The stillness of after Christmas

I love the stillness that washes over the world (well, my world anyway) once the hustle and bustle of Christmas day is over.

In keeping with my new outlook on life I have foregone the Boxing Day sales. It's not easy, I confess. I really wanted to go and get more solar Christmas lights for next year, but we won't be needing to put any up so it's kind of a waste of time.

I normally buy wrapping paper and cards, paper plates, napkins etc after Christmas for the following year, but I won't need them either. Cards I did buy, though, a few days before Christmas day. The Princess and Little Man always give their school friends cards, so I bought a couple of packs of 24 for 50c a pack. The best I've ever managed was a pack of 24 cards in February at Target for 5c a pack! If the stores were discounting Christmas stock before Christmas was over by 50%, then I wonder if they'd discount them further still once Christmas was over?

I must say, the scenes on television about the post-Christmas shopping has me a bit sad. Why can't people just spend time at home with their families? Or go to the movies? Read books or have a picnic? Family is meant to be there for life; the latest handbag or designer shirt won't.

Christmas was just the four of us this year. I like it that way. Our cold lunch of meats, salads and fruits was changed at the very last minute to hot roast chicken and pork, roast vegetables and baked bread, followed by ice cream and topping. Why? It rained and rained and rained for days on end. I even had to put a cardigan on over my nightie when we got up at 6.30am to open presents!

On Christmas morning I checked the rain gauge and there was 110mls in there. We had another 90-odd mls fall by the end of the day. By Boxing day morning there was another 30-odd mls in the gauge. Yesterday we only had 7mls in the gauge when I checked in the morning. I haven't checked at all today. I think we're free of rain for a little while now that all of the monsoonal trough has headed south. Hopefully it will give the paddocks time to dry out a bit so we can mow again. At least all of this rain has given us a chance to watch and learn where the ground flows, holds water or flows the wrong way. I just wish we had the money to buy the rainwater tanks we've been wanting to get! And to put guttering on the roof!

I've read two books so far since Christmas Eve. I got The Black Echo by Michael Connelly as a Bookcrossing book left at the library. It's a police drama novel. It was really good. Then The Groom read it. I haven't decided where to leave it now we've finished with it. Yesterday I finished The Mango Tree by Australian author, Ronald McKie. It was so lovely. I bought it a couple of years ago at a second-hand book fair and can't believe it's taken me this long to get to it (but then again, if you only saw the amount of books we bought you wouldn't be surprised!). Now I'm back to a book (that I started months and months ago) by Marianne Fredriksson called According to Mary Magdalene, another book fair book. It's an interesting novel as "told" through the perspective of Mary Magdalene before, during and after meeting Jesus.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed what they made of it.

My favourite books

Okay, it's been a while since I said I would write about my favourite books.  I really ought to get on with it, it would be a pleasant diversion from the stresses of selling a home!

As a child I was obsessed with Enid Blyton, especially the Faraway Folk series and The Naughiest Girl in School collection.  In fact, I wanted to go to Boarding School solely based on those stories.  Sadly, my parents never came around to my point of view and regular public school was my lot in life.  No late-night adventures ever happened there!  As I grew a little older, Enid Blyton gave way to Trixie Belden mysteries.  But I've never given up my love for darling Enid.  Oh, and Milly Molly Mandy.   I was so happy to have a daughter that I could smother her in those stories from my childhood.  I had kept most of those books throughout my teenage and young adult years very carefully, and when I left home they were stored away until I was able to collect them.  When that time came it turned out mice and silverfish and the like got to them first.  So I buy my favourite childhood books where I can for my daughter.

As a teen I read To Kill a Mockingbird.  I even tried to convince The Groom to name our daughter Harper or Scout.  He wouldn't be in it.  This is the novel that woke me up to the injustices in life and the world.  Until that novel I was relatively naive and insulated from the world.  I am thankful to my parents for my sheltered upbringing, but that novel was the beginning of who I am today I believe.  

