Roll on, Christmas

Just made my arrangements for Christmas. This year I am going away for the holiday, to a place called Okuti Gardens in Little River, where I will sleep in a house truck. (I really wanted to sleep in the yurt, but there's no cooking facilities in it). Little River is a nice green place, with a great cafe/art gallery and walks on the surrounding hills. I'm looking forward to it, and won't mind "missing" Christmas, as its come to mean less and less over the years. I only kept it up because Mum liked it, but she died about three weeks ago, so now I feel like doing something else, establishing some new traditions. Spent some time sorting out Mum's stuff, playing her old records on the record-player. Remember record-players? How about radiograms? They had radio and record-player in one attractive wooden cabinet, that you could admire and polish and place in your living-room like a piece of treasured furniture. They went out when transistor radios came in. Even transistors have bitten the dust, and the word "tranny" means something totally different now. Anyway, I played "South Pacific" and "Fiddler on the roof", and thoroughly enjoyed them. I've always disliked musicals - all that suddenly bursting into song and being happy and gay seemed a little like extreme behaviour to me. But "South Pacific" has the BEST SONG OF ALL TIME - "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair". And all of the songs in "Fiddler" are great. Check out "Matchmaker,matchmaker" for an affirmation of the husband-free life. "...he'll beat you every night, but only when he's sober, so you're all right!"