Christmas this year was terrific.

On Christmas Eve I stayed up pretty late talking online to people, because it was way too hot to go to sleep. I love sitting here with the back door open and the night wind blowing all the forest and flower smells in. At about 10.30pm I walked down the road to a booze shop that was open late, to get a bottle of port for my father. The shopkeeper had left the door open and was sitting outside on the kerb enjoying the cool breeze. Night is the best time during summer, and walking at night is definitely one of the best things to do with it.

I got up around 4 a.m. (the normal time I get up to go to work, and hence the time the cat expects breakfast), fed the cat and took a look outside again. A few birds were just starting up the dawn chorus but it was still dark. Then I went back to bed and slept in until it was time to get ready to go over to my parents' place at 9.

We had hot miniature croissants with ham and camembert cheese, strawberries, and champagne for breakfast and then opened presents. Then we went to one of the beaches near my house, for no particular reason except that the rest of them hadn't been there in a while and it is quite a nice beach. There were about two billion other people there. We sat around on a blanket under a pohutukawa tree and watched other people swimming, making sandcastles and so on, and got bits of red pohutukawa blossom all over us. Then the wind picked up a bit so we moved to the park across the road which was a bit more sheltered.

Some people under the tree next to ours had received three absolutely tiny black-and-white fluffy kittens for Christmas and had brought them along. The kittens were curled up in a little kitten heap in some bark under the tree, perfectly happy and with no intention of running away or indeed even waking up. I took photos.

I found a seesaw at the other end of the park and walked up one end of it and played around balancing in the middle of it and trying to keep both ends off the ground and level. When I got bored with that, I walked along a low wooden fence thing for a while.

After we were all sufficiently sunburned we went our separate ways, and since I had my camera I walked along the road both ways from home and took some photos. Horses in a flowery field in one direction, with the water behind, and then in the other direction, down into all the bush tracks around my house. It is pretty dark in there even on a blazing summer day like this, so perhaps those ones won't come out, but we shall see.

Perhaps this evening I will walk back down to the beach and see a movie. There ought to be a few illegal fireworks to be seen down there, too; almost every year, somebody saves them up from Guy Fawkes Day. I didn't have a very good Christmas last year, but this one makes up for it so much it's just UNREAL. Yay Christmas.