I have always loved Shakespeare, for me, he is one big mystery.  I don't always understand him but I just, I don't know, get him.  I tend to favour the comedies, but Macbeth is my favourite.  I like the hilarity of Midsummer Night's Dream, but we studied it to death in one English Literature subject at Uni and now I'm a bit over it.  Too much dissection can ruin it for me I think.  I treasure my collection of his works in paper back form.

As a teenager I was given my uncle's old copies of Animal Farm and Brave New World.  They were his books from school, so those Penguin editions are quite old and brittle so I don't read them anymore.  Funnily enough, I never read them in the way that they are intended to convey a particular message.  I thought Animal Farm was funny and Brave New World a bit 'out there'.  I am glad that I read those at the age I did.  Now if students read them for the first time it's usually to dissect them within the 'critical literacy' framework, looking for particular discourses and honestly, to pick them to pieces.  As someone with a degree in Education majoring in English, I think the syllabus has taken away the sheer enjoyment of reading for pleasure.  Now to get off my soapbox.

I discovered Jane Austen late in my teen years but it's only been in my 30's that I've come to love her more than most other authors.  I wonder at times if I was simply born in the wrong century.  I love all (nice) things Georgian and I like the rules surrounding society.  Sometimes I think life would be simpler if we all knew what was expected of us.  I love the pomp and ceremony of the era and the clothing.  Knowing my luck I would have been born into the working classes so had I have lived then I probably would not have enjoyed it as much.  My favourite novel is Sense and Sensibility, although I love the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth.  

Along with Austen, I also like the Bronte sisters, with my favourite novel being Emily's Wuthering Heights.  But I also like Charlotte's Jane Eyre.  They are both very different but written very well.   

As you can see I tend to favour the 'classics'.  I don't know if this falls into that category, but I am fascinated by Seamus Heaney's bi-lingual version of Beowulf.  I did a semester of Old English at uni purely because of this poem.  It was a pre-requisite for Middle English, which looked at Beowulf, but I didn't end up taking that second subject after all.  I read the poem like a novel, breathlessly and quick.  I got up a speech rhythm not unlike a gallop in parts.  I felt exhausted at the end of the poem, like I had gone along with Beowulf on his journey.  I feel that J.K. Rowling borrowed some of the tale for some of her scenes in The Goblet of Fire, the whole gilli-weed bit was too similar to a scene in the poem.  But good on her if she did.  

You may have noticed that my childhood was shaped by child focussed novels.  This has yet to leave me.  I am a massive fan of the Harry Potter books.  Massive.  So much so that I can't bear to watch the movies (but I do) because I tear them to shreds over how much they have differed from the novels.  The Groom finds it embarrassing to go with me to the movies because I'm all "that's NOT what happened in the book".  I have also been known to elbow small children out of the way to get my hands on the first book on sale day.  Well, if I've been standing at the front of the line two hours before the store opens then I ruddy well ought to get the first book!  And I would find myself into the wee hours of the morning pouring over Mugglenet.  I'm such a sad, sad human being.

Above all, my favourite reading has to be biographical books on female English monarchs.  I love Katherine of Aragon especially.  I love anything written by Antonia Fraser, too.  I'm not overly interested in any monarch after Queen Victoria, but I so love strong women who have forged a role in life for themselves despite the times they lived in.  

There are so many more books I love to read that I'm afraid I shall be here all day listing them all.  Patrick White, Tolkien, Upton Sinclair, Thomas Hardy, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf are some of my favourite authors.  

There is one book that I cannot allow to escape unmentioned, and that is Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth.  It was read to us by my Grade Three teacher every day after lunch recess.  I LOVED IT!  I tracked it down after having my children so they could share in it when they were older.  They are yet to read it but I am sure they will love it as much as I do.  I think that my love of the book has more to do with that teacher being my favourite teacher than anything else, though.

