It’s hot. Thirty degrees when I got up at seven this morning and windy. Everyone has been telling me that I should go and see the Christmas lights on The Boulevard, seeing as it is just around the corner. Last night then we headed out after dark hoping it might have cooled down a fraction but unfortunately not and joined the throng on the Christmas twinkle trail.
There were not as many houses lit up as on Franklin Road in Auckland but those that entered the spirit were definitely visible from space. I swear that it must have been a degree hotter on this stretch of road than elsewhere in Melbourne due to the radiation of millions of tiny twinkle lights and the greenhouse gases spewing from the snake of cars inching along the street.
“Are the lights worth it?” someone leaned out of a car going nowhere in the jam to ask me.
“Well yes they are worth a walk.”
And I thought people might be having an eco-Christmas this year but no they still went for the showy lights and tacky themes that I half expected to see the Virgin birth in animated lights watched by Rudolph the Red Nosed Pug dog and the three wise possums – “ooh a star, let’s follow the light.”
To me though, nature won the prize last night for being the most festive. A lone cicada serenaded the gathering buzzing a monotonous Christmas song and the brown moths illuminated fluttering in the light of the streetlamps took the prize over the twinkling Las Vegas lights.
Have I mentioned it’s hot? Thoughts of snow, sleigh bells and chestnuts roasting couldn’t be further from my mind. Apparently the fish shops are doing a roaring trade today. Shrimps to throw on the barbie will be heard sizzling tomorrow no doubt and that crack you hear is not a Christmas cracker but the spine of a tasty crustacean. This is Christmas in Australia.
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