Tales of Christmas Past

"I'll make it snow for you. I'll make it snow tomorrow morning!."

There's not a lot you can do to impress city kids these days, and it's even more difficult when those same small people have experienced more of the real world via TV and the Interweb at age 6 than you are ever likely to explore before your final vintage. Still, all you can do is try.

"By the time you come home from town tomorrow morning, the whole vineyard will be covered in snow!"

There was a Christmas past when a need arose for a similar demonstration of control over the mystical elements, a Christmas in which there deserved to be a bit of a spiritual lift. The great days' eve was filled with the sort of conversational game which amounts to somebody putting up a cultural paradigm , and everyone else knocking it clean off its sacrosanct pedestal. You know the sort of thing. " Santa does not exist because I happen to know he is Uncle Roger in disguise, and the nearest he's been to reindeer is Dubbo Zoo." or " If the sleigh really does land on the roof of  the winery, how come we don't all wake up with the noise?"and "What was Rudolph really on when she developed her red nose and what's with the stupid fur-lined suit and second-hand motorcycle boots.?" Nah ne nah ne nah nah!! 

In effect, by the end of the second bottle of Rosewood Rare Topaque, (proving for me at least,there is a god), there seemed no doubt that poor old Nic'd had the flick. Now everybody knows M/S Claus is a part of all of us from time to time and, chimneys and flying pigs aside, she has been a power of strength to desperate small and large children alike, down the depressing ages. Therefore there was, even on nostalgic grounds, a need for balance to be re-established in the debate. Indeed, a sullied reputation needed to be righted, and a righteous use yearned to be made of a redundant bean bag. What do we want?... "to save Santa!' When do we want it?..."Now!",.. more or less. It was time for Santa's little helpers to strike back!

Early next morning, before the aforementioned very fine Rutherglen tokay had allowed those vocal souls of the previous night so recently uncorked to re-enter the fantasy and privilege of another glorious day at Bloodwood, a terrible plot was hatched. An impressive trail of pristine deer poo, courtesy of the carefully spilled contents of a slashed bean bag, cometed away beyond the Cabernet vineyard and disappeared down stage right into the breaking dawn. As the dreary, bleary slum of over-hung Christmas eve cynics one-eyed the break of this special day, both barrels of the 12 gauge shotgun, in uncomfortable proximity to the tin walls of the shed,  mortared the cowering dawn.

"Get back in your own backyard, you discredited cross-dressing old hippie bastard, and take those poncy bloody velvet-eared sheep with you, they're stripping the Yellow Box trees."

Well, you could have heard a cork float.

Children of all ages, (mostly post-war), hushed in disbelief. "He's shot Santa. He's bloody shot Sandra Claus !!". That bearded kindly person, so lately a figure of conjecture and cynicism, of mock and ridicule: neigh doubt and disdain,  had suddenly re assumed his substantial corporeal proportions, and there was the trail of synthetic reindeer poo stretching to the horizon to prove it.

And was the whole vineyard covered in snow when the city cousins returned from the Boxing Day sales the next day? You bet your best bean bag it was. Rhonda and I are becoming a dab hands at liming vineyards these days, and as these particular city folk know what's going on in the real world by watching all the weather on T.V., they'll never know the difference.

Nothing ever changes in the worlds we invent..without a little bit of help!