December December

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Another Christmas has come and gone. This one was a beaut, with much consumption of appropriate culinary and vinous fare, but also much toil and sweat, chiefly involving preparations for, and participation in entertaining, as well as numerous traditional table tennis tournaments - we have a nice outdoor arrangement of BBQ, table tennis and swimming pool which makes for a very pleasant way to pass those long summer evenings.

Somehow Mrs MLCM didn't get the message about me cutting down on the alcohol in the coming year, and she bought me a rather nice dozen bottles of fine South Australian shiraz, although she pointed out that it would require ten years in the cellar to peak, so it's a kind of present elect, awaiting maturation.

Speaking of cellars, ours was badly in need of cleaning and sorting (the cleaning on account of a slight mishap with the racking of a recently fermented batch of beer), and that's where I was when Shane Warne took his 700th test wicket during the Melbourne test match. Fortunately I had taken the old, nay antique black and white portable telly into the cellar, where to my great surprise we discovered fabulous TV reception and so watched the great event unfold in between updating the wine cellar database and cleaning up the home brew mess. One to remember I suspect...

But this year's festive gorge-fest has also been tempered with some physical labour (mostly cleaning, but also a fair amount of table tennis and even some hill climbs) which has stopped the middle-age spread from swelling quite so much. But I did have one or two "farewell" flings, the last one yesterday rather incongruously being a tremendous slab of baked cherry cheesecake which I ate in a German patisserie in the Barossa wine region run by a Thai family who also do Thai take-away! So with your apfel kuchen, you can also order a Thai green curry and a glass of shiraz if you wish. I settled for the cherry cheesecake and a coffee, the wonderful taste somewhat tempered by the knowledge that the coming year will be bereft of such luxuries

Now, down here it is only a few hours from the New Year, but my celebrations are all over as my reward for taking the last two weeks off work is to start back on New Year's Day at 6 a.m. Therefore, an earlyish grogless night is in order

Oh well, they tell me someone has to do it. I'm not convinced, but hey, that's life all over I guess.

Anyway, hope you all have a great New Year and I'll catch you in 2007.

MLC Man.