My annual Christmas letter relaying cheery tales of my new life Down Under started out with great gusto the first year, when I was still in a state of shock. Everything was a novelty and I hadn’t really come to terms with the fact this was probably where I was going to live for the remainder of my life. I wasn’t on holiday – this was for real. People ‘back home’ often assume one is basking in the glory of a foreign land, rolling in Aussie dollars and enjoying the fruits of untold success. The truth can be rather different. I’ve avoided The Annual Christmas Letter for around 10 years but was reminded of my short-coming this year upon receipt of a friend’s spectacularly envy-inducing prose. Now here was a family that had emigrated elegantly – to Spain. My friend’s annual Christmas letter show-cased her picturesque Spanish villa and her beautiful family and was peppered with tales of trips to Germany and London (Ascot) culminating in this year’s escape from the home renovation to Verbier, Switzerland (which I later discover is a slice of Alpine paradise, frequented by the rich and famous). I assure you, she was not for a moment intending to gloat. That’s just the way life was. Let me make a slight comparison. On this particular day, I had risen early to brave the pre-Christmas market. The cost of living in Oz is surprisingly high so I belong to a fruit and vegetable group which shops at the local large fruit and vegetable market. It sells wholesale fruit and vegetables to resellers and the public at a considerable saving. This is my market day. It involves buying enough fruit and vegetables to split between 10 people. I lug boxes of fruit and vegetables back and forth to my car which is precariously parked in between a giant fruit truck and a fork lift truck offloading pallets of paw-paws. I dodge ten more forklift drivers who shout and gesticulate while reversing at top speed without looking. There are several near crashes. It is dog eat dog. I witness a woman wrestling a box of mangoes from a store holder. Breathless and adrenalin-charged, the manic shop is finally over and I have avoided being squashed by a large pallet of pumpkins. The task is then to drive home, offload the twenty or so boxes of fruit and vegetables and divide them into ten boxes on the front lawn. Boxes are then driven to a central pickup point. But that’s not all. I am then encouraged by my slave driving husband (I exaggerate slightly), to return home and drive an hour to hire a truck, then load furniture I have bought from my American sister-in-law who is heading back to the States. It is finally 11pm, the furniture has been offloaded and repositioned and I am weak with exhaustion. Another day in paradise, I muse. I am about to nod off when my husband’s Blackberry (fast becoming ‘CrackBerry’) beeps, indicating an email. He has a read, then turns to me, ‘This is one Christmas letter you won’t want to read – maybe leave it until morning . . .’ The Annual Christmas Letter. Enough to make a grown woman cry . . .
The PDF below is taken from Bookseller + Publisher's Summer Sampler 2008/09. Copyright © 2008 by Lois Nicholls. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
PDF - A Taste of 'Aussie, Actually'
