It was my great pleasure to learn that I became the new host...
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It was my great pleasure to learn that I became the new host on this platform, and as I feel in the last couple of days, I ca...
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We Aussies look for any excuse to have a get together and celebrate something, and with Christmas 2023 just around the corner there will be hardly anyone in the country who will not spend time with family and friends on either Christmas day or the subsequent week leading up to New Years Day.
This country’s beginnings as a convict settlement instilled in us a sense of comradeship that is possibly unique in the world, and along with other Aussies we celebrate Australia Day, on the 26th January each year!
My way of contributing is by holding a street luncheon dinner each year for about a dozen of the neighbours. We live in a short street which leads nowhere with a couple of dozen houses. It’s a nice friendly community on large house blocks and we do get along well with each other.
Being the biggest loudmouth in the street, I relish the opportunity to stage this event each year, show off my cooking skills and have my local mates around me. They bring along what they want to drink, and Ade and I supply the food!
As it’s the middle of summer here, despite the fry-pan in hand, I don't serve anything hot.......but there is a decided Aussie flavour to whatever we serve.....I think the only thing we don’t do is….”Throw a Shrimp on the Barbie”!! That expression is about as loathsome to an Australian as drinking a can of ‘Fosters’ beer.
Got to have the patriotic table decorations
And it wouldn't be Australia Day without one of Ade's Pavlovas. Whatever New Zealanders might say, Ade (who inherited the art from my mother) is the Pavlova queen! She has cooked a single humongous Pavlova that offered 24 servings in the past! This particular one managed a dozen!
We do what Australians do, we eat and drink heaps in our lovely stable, carefree environment and thank God we live in (what we feel is) the best country on Earth. In these troubled times we just wish we could share some of our good fortune with the rest of the world.
Have a great festive season all you lovely contributors to the Community Centre family, and on Australia Day Ade and I will raise a glass to all of you.
Cheers.........Rob
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Thank you for this @Robin4 and Happy Holidays to you and Ade! You both look absolutely fantastic. And so does all the food. And so does your glorious summer garden!
I'm looking forward to a quiet Christmas with my oldest daughter home from Los Angeles for the holidays. Her first day back, I made her an apple cake and she swept me off to the theatre to see a revival of Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along."
Tomorrow we'll decorate the tree (I'm old-fashioned and always wait until Christmas Eve). We'll have New York bagels and lox for Christmas breakfast, and Christmas dinner will be a pot roast made with grass-fed Wyoming beef sent to me by one of my bestselling clients, a writer who lives on a ranch in Wyoming.
Before Polly arrived, I had houseguests: former Airbnb guests who have become dear friends! As a remote host, this doesn't happen as often as it does for in-home hosts. But it does happen, and that's one of the many reasons I love hosting on @Airbnb. It suits so many styles and types of host.
It was nearly three years ago that Dell booked my cottage as a surprise to his wife Audrey for her birthday. He told me he had nearly lost her to a pulmonary embolism at Christmas.
Since then we've visited back and forth between Tulsa, Maine, and New York. Here they are at the Whitney Museum on their latest visit:
We went for drinks at a place with a view, had dinner at Brooklyn's oldest restaurant, and did a jigsaw puzzle:
Before they came, I ran up to my Airbnb in Maine for a week, and was lucky enough to get caught in a picturesque snowstorm:
Now - amid all this beauty, joy, family, and friendship, I had sad news. My mother died peacefully at 91 just after Audrey and Dell left. My daughters and I are going down to Baltimore for her service between Christmas and New Year's. Meanwhile, Covid finally caught up with me and I've been in isolation all week in half the apartment while my daughter nurses me from the other half, passing meals on trays through the door and making endless cups of tea.
And yet, I know you, Rob, would have the same feeling I have: It's a wonderful life, and I'm one of the luckiest people on earth.
Happy everything and here's to a great 2024.
What a beautiful story Ann.
Family are everything, lovely that you have Polly with you for Christmas.
Can I say something about your Mum. It is very hard for a person who has been active all their life to accept old age and the limitations it imposes. My mum was a very active person all her life. At age 56 she lost a breast to cancer! She recovered well and went on with life.
She had a prosthesis to supplement the missing item and I remember one day while she was rushing across a busy road the prosthesis popped out onto the pavement. Not having time between the traffic to bend down and retrieve it, she simply kicked it across into the gutter where she calmly dusted it off, re positioned it and continued what she was doing.
When she turned 72 the cancer returned, it was all through her and she was given 6 months to live. She refused treatment and said..."If this b*stard of a disease is going to take me, so be it, I will not give in to it".
It sounds a stupid thing to say but, I am sure she willed her cancer away! She got another 17 years after that, saw her grandchildren born......in fact she became a grandmother for the first time twice on the same night. Our Sarah was born at 8.30pm on December 12th, and my sisters little girl Jessica was born at 3.15am on the 13th.
Mum was beside herself!
When she was 84 I gave her an old computer of mine, she got herself an internet connection and every day she downloaded crosswords from the various publications around the world.....she was a 'Crossword junkie'.
But when her time came to make her way across that rainbow bridge in the winter of 2009, Ann, the body was ready, and so was she....and although it is sad to loose them, you have a wonderful life to look back on and treasure and I am sure she felt at peace with where she was.
Treasure those you love Ann, I hope you get to have lots more time with Polly and with your STR friends Dell and Audrey, have a lovely Christmas......do you know, I have never had a Christmas in the snow?
Good luck possum.
Cheers........Rob.
