Advertisement
Published: February 6th 2021
Edit Blog Post
Christmas Eve 2019
Nicola, Kerrii & Andrea...slaves in the kitchen! Well
The Times They Are A Changin' as Bob Dylan told us in 1964!!
With Christmas 2018 spent in Copenhagen, Christmas 2019 saw us in Melbourne while Christmas 2020 saw us Home Alone in Sydney!
Since I wrote a travelblog about our wonderful Copenhagen Christmas adventures I won't repeat them here.
For Christmas 2019 Kev and I drove from Sydney to Melbourne, a journey of 880kms which we took two days to do with an overnight stay in Albury. Once in Melbourne we headed to Nic's place where we were staying. Meanwhile Andrea flew from Armidale, staying with Kerrii, Seb, Grace and Rupert and with the two apartments about a ten minute walk from each other it was easy for us all to go from one to the other.
So on Christmas Eve we enjoyed a beautiful Roast Pork dinner cooked for us by Seb and held at their apartment while on Christmas Day we had another lovely meal at Nic's place. Following us all eating more than an 'elegant sufficiency' present opening was the order of the afternoon.
Boxing Day, all of us apart from Andrea headed off to the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch
Christmas Eve 2019
Kerrii, Nicola, Grace & Michelle the Boxing Day test match between Australian and New Zealand which was great fun. With a packed lunch made up of Christmas leftovers, which included some of Nic's famous Christmas cake amongst all the delicious food, we enjoyed some friendly rivalry with the many Kiwis who were all around us with an eventual win for Australia by 247 runs a few days later.
We enjoyed many of the delights which Melbourne had to offer after the Christmas celebrations; visits to the State Library of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria to name a few before we headed back to Sydney.
Christmas 2020 couldn't have been more different thanks to the nasty surprise which Covid-19 gave us when we first began to realise earlier in the year that it was going to throw all our well made plans into the air! For us those well made plans were that Katherine, Thomas, Sienna, Evie and Isabella were coming from Copenhagen to join us for Christmas while Ross and Natsumi too were coming from Kanagowa to join the rest of us living in Australia in Armidale, Melbourne and Sydney. Needles to say, family members who
Christmas Eve 2019
Seb, the chief Chef and his sidekick Kerrii were flying in from Denmark and Japan had their flights cancelled so we set about making other arrangements.
In the end, the only family member with plans to come to Sydney for Christmas was Nicola who booked herself, Kevin and I into Aqua Dining for lunch on Christmas Day; the restaurant situated over North Sydney Pool with views of beautiful Sydney Harbour and the Harbour Bridge. We were really looking forward to that even though we were going to miss the rest of the family. Then Sydney's Northern Beaches entered a crucial five-day lockdown when Covid cases were detected there which saw all the States closing their borders to each other. Effectively this meant that, as one of Melbourne's five million residents who'd already spent fifteen (15) weeks in lockdown to curb an outbreak of Covid there, Nicola would have had to spend another two weeks in quarantine in a Melbourne hotel once she'd flow back from Sydney before she could go home. Not willing to do that, a decision was made to cancel lunch at Aqua Dining resulting in Kev and I spending Christmas home alone!!
In all our forty nine (49) years of marriage, as I
Christmas Day 2019
Nic's tree and some more pressies had three children from a previous marriage, we've never had Christmas on our own!! And since I like a cast of thousands around us for Christmas, I wasn't very happy about that. Well, that's an exaggeration of course; what I really meant was I like family members - which at this point in time are adult kids and grandkids - all together with us at Christmas. But of course life's all about rolling with the punches!!
So on Christmas Eve I spent two hours (I kid you not) in a socially distanced queue - with most of us wearing masks - at our local Seafood shop to buy lobster and prawns for the home alone Christmas Day lunch. And even though we were on our lonesome the house looked very nice with the tree and all the decorations to cheer us up.
Boxing Day, when Margot joined us it was obviously a tad quieter than it normally is but we made the most of it with the added bonus of being able to enjoy some of Margot's famous Christmas pudding after yet more lobster and prawns!! Not only were we 'home alone' it was the first Christmas we
Christmas Day 2019
Kerrii, Nic & Andrea; the talented kitchen staff! haven't had the traditional Ham, Pork and Turkey with all those hot veggies. Not really the most ideal food for a summer Christmas in Australia but it's all about the tradition which came from the UK.
The next thing to look forward to was New Year's Eve with the fireworks to be shown on TV and everyone encouraged to stay home to watch them; again something I'm not used to!! But the bonus there was that Ross and Natsumi in Japan plus Katherine, Thomas, Sienna, Evie and Isabella in Denmark were watching it live-streamed so we were able to chat to them afterwards. At least that's a bonus of today's technology we are lucky enough to enjoy, A bit different to what those who lived through the Spanish Flu Pandemic in 1918/1919 had on offer! And I took some pictures of the fireworks from the TV so I could kid myself that I was there in person!!
Now it remains to be seen what Christmas 2021 has in store for us. Stay safe everyone!! xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 16; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0638s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
John
non-member comment
Christmas
Seems fun was had by all ?. I see Grace is taller than all the family now. ?