Roger Moroney
Here we are on the cusp of December — the final chapter of the year.
The month which heralds the first calendar month of summer, which will almost certainly mean Friday will see the rains arrive.
It is also the month of the festive fervour.
Christmas time.
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The time for the retail industry to launch full scale assaults on our letterboxes with enough sales pamphlets to wallpaper the average sized room after just four days.
There was a survey done on this activity a few years ago which I daresay horrified people like Prince Charles who are devoted to allowing trees to remain standing, rather than sliced to create a colourful reminder that there will be 40 per cent off everything in store on Boxing Day.
Not Christmas Eve...Boxing Day.
The day when you don't really need anything, and even if you did you're usually strapped for cash after the madness just gone.
It was estimated that the average household (the ones without a "no junk mail" sign on the letterbox) gets about half-a-kilo of them every fortnight.
So that's a kilo a month...12kg a year.
Multiply that by the around 2000 houses that probably get them and that equals 24,000kg.
And that's just one modest-sized city.
Across a whole country of this size that would probably equal maybe the gross tonnage of a small ship.
Buy hey, given that probably about 98 per cent of them get dispatched for recycling it's probably not too much a strain on the pine forests.
Ah yes, here comes December.
For me, 'tis the month of the book or gift voucher as I prepare to plan my extremely modest shopping expeditions.
Expeditions which traditionally are embarked upon around December 23.
No drama.
And hey, some of the big petrol stations are even open on Christmas Day itself so if one has erred in terms of purchasing a gift then a quick drive down to one of them does the trick.
It is always gratifying to see one of the kids tear off the wrapping paper and exclaim "ooh...two packets of biscuits..."
"You can never have enough biscuits," one should firmly reply.
"Or pots of shoe polish."
So the other kid after opening their gift and finding shoe polish remains tacit and mute.
All over town the Christmas sparkles and baubles are on show.
In fact they have been for a great many weeks in a great many cases.
I figure it's kind of like when you have a tree full of sparrows all perched and staring down upon a sprinkling of breadcrumbs.
They are mindful there could be cats about, so it is a waiting game.
But when the first one descends and begins to line its stomach they all start to descend.
The starter's gun has effectively gone off.
The shops seem to do the same.
When the first decorations go up in one shop they begin to start going up everywhere.
And it's usually around late October.
Once upon a time October was a long, long way from Christmas, but in this day and age it is the time to start putting the shopfront decorations up, which is probably rather exciting if one is 7 years old but terrifying when one is of grand-parentage age.
I simply put Christmas off as long as I can, and on Boxing Day I make all sorts of misguided resolutions about "being more prepared" for the next one.
I have been doing that since 1972.
That was the year, in my latter days of teenagehood, that I learned to use a vacuum cleaner properly because mum gave me the task of clearing the carpet of drying pine needles.
The following year we got a plastic tree, but I have retained the traditionalist approach and every year I put my vacuuming skills to work on January 6, because it is equally traditional to send it packing 12 days after Christmas Day.
One must adhere to tradition of course...like not having the first beer of the day until 11am arrives.
However, if one is in charge of roasting the turkey it is 9am.
By 1pm both the turkey and it's culinary creator are, shall we say, quite well done.
And of course being the festive season the usual songs will emerge, but one which seems to slip the net is, in my opinion, one of the very best.
Check out Elton John's delightful 1973 effort titled Ho Ho Ho...Who'd Be a Turkey at Christmas.
Makes you want to get up and baste the beast one more time.