Christmas in the city

FOR me, one of the great joys of Christmas is spending time in the city. For one, it's quiet and it seems as if everyone else has gone out of town.

FOR me, one of the great joys of Christmas is spending time in the city. For one, it's quiet and it seems as if everyone else has gone out of town.

The things that can annoy you about city life the other 11 months of the year seem to fade away in January. There's little in the way of traffic on the roads, you can park your car with ease and get a table at your favourite restaurant with a minimum of fuss. While the festive season is a great time to take a holiday from the city, I can honestly say the idea of staying away from crowded airports and stressful highway drives at this time of year and just staying put at home has me filled with excitement.

The fact that I live in a city with some of the best beaches anywhere, that it's blockbuster time at the cinemas and the art galleries is really just a bonus.

Christmas is also about the only time I cook at home. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I broke my oven last Christmas and haven't felt the need to get it repaired since.

That said, I plan on placing a call to the repairman as soon as I've finished this letter as I'm going to tackle the Christmas menu Christine Manfield has devised exclusively for this edition of WISH. For our previous two December issues we decided to head out of town for a location for our fashion and food shoot and Manfield themed her menu for those issues accordingly. For this issue, she's devised a menu that brings flavours from around the world to your home and makes use of ingredients that you wouldn't use every day.

Also in this issue we take a look at the amazing Aussie success story of Dinosaur Designs from its humble beginnings at Paddington Markets in Sydney to having eight stores of its own, including one in New York City, and countless stockists around the world. Speaking of success stories, we also meet James Dyson of Dyson vacuum cleaner fame and find out how he's helping restore Britain's ailing manufacturing sector and what Australia can learn from it.

And closer to home we catch up with the purveyor of fine foods, Simon Johnson, who sold his company to Manassen Foods last year to allow him more time to focus on the creative side of the business.

And as it's holiday time for many people, we've got travel stories from Scotland, Sri Lanka, Hawaii and the Gold Coast to transport you there in spirit or whet your appetite for your next holiday.

Have an enjoyable festive season whatever you decide to do. WISH will be back with our first edition for next year on February 1.