8 November 2004
Jungle Bells
It's 39'C, 92% humidity, yet you're surrounded by snowmen.
If your head screeches in the glare off the sand, the creepy jingle of electronic sleighbells will surely tip it over the edge to aneurysm.
You pray pathetically for your liver to re-flood your bloodstream with even a small portion of the alcohol it was so carefully combing out at daybreak.
Meltingly listless in the hammock under the mango tree, the choking odour of roasting meats and heavy puddings stokes the dread clamping your glistening chest.
As Bing Crosby sings "White Christmas", sweat leaks from your every pore; rivulets of dye from your obligatory paper hat stream down your forehead like a scene from "Carrie".
The midday meal is laid out on the holly-covered table, festively embellished with more flies than the business end of a sheep, beginning the frantic Tourettes-style waving that somehow brings Yoko Ono to mind.
Welcome to Christmas, Queensland style!
Now don't get me wrong: I love Christmas food. I love it to the point of shameful. I could shovel plum pudding and brandy custard into my face until an ambulance is required. What I don't love is being expected to do so at the height of a subtropical summer. And I don't want my oven on for hours in the middle of the day, heating the house and seeping with lava flows of pig fat. It's summer, OK? The aim of the sane is to keep the house cool.
I'll let you into a little secret: it doesn't snow in Brisbane. Ever. We don't need to eat bricks of stodge to keep warm. We don't have reindeer, we don't have sleighs, we’ve never seen holly, and if some bearded guy tried to climb on the roof wearing a fur-lined suit and carrying a heavy load of toys, he'd have foam flecking off his lips in the grip of heat seizure before he could make it over the guttering - if the insects didn't drive him to insanity first.
...and we don't have chimneys, anyway.
- We had a violent electrical storm tonight, so I had to unplug the computer. I went fashionably retro and used a pen to write the first draft of this. It felt very strange.
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6 comments:
Wow, and I thought the old, foam-flecked-bearded guys were only in *my* neighbourhood!
And nothing beats glistening chests, to be honest. They're an important part of any holiday season!
Ah, yes, the glistening chest can be a good look. As someone who grew up by the beach I have seen a good deal of semi-nudity, and I can tell you with authority that sometimes the idea is better than the reality.
...but the reality's not always that bad, either.
Actually, I had intended to go back and edit that line to read "...greasy chest", but you were too quick, so it has to stay.
Trust you to have seized hold of one of the only two vaguely salacious lines in the whole post, Tim! (The other, of course, being "lava flows of pig fat".)
Suzette, if there's anything you can count on me to do, it's to seize hold of the salacious...
"Lava-flows of pig-fat." Ugh. I needed a Tums™ just reading that. And yeah, greasy chests just don't have quite the same Holiday Appeal, somehow. Even when the chests are especially festive. ...Man, is it me, or is it hot in here?
Maybe Brisbane should just give Xmas a toss and celebrate Cinco de Mayo early or something?
"Suzette, if there's anything you can count on me to do, it's to seize hold of the salacious..." Yeah, me too; that's why I'm so quick to point the finger. ;)
I perked up considerably at your suggestion of giving Christmas the flick. There's a growing "Christmas in July" thing happening in this country, which makes sense, but for mine, I think an annual summer debauch would suffice: night-time fiestas involving evil cocktails, big fat cigars, silly hats and interpretive dancing.
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