Is there anyone here called Carol?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.

Yes, yes it is indeed beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and I love it!

I’m trilling carols every chance I get, although I do admit to often mishearing the lyrics. It’s a common problem, I know of people who are convinced Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer also mentions “Olive, the other reindeer…”

The Women in Black

The Women in Black*

By Madeleine St John

(Book review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge)

Sydney in the late 1950s. On the second floor of the famous F. G. Goode departments store, in Ladies Cocktail Frocks, the women in black are girding themselves for the Christmas rush. Lisa is the new temporary Sales Assistant. Across the floor and beyond the arch, she is about to meet the glamorous Continental refugee, Magda, guardian of the rose-pink cave of Model gowns…

*Not to be confused with The Woman in Black, a 1983 gothic horror novel by Susan Hill, that was made into the scariest film of all time.

I have to confess that I’m bending the rules with reviewing this novel for the challenge, which is about discovering works by Australian authors you haven’t read before. I have previously read The Women in Black, many times in fact, and reading it again either from start to finish or delving at random into its pages is always a delight.

Good things come in small packages…

It’s Christmas, don’t blink, don’t look away! Not all the angels are singing the Hallelujah Chorus…

Celts and selkies…

For an Australian, I’m so Scottish that if you cut me I’d bleed tartan. Or single-malt whisky.

I’m a lowland Scot on my dad’s side and Highland Scot on mum’s. Of all my sisters my parents decided to give me the most Scottish name they could think of, which is how I end up named for two Scottish icons: the heather flower and the warrior who struck a blow against the English.

Better late than never, right?

There are few delights more delightful than receiving a text message on a dreary week morning from a beloved niece. “You are the coolest aunt EVER!” There was even a cute emoticon.

The subject of this unsolicited accolade was my upcoming attendance at the Harvest Music Festival, being held in Parramatta. My niece, a die-hard music fan, had already been at its Melbourne staging and was excited I was going too.

Now I’m not sure if what I’m about to confess is going to reverse or enhance her opinion, but I really hope it is the latter. It comes down to my age, and it’s not my somewhat advanced years I’m confessing, she already knows how old I am. No, for all my decades on this planet we call home, I’ve never been to a music festival.

Planes, trains and high hopes...

I never would have hitchhiked to Birmingham

If it hadn't been for love

I never would have caught the train to Louisiana

If it hadn't been for love

Listening to British songstress Adele belt out this wonderful soul piece today, I felt a pang of sympathy for a fellow traveller, carrying their heart on their sleeve.

Pod people...

“He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.” The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett.

That quote has only a tenuous link to this article, but I’m about to mention Fifty Shades of Grey, so I wanted to balance it out with an example of literary mastery.

Why am I mentioning Fifty Shades of Grey? Simple, I heartily disagree with descriptions of its sex scenes as ‘vanilla’.