November 10. Day 315. Santa Claus is coming to town

 

I suspect many of those organised types who got their letters off to Santa early were delighted that the big bloke brought their Christmas gift with him when he arrived in Brisbane this weekend. It rained, proper soaking rain.

After months of relentless dry which has seen gardens shrivel up and die and bush fires start to circle ever closer to the city, the heavens well and truly opened last night and they stayed open today.

It is of course possible that it wasn't Santa but the South African cricketers who brought the rain. Nothing is more likely to convince the heavens to open than a game of test cricket at the Gabba.

Either way I'm sure even die hard cricket fans are at some level just a teensy bit grateful to see the rain.

I'm almost certain Santa wouldn't be complaining. If you'd just arrived from the North Pole and were carrying as much body fat and heavy clothing as Mr Claus, a Christmas concert in the unforgiving Brisbane humidity to greet you might feel like a present you'd be happy to return.

The rain kept the temperature down and the crowds were thinner than in other years but the delight was clear on the faces of those who did turn up.

With My Little Pony, elves, Spiderman and of course Old Saint Nick to entertain at the annual David Jones Christmas concert, nothing was going to rain on these kids' parade.

There may have been no play at the Gabba but in the Queen Street Mall the kids seemed to think all their Christmases had come at once.

Just as well. You'd better not shout, you'd better not cry, you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus has come to town and is now appearing in a department store near you.

September 24. Day 268. Leaping into holidays

School holidays. Two whole weeks on almost unlimited opportunities to do whinge about being bored.
It doesn't seem to matter how many gadgets you have, there never seems to be the right one for the moment.
While scores of cable TV channels failed to deliver a flicker of excitement, the promise of an afternoon storm had Mr O and his cousin Cleo out in the yard jumping around like frogs as the rain started.
The amount of thunder and lightening suggest that others got a great big dumping but here there was little more than a trickle.
Perhaps next time they should try a rain dance.

September 18. Day 262. Needle in a haystack

I am sure I'm not the only one in Brisbane closely watching the sky. We've been promised rain which, for those of us who can't remember, is when wet stuff falls from the heavens.
It is, as has often been observed, a country of droughts and flooding rain and right now we are very much in the drought phase . We've just come through what the Bureau of Meteorology describes as a record dry spell of 41 consecutive days of zero rainfall in Brisbane in July and August. This was  broken only by a massive downfall of 0.2 mm on August 31. Hold the front page.
To use a typical Aussie phrase it's  Dry as a Dead Dingo's Donger (in the interests of good taste I choose not to refer to the other saying  referring to a nun's bits).
But this morning there was definite evidence that wet stuff had indeed fallen overnight and quite a blanket of cloud to suggest there's more to come (I believe this is directly related to the fact that I cracked and decided to top up the pool's water and has nothing to do with any meteorological influence).
Anyway, the cloud on the normally clear Brisbane skyline created a rather dramatic effect on Stefan's Skyneedle as I walked by this morning. Very moody.
It's easier to find a needle in a haystack than a wet day on the calendar in Brisbane at the moment - but we live in hope.
Now where did I leave that umbrella again?