I was casting my mind back to Christmas days of the past, when I was a similar age to the sprog. I can remember well the pre-’santa is actually mummy and daddy’ days – finding it hard to sleep, waking up at the crack of dawn, presents in a pillow case at the end of the bed. So it’s been really funny watching Jack this season. He has his suspicions about the origins of his presents, but he’s not stupid enough to jinx it all by calling fake on the jolly fat man in the red and white suit.

The missus and I got to bed at about 2:00am last night and were awoken by a very excited little boy at 6:00am. As excited as Jack was by the stocking in his bedroom, he still dashed off to the bog for his morning piss – if ever there was a boy that liked his routine, it’s Jack. He appeared at the side of our bed holding his stocking saying, “Santa’s been!” And indeed he had.

Every year we try to make an effort not to spoil our son and every year, like most parents I suspect, we fail. He got in-line skates, a skateboard, a DS Lite, three DS Lite games, books, sweeties, a remote control aeroplane, Pokemon cards and a farting toilet. I always like watching him to see which present will be the biggest hit – this year Liz actually struck gold with her present to Jack of three packs of Pokemon cards, which just happened to include two energy cards and three evolutions. So that’s alright then.

This year Santa brought me an Elgato EyeTV Diversity for the living room Hackintosh and a $200 gift voucher at the local surf shop which I plan to spend tommorow on a ‘shortie’ wetsuit. Liz got a very swish Rip Curl watch, some fetching handbags, some new Crocs, some jewelery and lots of wine.

We drove over to may parents at 10:00am for more gift-giving. By the time we were on the road to Broughton the last of the grey skies from the wet front that passed over us yesterday were clearing and temperatures were lifting. My dad had gone to town on the Xmas lunch (traditional) – by 1:00pm I was stuffed and everyone had collapsed on the comfy chairs on the deck to relax in the sunshine.

I was the first in the pool, quickly joined by Liz and Jack. We had a very relaxing splash around for an hour or so, followed by a light lunch and then we headed home.

Boxing day started out warm and sunny and finished that way. We headed back over to my parents to see my sister and the BIL who’d driven down from the Southern Highlands for the annual gathering of the clan. We arrived at about 10:30, sister was already sitting in the pool, glass of champers in hand and the BIL was already watching Australia get caned by the South Africans in the cricket.

We ate leftovers and swam into the pool until early evening, before heading home. Another Xmas over, the new year to come.

Projectile …
Two days before Xmas, Jack was spectacularly ill. He’d said to his mum that he didn’t feel too great earlier in the day but we didn’t pay too much attention to it because he perked up again. However at about 1am, just as I was thinking about going to bed, I heard the tell-tale sound of vomiting from Jack’s room.

I rushed in just in time to witness a scene reminiscent of Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s most excellent motion picture – The Meaning of Life. Jack was sat on the bed, throwing up copious amounts of orange (why is it always a light orange/beige colour?) puke all over his bed/himself and the floor.

Like most parents I suspect, we’re well versed in post-puke procedures these days. I took Jack into the bathroom, pulled the pukey PJs off him and stuck him under the shower with a toothbrush, while Liz began the clean-up. It soon became apparent that the mattress, unprotected as it was, was a right-off. Such copious amounts of vom had been spilled on it, that there was no way it was ever going to smell right again – particularly not with the summers we have here.

So the next day I went to town and bought a new mattress the Mattress Factory outlet. I brought it home and put the old one in the plastic wrapping to take to the tip. I put the puke-soaked mattress in the back of the car and drove the 7km to the tip – given that the temperature outside was about 32°c, you can perhaps understand why I spent most of the journey with my head out of the car window. I approached the tip, relieved I’d be able to offload my stinking cargo – only to discover that they’d closed for Xmas and wouldn’t re-open for three days. So, as tempting as it was to sling the mattress at the gate to the dump, I drove back home, unloaded it and stowed it round the side of the house.

Jack made a full recovery the next day.

No vacancies …
The day after Boxing Day I was on patrol on the beach. Since it was the Xmas holidays and many of the club’s members were back from boarding school or college, we had a full squad for the first time this season. Which was just as well really as it turned out to be an eventful day.

The first emergency happened when a bloke came up to us and asked if we had a spare Ventolin for a friend who’d lost his and was having an asthma attack. We said we didn’t  and asked if the guy was okay. Richard sent Matt to have a look-see and it turned out the bloke was some way from okay – he’d got dumped in a wave, had face-planted on the bottom, swallowed some water and was hyper-ventilating. We got him on oxygen and called an ambulance.

Meanwhile a small girl was brought to us suffering badly from Blue Bottle stings. She’d caught a right dose of venom across her back and was, understandably, in some distress. As per guidelines, we put her in the shower with the water as hot as she could bear. After about half an hour the stings calmed down long enough for her mum to get her dressed and back to the holiday house.

While everyone else was coping with all that, I was left on the beach, on my own, with about 500 holidaymakers for company. The surf was fairly heavy and so the inevitable happened – a flash rip blew up right on the right-hand flag. I spent the next two hours in the water with a rescue tube letting people know about the rip and plucking the odd kid out of the water that floated into it.

After lunch I was in the radio room to hear a call from a small boat on the VHF to the marine rescue that their motor had conked out, their anchor was slipping and they were only about 200m off the beach, just south of the surf building. I got the binoculars out and saw the boat in question. I radioed down to the beach and Byron and Alister fired up the IRB and want to offer their assistance. No sooner had they reached the boat than the VMR vessel hoved into view and towed the stranded tinnie away.

The next message on the radio was from Mollymook SLSC, 80km south of us, letting Surfcom Kiama know that due to a large electrical storm, they’d closed the beach. I had a look at the radar on the BOM site and it clearly showed a large storm heading directly for us. Sure enough, beaches down the coast shut down one by one.

The storm front was something to behold – a huge wall of white cloud stretched from inland to way out to sea. As the first lightning and thunder burst out, we put the flags on the sand and closed the beach. The storm came directly overhead and was extremely active for the 45 minutes it took to pass northwards. No sooner had it gone, to be replaced by some light drizzle at the tale-end, than surfers appeared from nowhere to take advantage of the now wind-free conditions and glassy waves.