanism that prevents it. I would need years of therapy to achieve that level of laid-backness.

During the meeting, I decided that the pinchiness of the shoes was merely due to the combination of wet feet and brand-newness. By the time I got home, I had rubbed two blisters so sore and raw that my family all winced in turn, and looked at me as if their once bright and capable daughter/sister/partner had be replaced by Muriel (It's Mariel!).

And where were my Uggs when I needed them? In sunny Australia, of course. Why would I take my warm sheepskin boots to chilly old England?

Ideas for blog posts are like buses...

...you wait ages for one to show up, and then five come along at once. You stick your arm out for the first one but the driver sees you have a pushchair and some shopping bags, and tears past you, by which time the second has decided you were going to get the first and keeps going, so you stick your hand out somewhat aggressively for the third, until you realise it's not going where you want it to go, but it's has already come to a stop and the driver remonstrates with you for hailing a blog post under false pretenses; meanwhile the fourth speeds past, at which you waves your fists and yell obscenities, so that your final hope - the fifth - thinks better of picking up an irate Ugg-wearer and carries on by.

That was a rather long-winded way of saying that there has been a lot going on - exciting stuff, emotional stuff, and the usual mopping-the-floor stuff - which generally means my brain short circuits and I cannot put my thoughts into neat packages.

If it's any consolation, I feel bad about it. But it's no use, I shall have to ditch the idea of buses for now and get on that plane - I'm heading home in 6 hours. See you soon, London.

What Not To Wear, 2

I'm being terrorised by a fashion-conscious six-year-old.

First it was the Uggs. Since that horrifying incident, during which she tried to forcibly remove the offending footwear from my person, she has kept up her Ugg-tormenting. 

"You're wearing your Uggs again!" she shouts from across the park. Then she comes closer, and looks from them, to me, with such derision that I feel a bit tight around the chest. She does this every time I wear my Uggs to the park, which is approximately thrice a week. It has gotten so that I can't bring myself not to wear them, because what if sub-consciously I'm ditching them because a six-year-old who wears Little Miss Chatterbox t-shirts thinks I'm a geek?

However, even I draw the line at wearing sheepskin-inners when it's 25 degrees, so today I went to the park Ugg-free. I felt confident - I knew I wasn't wearing them for the right reasons, and that I could also guarantee no sneering looks.

Or so I thought.

It began well. She raced over to where I was crouching down to brush tanbark off The Boy's head (he and a friend had been playing It's Raining Tanbark with much hilarity until the rain got in their eyes). She wanted to know why The Girl and Boy had orange and black stripes all over their faces. I replied that it was oil pastel, and they were playing tigers earlier, and I couldn't be bothered to wash it off till bath time. All acceptable, so far.

Then I stood up.

"Oh - you look ODD," she said. I pretended I hadn't heard.

"I said you look ODD. Why are you wearing runners with a skirt? Why?"

"Um, they're not really runners. They're kind of sneakers."

"They look like runners. And with a long skirt. That just looks weird."

"Oh," I said, looking down at my feet, and mentally agreeing with her. "Oh well!" I breezed, as I turned and walked away, thinking "I'm telling my blog on you."

A Muesli Post

I was up early, at The Boy's insistence. We sat on the sofa; me bleary of eye and fuzzy of head, him raring to go. "Bugsla," he kept saying. "Bugsla," more earnest every time. I eventually worked out that he was saying A Bug's Life. It took me so long I actually agreed to let him watch it. Come on, it was 6am, not a time for wholesome activities like puzzles.

I ate muesli. He had three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks came downstairs at 7.30 and then the day really began, with getting dressed and packing morning tea and packing ourselves off to nursery, where I was helping out for the morning. 

I washed paint brushes, and made "Ooh, lovely" noises about the children's artwork. One little girl said to another: "I'm not playing with you today, I'm playing with her instead." I told her that wasn't very nice at all. She looked at me as if she could not give a toss what I thought.

We went home and ate pasta. The Australian made me a delicious coffee on our delicious-coffee-machine.

We played Barbies, and vets, and shops, and farms with dingoes and koalas and platypuses. I wondered if it was correct to say platypi, or platypus-plural, or platypodes. Then I stopped wondering and cooked the tea. 

They ate, they jumped off every piece of furniture while I shouted "Someone will get hurt." Someone got hurt. We went upstairs and did pyjamas and teeth and stories and cuddles. I sang "Truly Scrumptious". They went to sleep.

And then I came downstairs and signed the contract for my novel! 

It's not every day...