Me in garden sweltering in 43 degrees of formidable heat

We found a nice artificial Christmas tree, not ideal as I have always had a real one, but they don’t have too many Norwegian Pines floating about round here. It looked great when we got it all decorated, and we started getting some lovely Christmas cards from early December which was lovely (thanks to everyone who sent one!), it was so exciting getting the post every morning! My last radio show before Christmas was on the 21st so I played a mixture of big hits and Christmas songs for the whole show – it was great, I was singing along to Slade, The Waitresses and The Pogues and finally beginning to feel like it was the festive season!! They have a competition here (just like on Westfield Avenue in Eggborough) for the best Christmas light display, there are about 5 categories and fairly big prize money so it is all taken very seriously by some residents! You can even get a list of entrants from the council and do a ‘Christmas Lights Drive’ around Moranbah!

We both a ridiculously brief holiday period totalling 4 days off, how we longed for the traditional 1.5 / 2 weeks in England! In Australia it seems that once Christmas day is over, then that is that – whereas in England we treat the whole week as a festive week which is much nicer.