Tis the season to be partied out

It’s 4pm on Sunday right now and I feel about 75% recharged from this week’s adventures. We’ve got Christmas drinks & nibbles with our neighbours at 5, and then might wander over to the foot of the Harbour Bridge for a twilight carol service (not cos I particularly want to celebrate Christmas but I do like some of the tunes!)

Monday – Milk Crate Theatre Christmas extravaganza – it’s a theatre company made up of homeless people and a few professional actors – pretty soul-warming, affirming stuff.

Tuesday – Kylie concert! Not something I’d normally do, but when in Rome… Very pop-tastic and full of lots of screaming young girls and gay men – entertainment in itself!

Wednesday – dinner out with K and his boss, followed by a few drinks in our local – lovely but an impromptu evening out when I should have been doing my laundry or something!

Thursday – Christmas party with my former colleagues from my temp job with the State Govt. Typically all the Aussies left fairly early and from over 100 people at the beginning, there were three of us left by 11pm – me, an English bloke and an Irish-Australian. Good night of playing pool, drinking beer and catching up.

Friday – K’s work’s Christmas party, at their CEO’s place out in the ‘burbs. Barbecue, beer, wine, summer’s day. Pretty nice. Almost the last ones to leave (again!) by about 7pm, got takeaway pizza and headed home. We both fell asleep on the couch by 10.15!!!

So yesterday, after a good sleep and a fairly early start, I did very little apart from things like read the weekend paper, take part in my brother’s study on psychosis (as you do!) try to fix my printer (failed), book accommodation / travel / research options for various trips we’ve got coming up over next few months and watch back episodes of Sex & the City! Today has been much the same although on a more active note we’ve just been swimming, which was lovely – 20 lengths of the outdoor 50m pool nearby which is clean, uncrowded and has spectacular views.

Most of Australia seems to finish up for Christmas early and the tradition is for the holiday season to last right through until Australia Day on 25th January. We’re bucking the trend and we’re both working right through to Christmas, and in between Christmas / New Year. We’re then going on holiday after Australia Day for about 10 days – it’s good to be different, especially as it means we avoid the school holidays!

All in all I’m finding this time of year really disorientating (or is it disorienting, I never know!). Although it’s lovely to have such an extended summer, and to not have the usual misery of 3pm sunsets, freezing cold mornings and general doom & gloom of a UK winter, in a weird way I miss all of that. My body is really confused by it and I’m a lot more knackered than I normally am – K’s the same – so our theory is that our bodies are suffering from not having the usual excuse to hibernate, eat lots of chocolate and generally get away with slouching in front of the TV without feeling like we should be out ‘doing something’ and ‘making the most of summer’. We both had tons of energy when we first got here and were zipping about merrily at the weekends, going to the gym lots and were generally full of beans. Now it’s a definite struggle to keep up!! I’m sure there are lots of theories to explain this – biorhythms, need for a holiday, natural consequence of a busy year involving a move halfway across the world, change of jobs and related stresses and strains. But whatever it is, I’m hoping a few long weekends over the festive season, followed by a longer break in January, will see us back to our more sprightly selves – just in time for winter here!?!!?