have yourself a merry little christmas

Christmas morning. I think it was 1976. I know Mum made our nighties out of flannelette, my sister's had pink pussy cats on it and I still covet it to this day. Clearly I was not a morning person even then, although the promise of all those presents was enough to put a smile on my face. Having posed very patiently for the Kodak instamatic, we probably ripped into those presents unaware that outside Santa had been busy building us a brand new swing set and a pool. The kind with the corrugated tin on the outside and the blue plastic on the inside, with those strange white plastic clips that always reminded me of Cheezels to keep the lining attached to the walls. It was indeed a merry Christmas. The kind of Christmas I find myself craving more every year, as the circus grows and becomes further and further removed from anything good and simple and heartfelt. I remember the simple joy of being a child, feeling quite innocently that the whole world was only as big as your arms would reach. That was a good feeling. And while the world has largely been taken out of my hands these past 32 years, I only hope the simple joy will be alive and well at our house this Christmas morning through the eyes of two little girls. And that my arms are enough to hold their world together for a few years yet.
Merry Christmas.

trash and treasure

Today was very much a nothing kind of day, a tracky-dack, don't-bother-brushing-your-hair kind of day. Until I went out to the wizbin and found this little fellow, just perched there on the most non-descript, mundane item of man-made detritus it could find, looking truly miraculous. And all ''Who me? Don't mind me, I'm just sitting here being the poster boy for nature's incredible design portfolio.'' So it seems that even in the trash, there is treasure.

where have you been, my darling young one?

I consider myself a deeply devoted follower of Bob Dylan. His music has been the soundtrack to many of my life's great joys and dramas, and even the inconsequential moments in between. His words still, and will always, make me cry. But I had not, until recently, seen any of Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home. This probably makes me a very pale pretender in the eyes of Dylan diehards, but I'll put it down to the fact that I haven't watched anything feature-length that doesn't involve animation for at least five years.

I still haven't watched No Direction Home in its entirety. But I have seen enough to realise that my love for this man's poetry was just scratching the surface. Seeing the young Bob Dylan, the kid prophet who everyone wanted a piece of, I fell under his spell. His grainy black-and-white, before-I-was-born spell. Sexy doesn't even come close. It was love on a whole new level.

don't hold your breath

Bellingen. You can't actually say it without emitting a deep sigh. I've tried.

I've also tried to imagine a reality that involves me living there, raising barefoot blissful children, communing with nature and seriously not giving a flying fuck what anyone else thinks, says or does. I'll let you know how that works out.

perfectly balanced

I love dragonflies. In my own personal ranking of beautiful insects, they're second only to cicadas. This is largely because their very long tails are a little bit freaky and they make that click/buzz sound when they fly, whereas the dear little cicada has a very slow, considered way of walking around that makes you feel sure they're not going to do anything rash. But dragonflies, when they are perfectly still, are so perfect and so still that you can't help but marvel at them.

Which brings me to this little chap, another Bellingen purchase, handcrafted so that when you place its head on the tip of your finger, its wings provide perfect balance and it will sit there all day without falling off. You can even zoom it around if you feel so inclined. Although I think zooming might defeat the purpose. It's really all about the stillness. No sudden movements. Don't do anything rash.

the rainbow connection

I served up two bowls of pasta to the six-and-under set, for whom eating is not always a priority. It was a kind of pasta we'd never had before, which prompted Freya to ask exactly what kind of pasta it was.

Me (reading from packet): They're called macaroni elbows.

Freya (without pausing for thought): No, Mum. Not elbows. Rainbows.

And who am I to argue with that.

five grey elephants

The other day I was sitting at my computer, looking at this and that, when Freya came into the room to see what was happening and why she wasn't involved. She was holding a hair elastic, stretched between two fingers, and she started singing a song that's often on Play School - five grey elephants balancing, step by step on a piece of string - actually those weren't her exact words, but I got the general idea. Then she realised the computer was on, which led a split-second later to the realisation that she had direct access to YouTube, her new favourite thing which allows her to watch ''the Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang song'' and funny cat videos for hours on end (probably only minutes, but it genuinely seems like hours). So she asked to hear the elephants song, and as I know the infinite resource that is the internet, I googled it. We did not immediately get the song we wanted, but something much more intriguing and wonderful, called the calm space which on that particular day in this particular life could not have been more perfect. I marvelled at the sheer serendipity of it all for several seconds, before being sternly prompted to find the five grey elephants. Bal-an-cing.