Highlighting Christmas calamities

STORIES FROM THE SOIL: Aaah, Christmas in the country.

CHRISTMAS CAPERS: Christina shares the fun of an Ongley festive season. . Picture: Max Fleet

AAAH, Christmas in the country. So peaceful, so relaxing, so uneventful ...

Well, not entirely, but then it wouldn't be an Ongley family Christmas if a degree of noise and calamity wasn't involved.

To save you the long story, I'll give you the highlights of our Christmas in the land of the red soil.

• True to form, my dad lobbied for the right to watch Carols by Candlelight on Christmas Eve, but even he had to admit he no longer knew who any of the performers were and, at any rate, all the youngsters spent too much time showing off their voices rather than just singing the darnsong. "It was much better when John Farnham was one of the guests," my mum remarked. I ignored her and put on a classic DVD, which we all promptly fell asleep in front of.

• The Farmer, meanwhile, spent Christmas Eve spraying and was out so late he decided to sleep at the farm rather than wake everyone up. My dad panicked and spent the early morning imagining him trapped under a rolled tractor for Christmas - not helped by the fact we lost an old friend in a freak accident on the Gold Coast a couple of days before - and was reassured only when The Farmer walked back in a little the worse for wear about 7.30 on Christmas morning.

• We took a little while to exchange presents, prioritising wake-up tea and coffee and forcing everyone to wear silly Santa or elf hats for photos. The Farmer just loved his. When we finally got around to it, I was given the distinct impression I was not pulling my weight in the cooking department - my presents included a slow cooker, a digital meat probe and a pasta maker. I later experimented with the pasta maker and ended up with almost as much in the bin as in the pot of boiling water, but I managed to scrape together enough for a meal. I suspect this gadget will get used about twice a year if I'm motivated.

• We had a glorious Christmas lunch on our back deck, using The Farmer's brand new Christmas barbecue to cook up some beautiful local seafood. In true Ongley festive style, we ate breakfast at 11.30am and lunch at 4.30pm, thanks to slight delays when we realised we had run out of gas for the barbie. Thank goodness for the local servo.

• The dogs distinguished themselves as usual. Stu the cattle dog turned a nice Boxing Day outing at Woodgate Beach into a family search party after he slipped his collar and ran off into the scrub, cleverly avoiding us for two hours. It took the help of kindly neighbours and the smell of fish and chips to flush him out. Lola the kelpie wasn't much better. She put herself in the dog-house by firstly pulling a white dress off the Hills Hoist and giving it a new pattern inspired by ochre paws, then tearing a strip off a bed sheet. My mum still reckons she can fix it. I'm not convinced.

• The Farmer had asked for a pump-action water gun for Christmas, ostensibly as a means of disciplining the dogs when they were naughty. He got the water gun. I got very wet. Since Christmas it seems we have had a stream of visitors, which has been both tiring and lovely, given a number of them came from quite a distance. So it's thank goodness for that barbie because I'm not sure how else we would have fed them all - I certainly wasn't going anywhere fast with the slow cooker or the pasta maker.

Originally published as Highlighting Christmas calamities