Post-Christmas post

The Sydney-Hobart is starting down the coast; the sun is shining but there's a nice fresh breeze; the fridge is stuffed with Christmas leftovers—figs, ham, chicken, chocolate, pineapple, pudding, mince pies; we are parked on the couches watching Boxing Day shoppers go crazy, yachts, house fires and Perth's soaring temperatures on TV, and trying to feel hungry again.

At my elbow is a notebook filling with scrawl, Nathan Burrage's Fivefold, Jane Yolen's Once Upon A Time (she said) and the Summer issue of Viewpoint: On Books for Young Adults. There are Christmas cards all over the bookcases and mantelpiece, Christmas wrappings all over the floor, Christmas planes flying people out of town overhead, and Christmas messages all over the blogiverse. Christmas and New Year greetings to all!

I just signed myself up for Jan Cornall's Summer Writing Lab, so that I'll be forced to tackle all the short story commitments I foolishly took on for the first three months of this year. So I feel as if I'm getting organised even as I lounge here on the couch. :)

Harry is off riding on his newly accoutred bike; Jack is on a Thai island (we had a Christmas Even phone call from him) having a wonderful time, we hope.

Out the window, I can see a skywriter finishing off the letter E; on the TV I can see, above the yachts, that this is the end of the word BOSE. I could have told you that, though; it's always BOSE. Next year I'll get them to write READ TENDER MORSELS above the harbour.