Batman Smells

Next Sunday is Christmas.

This isn't a community service announcement. I figured you'd already cottoned on to that. But, hey, I have to start somewhere.

The Blackberry family has fallen into the delightful tradition of an outdoors Christmas gathering - by the river or the beach. This is great because everyone can eat and then spread out to loll around in the shade and ignore each other in peaceful, digestive silence while children run amok unsupervised and get into the usual scrapes that children do in the great outdoors: sunburn, mossie bites, drowning.

However this year my uncle, Raffles, has had a hissy fit. He wants a hot turkey, dammit! So we're all trooping off to his place to squish together in the lounge room, remaining upright and conversational at all times. As you can imagine, this is Grumpy's version of a dream day out. If each of us blogs about our festive experience, it will be a classic example of compare and contrast. English teachers everywhere will be able to print out the pages and glue them into their lesson plan.

As Grumpy would say, and has indeed said, watch this space.