At the moment I am reading The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory.  It's the book I am reading whilst waiting at school to pick up the children.   I loved The Other Boleyn Girl but hated the movie.  I do tend to have more than one book on the go but the other books I'm reading at the moment are craft books because I'm getting a start on Christmas presents early this year.

I am thankful that my parents were generous with books.  They always bought us Little Golden Books everytime they did their groceries.  I've always been surrounded by books and I really doubt I could live a life without them.  And neither can my children.  The Groom thinks that with the pile of books surrounding my side of the bed he will one day wake up to find me smothered to death under a mountain of fallen books.  Other than drowning in a vat of chocolate, I think that would be a good way to go!

The home stretch

I have yet to get around to writing on my favourite books, I realise.   For that I feel bad.  To me, books are one of the most important things in life and I despair of ever neglecting them.  I shall get around to writing that blog, I promise.

In North Queensland we have had a lot of rain, and it seems there is more to come.  According to the Weather Channel's 10 day forecast there is rain and storms predicted for every day of those 10 days.  Yay.  I do love the rain but after about a week or so it does get tiresome.  But we've had a week of no rain to speak of since the week before then when we had a week of the stuff.  

Our house auction is this week and we're so glad it's almost over.  We've had a number of ridiculously low offers, insulting and offensive, actually.  But, we've had five offers so that shows there is interest in our house.  At yesterday's open house a couple came back for the third weekend in a row.  They were one of the people who put in an offer, but it was way short of what we need to get out of here and into the next house.  I'm hoping that because there were five people interested enough in our house to put in offers there will be five people bidding against each other for our house.  Although, I do think the agent isn't working hard enough to talk the interest up on our house.  She keeps telling everyone to put in an offer based on what they would like to pay for our house - of course everyone is going to want to pay the least amount!  But, as they say come auction night, the proof will be in the pudding.  

We've decided that it's better for us to lower our reserve and aim for a sale than hold out for five or ten thousand more and possibly wait for months to get that price.  Our fear is that the owner of the property we will be buying will decide he can't wait anymore and we'll lose it.  We don't want to sacrifice our lifestyle plans for the sake of money towards a pool at the next house.

I have just received the folder of stuff from the agent with information and feedback from people who have viewed our house.  I need to digest it and decide what to do from there now.  

On another note, The Princess and I enjoyed a couple of days together in Brisbane where we watched Taylor Swift's concert.  The concert and the trip was an early birthday present for her.  It was a late night for her and the crowd and lights and volume became all too much for her in the end so just after the encore began, a tired and teary little girl decided it was time to catch the train back into the city and to our hotel for bed.  We had a lovely time together, just her and I, and I hope we can do it again soon.  I promised her that one day, when she is old enough to appreciate it, we will go to Paris together.  Hopefully I can keep that promise - maybe when the Euro is better placed against the Australian Dollar!

Wishin' and a Hopin'

I wish we had this kind of book shop where I live.  I wish on the day I went past Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller in Collins Street, Melbourne, it was open so I could go in and lose myself in the smells and textures of the treasures within.  

There is a similiar book shop to this in Brisbane, called Tonnoirs, but I like the display of owls here.  Tonnoirs has narrow flights of stairs leading to magical worlds where the stairs are lined with stacked books.

Where I live we have the chain store book shops.  Oh, there is the Mary Who? shop but it's nowhere near the same as these wonderful worlds like I just mentioned.  

I write this because I had to go and pick up a few things from a shopping centre this morning and I really wanted to get some books that were 'out of the ordinary' but couldn't.  There wasn't anything 'out of the ordinary'. 

 

Even our op shops here are blah, there are no real treasures to be had.  I am envious when I read others' blogs and they show off their antique clothing, fabric or linen that they've discovered.  I miss the old Paddy's markets I used to go to in Brisbane, so when I head down there next time I'm going to scour the city in the couple of days I have there for treasures!

Instead, I shall reconcile myself to re-reading Wuthering Heights today while the children watch Coraline for the tenth time in the loungeroom.  It's another airconditioner day today.