Christmas Day. A cold front came through and the weather finally cooled down a little. The air was clear, all the humidity having been swept away by the front. A stiff, blustery wind raised whitecaps on the bay and white water was crashing over the reef. Not a great day for waters sports, but it was refreshingly cool – a Christmas blessing.
I stood atop the broad retaining wall in our yard and looked out over Long Bay to the green hills beyond the Great Morass. The cool breeze washed over me, I relished in the freshness of it. It was glorious.
The view from our yard, Christmas Day.
We decided to go to the gym, since it was our regular day anyhow and we were planning on going to the Seastar buffet in the evening. (See the ying and yang there?) Center town was quiet – eerily so. We walked past the police station. I looked over and saw an unlikely group of young people, mid-twenties, walking slowly in a ragged file departing the building. I wondered; it’s 7:30am, these kids look a bit bedraggled, they’re quiet, not talking to each other at all, and a couple of the girls are dressed in going-out clothes. Hmmmmm? Then it struck hit me; they must have just been released from the drunk tank. The Christmas Eve celebrations around here were numerous and loud and continued way past the time that we had ‘settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.’
On our way to the gym we carried a bag of lollipops with us to hand out to the kids along the way. We passed a little group of eight of them, out playing in their yard. That’s something you see a lot of here – kids out playing in their yards. Laughing, yelling, playing tag, running around after each other – being kids. This little group spanned the ages from about three to pre-teen; all playing together. It was obvious that they were pretty excited about it being Christmas, so we figured; what the hey, let’s get them jacked-up even more on sugar. Actually, we cleared it with their moms, who were out raking in the yard.
One mom waved the kids over and they descended on Bea like a pack of hungry elves. It was funny to see her circled by a boisterous gaggle of eager children, all with their hands outstretched. After the gym, on the way back we passed the group of mothers, which had swelled to five or six in number. One of them asked Bea if she had any more sweets left, so she gave them the rest. They dug in and started to eat the candies themselves.
The banana truck, every Saturday morning.
A well tended red ground yard in Redground.
Inside our supermarket - it's open every day.
