Christmas greetings

Happy Christmas (or, if you prefer, compliments of the season) to everyone.

Some thoughts about the day. First, from Tony Woodlief in The Wall Street Journal:

My family is facing a holiday dilemma, which is how to disentangle ourselves from dysfunctional traditions. Like those of many young families we know, our traditions entail juggling schedules to make relatives happy, administering long greeting-card lists, buying trinkets for co-workers and neighbors, and wondering whether hell might not be housed in a shopping mall, replete with Muzak Christmas ditties and endless viewings of "The Santa Clause 3." Something is dreadfully wrong.

Second, some very welcome advice (at least for me) from Boing Boing about how to wrap presents.

Read on if you wish, but if you don't, the first rule is worth bearing in mind: remove the price tags from your gifts before you wrap them!

Enjoy the day.

End of year reflections

Another year has almost passed. I was going to write at some length about some of the highlights of 2006 as I saw them (including books read, films seen etc), but will content myself with mentioning the times I've seen my grandchildren (who are shown in the photo above scrutinising a bandicoot at Cleland Wildlife Park ) and my first circumnavigation of the world, including a long awaited visit to New York.

The grandchildren are returning to London with their parents early tomorrow so I'll be retiring shortly so that I can rise in time to farewell them at the airport.

Best wishes for 2007 to everyone who reads this. I hope that it is a more peaceful year for you personally and for the world in general.

Bushfires one week, white Christmas the next: could it only happen in Australia at Christmas?

Two stories from The Age show how the Australian (or more accurately, the Victorian) climate can turn around so rapidly:


One reports that an area which a week ago was threatened by bushfires has been covered by snow. The other reports hail in the outer suburbs of Melbourne which, with the accompanying photo, has given the headline writer sufficient licence to judge it a white Christmas.


Here in Adelaide it's been cold by our standards, with a little rain falling at times. A grey Christmas, as somebody in the group with whom I shared an excellent Christmas lunch, described it.