Open Writing

Dear Sue,

Great to hear from you. You say you envy me ‘lying on sun-drenched beaches,’ by ‘idyllic blue seas,’ on Christmas day, with nothing to do but sip chardonnay and feast on crayfish. HA HA!

Just grabbing a few minutes while I recover my cool, having spent half an hour struggling with a motor mower which refuses to start. I have just about put my back out and it is flooded and I’ve had it. If I don’t get this grass cut soon the local farmer is going to turn up and claim it for silage. Still we will have new potatoes and fresh peas for Christmas dinner and I do have strawberries to pick and cherries, if the birds leave them alone.

What do you mean ‘lying on beaches’? In spite of the newspapers and TV. giving us advice on how to keep food fresh in hot weather and magazines with recipes for barbecues, great salads and luscious deserts, not to mention pavlovas, my lot, like most of the rest of New Zealand, will still demand traditional turkey, plum duff and mince pies. So while they sip their chardonnay under the shade of tress, I will be sweating, and I do mean sweating, over a hot stove in the kitchen. Thank goodness for Chateau Cardboard.

Christmas shopping? What is it with you, Sainsbury’s, Harrods and M. and S? Well, I use New World, the Warehouse and Farmers, thank goodness for New World specials.

You won’t have heard of the Warehouse, a positive Mecca, you name it and they have it, including the wrapping paper and ribbons and the right price too. Must get the shopping done before the school holidays though, yes, the big summer holidays start before Christmas, so it will be chaos in Dunedin from then on.

I lost my car last year, couldn’t get into any of the car parks so I parked it up a side street at the back of beyond and spent an hour trying to find it. It was our new car too and I hadn’t learnt the number. Being a mere woman I didn’t even know the make and was envisaging myself approaching a policeman and asking for help to find a sort of pinkish/grey car.

It is still Christmas trees and artificial snow for decorations and we will be singing ‘In the bleak mid winter’ at the Advent service, even though we will be wearing shorts and T shirts. However we will also be singing Te Haranui, for we are a multicultural society and the Maoris were here long before us and we do live at the other side of the world and it is summer.

Come Boxing Day, we will be off on our summer holidays. With a bit of luck, we will be down at Papatowai, that is if the camp site isn’t closed. D.O.C. and the council are having a bit of a row over sewerage and facilities not being adequate.

Which brings me to your beach bit. It has been known to hail at Christmas, that puts paid to a lot of the fruit up Central, and ‘lying on sun drenched beaches’, well I could be sand blasted if the wind blows, or eaten by sand flies if it doesn’t, but at least I won’t be stuck in a hot kitchen

With a bit of luck, while the men folk are fishing and the children take to the surf, I will wander down a cool bush track, escorted by the odd friendly fantail and listen to the bell birds and tuis singing their own special carols. Later I will find a nice spot on the beach, beneath a Rata tree full of its brilliant red flowers, our southern hemisphere Christmas tree, and lie back and relax. The men will barbecue and then it will be time for sipping chardonnay, crayfish, bluff oysters, fresh strawberries and, of course, pavlova.

Really, I suppose it is all worth it, the traditions of Christmas never die and we Pakehas have brought some of ours with us and adopted a few others.

I see you surrounded by real snow, sitting up to a log fire, with curtains drawn against the dark, and the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree, carefully wrapping presents, while I have to go and do battle with a motor mower.

But we wouldn’t have Christmas any other way would we? How lucky we are to be living in a country with food to eat and our families round us and no threat of terrorism.

So I wish you a Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year.

Love Glen.