A small box of Christmas cheer

It’s Christmas morning here in Aotearoa.

For me it’s a normal working day. I woke up at the usual time and went about my ordinary weekday routine. The house was very quiet – my flatmate left yesterday to be with his family, taking Little Princess and Teddy Bear with him.

I was just about to leave for work when I remembered I hadn’t fed the chickens. I zoomed to the back of the garden to say good morning to the girls and give them their breakfast. And while I was doing that a train passed by.

Our garden backs on to a main railway line; there’s a set of points outside our place, so the trains often idle there while waiting for other trains to pass. It’s amazing how quickly you become used to trains coming and going. The only ones that disturb me now are the fully-laden milk trains – up to 20 carriages containing 59 tonnes each – they really make the house shake. Even Little Princess, who can hear the most soft-footed person walk in the gate, and chases blackbirds off “her” lawn, ignores the trains.

I glanced up from the hens as the train slowed at the points. I found myself staring straight into the cheerful face of the engine driver. We waved at each other, and his face momentarily disappeared from the window. When he reappeared he called out, Merry Christmas! and threw something at me. He waved again and the train lurched back to life.

He'd made a pretty good throw. I went to pick up the object, which had cleared the fence and fallen a couple of metres from me. It was a small box of chocolates.

Under the black locust trees

Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, breathe in the wild air!
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There was no particular reason for our gathering. Summer was here, the weather was fine, the moon was full, it was the weekend, and I needed to practice my tent-pitching skills before going to South Australia. What further reasons did we need to camp out in the front paddock with a group of friends?

We were 12 people in all, and on Saturday evening a little United Nations tent city sprouted up in the paddock, which the farmer had kindly mowed for us. There were people from Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the United States – and just a few of us from New Zealand.

People brought along enough food and alcohol to keep a small army happy. We ate and drank on the front porch as the sun sank and a golden breeze purred across the paddock. The temperature dropped with the sun, and as Jupiter and Venus showed their faces in the western sky, out came jackets, socks and blankets. Later the full moon rose over the mountains. We went to the back of the house to welcome the moon, and picked out constellations and looked for satellites.

The next morning we emerged from our tents to a sunny, windless day. Pete produced a frisbee from somewhere – a Barbie frisbee, which the boys really appreciated – and we threw that around the paddock for a while. Pete took some of us on an expedition to find his favourite beetles [I can’t remember the name] but they weren’t receiving visitors that day.

When the sun became too fierce we retreated to shady places and ate and drank whatever hadn’t been eaten and drunk the night before. I lay in the clover-scented grass under the black locust trees and dozed for a while, had a long conversation with Melanie and later, an even longer one with Jesse. A korimako practised his song in the branches above our heads and kereru flew kamikaze-style through the paddocks.

This was one of the most relaxing weekends I’ve experienced recently. I could do whatever I wanted; there was no pressure to rush here or do this. We place too much emphasis in our society on busyness. I’m so busy, we say, as if it is a virtue to be too busy to chill out. Maybe I have fallen into this way of thinking, because the feeling of calm contentedness I had under the black locust trees that afternoon was unfamiliar. I am always doing something, and while I like to be busy, it isn’t healthy to be so busy I never relax.

Even when I try to take it easy by, say, reading a book, at the back of my mind I’m wondering what else I should be doing. It means I can’t enjoy the moment because in my mind I’ve already moved onto the next thing. It’s amazing how much time I can waste worrying about what I could be doing that I’m not!

But on that blazing hot Sunday afternoon the chatter in my mind was quiet. There was nothing I had to do, nowhere I had to go - but be there.

God help us to live slowly:
To move simply:
To look softly:
To allow emptiness:
To let the heart create for us.
-Leunig, "When I Talk to You"

Patience is a virtue ...

... As I’m always reminding PP. [He really appreciates it, I can tell.] Well now I have a taste of my own medicine, with the arrival in the mail today of this:



Oh yes. A ticket to a one-day cricket match between New Zealand and Australia, at the Adelaide Oval, in February.

Now my trip to South Australia is starting to seem real. In less than two months, I’ll be there.

I can’t wait.