When Santa Claus Came!

at 5am, the bus deposits me outside Stratford PO after i say goodbye to the nice lady behind me whose mother has just been ill. it's pitch dark, freezing, and no one will be awake until two hours from now. i need to pee badly and find a friendly tree. beth comes to pick me up and by 5.30 im comfy under five layers of bedding, lying down flat for the first time in four days.


The five layers of bedding.

the sun has risen around me and i hear a prating on the stones coming into my little "outhouse". i pretend to be asleep because the draught coming in through the open door isnt terribly inviting. there's the cutest little girl in a tiny fairy dress prancing about my bed with the clock telling me it's actually her alarm clock but her granny took it and put it there on my bedside without her express approval. so i wake up.

this girl is tilly, the five-year-old granddaughter of beth. i walk into the house and there in the kitchen is maggie slicing fruits. ah... fondness. there's another wwoofer, erika from sweden with her. living with them is magy, beth's old mate who used to live up here in singapore. we have brekkie and head out for some gardening, mulching, and spring cleaning, also some fly-waving and nose-choking. lunch is turkish wraps, which reminds me of mum's popiah parties back home, in between visits to the rubbish tip. the work is done for the day and cooking for christmas eve dinner commences. maggie and erika start on their elaborate christmassy dishes while i plot my first pot of chicken curry ever. it's easier to think in bed so i crawl in and think of chicken curry and how nice it would be to have a little nap... maggie comes to wake me up so we take a little walk to the local IGA to get supplies. we catch up a little while and im just so very glad to see her again.





the next few hours are a blur of table-setting and cooking and by that time, everything is ready for the guests and of course i need to shower first to impress. visitors include the police chief, which isnt surprising considering that beth is the mayor. which is very surprising to me. the folks back home would be so proud of my decency. dinner is a righeous stuffing and by the time we're having christmas pudding with custard im almost bent over in pain and dozing off. one of the guests, clare, is a music teacher and reads stories. one of it is a children's books about beth's late-partner jim who was a musician. the other one was Kafka's Soup. twas a little cookbook written in to style of great authors like Pinter, Chaucer and Greene. fantastic, and by that time Tilly had to be tranquilised and dragged to bed in preparation for Santa Claus to come. we didnt need any nudging though, and all trooped to sweet sleep for christmas day tomorrow.