As we have in the past few years, we had Christmas at home, and as in previous years our aim was to have a quiet one where we relax, listen to music, and read.
Preparation started about two weeks before, when we we did our traditional pre Christmas emptying of the freezers, especially our overflow second freezer.
I don't know about you, but through the year our freezers gradually fill up with frozen leftovers, rice, and strange tubs that have lost their labels with odd looking brown lumpy contents.
Well if no one's eaten them. out they go. We've learned to be ruthless over the years and chuck stuff out. This of course means that our green bin takes on a strange curried tomatoey smell the week we do our chuck out, but it does mean we have space in the freezer for our Christmas food.
Then it's a round of shopping, baking and cooking, the ritual of lining up to collect our sea food order a couple of days before, and a panic when we went to collect our organic chicken on the day before the day before when the clerk in the grocer's couldn't find it.
Actually it was a storm in a teacup - there had been too many orders to fit in the freezer where the Christmas orders were being stored and ours had been moved to another freezer, but they'd forgotten to tell the people working behind the counter about the move.
This year we kept it simple - seafood on Christmas Eve with a bottle of champagne and cold roast chicken on Christmas day.
On Christmas Eve it was warm enough to eat outside and then watch the sun go down as we finished our champagne.
Christmas morning was a different story. Grey, overcast, showers of pelting rain, and cold enough to need the heating on. We considered heating our roast chicken, but we'd made salads to go with cold chicken, so cold chicken it was.
Amazingly, after lunch the sky cleared and the day warmed up allowing us to go for a late afternoon walk.
Full of optimism for a better day on Boxing day, we went to bed only to be woken by heavy rain punctuated by bouts of even heavier rain. While we were having breakfast the power went out, and the rain became even heavier, like God was flushing the toilet, and turned momentarily to small hail.
The nineteenth century open brick drain in the street overflowed and ran like a creek, washing over the road margin and the nature strip, but fortunately didn't get high enough to cause any damage.
And then it slackened to drizzle. The power came back on, and after a wobble or two, stayed on.
I did a walk round and neither our house or cars appeared to have sustained any damage, and apart from one sunflower growing in the backyard, the garden appeared intact.
However games were most definitely off.
There was nothing to do but settle down and watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart while waiting for the rain to clear.
Which it did eventually, but only half heartedly with the day staying chilly and damp, with the occasional drizzly shower to add to the fun.
We heated up the leftover chicken and had hot vegetables and roast potatoes - almost like we did when we lived in England years ago - no brussels sprouts though.
And eventually the weather did pick up, and the last couple of days have been warm and sunny, dry enough to cut the grass and eat lunch outside, even if it has been cool overnight, sometimes cool enough to need the heating on first thing.
We've no real plans for New Year's eve other than a drink at the pub followed by some prawns and champagne at home, and while the forecast doesn't look good for New Year, we've got some plans to get out for a couple of local low key bushwalks avoiding the tourist honeypots ...
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