So, Here It Is. Merry Christmas.

Seasons Greetings to you, one and all! Christmas Day is finally upon us, all the way down here in Oz, and what a wonderful day it's been.

It all started last night, really. Tizer was tucked up dreaming of whether reindeer really can fly, we were playing pool and sinking a little too much Shiraz again. Now, it had been our intention to get an early night in anticipation of Santa's arrival, but before we knew it midnight was upon us and it was suddenly Christmas Day! Emboldened by a mixture of Christmas spirit and red wine it seemed like rather a fun idea to text and 'phone all and sundry to wish them all the best that the season has to offer. Of course, it was only lunchtime on Christmas Eve back home, which I think confused one or two people, us included.

I'd downloaded some Christmassy tunes onto Mac, so we stuck these on (Fairlytale of New York, Merry Christmas Everybody and - of course - Merry Christmas Everyone from the one and only 'Shakey') and opened another bottle of wine. All very jolly, but for some reason I seemed to have forgotten how to play pool and Mrs V was trouncing me at game after game. Enough was enough, and bed was a-calling.

We awoke on Christmas morn proper to find Tizer still asleep - at 2 years old she's not yet quite giddy enough to wake us up at some god-awful hour telling us that Santa's been, though I'm sure she'll start with vigour next year. It was warm and sunny, odd for Christmas but far from unpleasant. We roused the recumbent Tizer who quietly accepted a round of toast, before starting to eye the handful of presents Santa Claus had left for her (clever bloke that Santa, finding us half way around the world like that).

In the interests of keeping the weight of our luggage down on our numerous flights, we'd had to put some thought into what presents we could get for Tizer that wouldn't involve us spending a small fortune on excess baggage charges. In fact, Mrs V and I had employed the same train of thought in our presents to each other, and it proved an interesting exercise in relative frugality at a time of year that's normally about over-spend and excess.

All the way from the North Pole, Santa brought Tizer a funky little electronic keyboard, an inflatable kangaroo called Karl, a couple of DVDs and a ballon-animal-making kit. See, all fiendishly lightweight, especially the inflatable items. She was delighted with her haul, bless her, hammering tunelessly at the keyboard and demanding that her mother make dog after mis-shapen dog with the modelling ballons, while all the time clutching Karl jealously under her arm.

Tizer warns Karl that this is going to hurt him an awful lot more than her...

I gave Mrs V a couple of games for her Nintendo DS which, whilst not particularly imaginative presents, were well received and appreciated. Mrs. V, clever girl that she is, got me tickets to see Micheal McIntyre (very funny stand-up) in February, which clearly showed that she'd employed much more thought than me. Wonderful idea though, really looking forward to it.

I played with Tizer whilst Mrs V prepped the turkey and slammed it in the oven, and we spent a thoroughly pleasant family Christmas morning together. Things were spoilt a little by Mrs V's insistence on beating me stupid at a couple of games of pool (I have no idea why on earth I'm suddenly playing so badly), but the emergence of a chilled bottle of white helped to ease my bruised ego.

Weather-wise, whilst dry and warm, it wasn't the wall-to-wall blazing sun, Christmas dinner on the beach affair we'd hoped for. Not that we minded - it was in low 70's, slightly cloudy, bit breezy. Had to be a hell of a lot better than what they were suffering with back home. Speaking of which, I got a 'phone call early in the afternoon from Ian, one of our chums back home. It was the early hours of Christmas morning for them, and as he was clearly blathered and I'd barely touched a drop, it was a strange old conversation and yet again one of those moments where you realise how far away from the UK you really are.

We'd planned for the turkey to be ready mid to late-afternoonish, so decided to go out for a walk to get our appetites up. Well, once out on the street, you could definitely tell it was Christmas Day: kids on new bikes, kids on new skateboards, kids on new roller blades and - this being Oz - hoards of kids with shiny new surfboards tucked under their arms heading for the beach. We followed them down that way, watched a few of them surf, then had a little stroll around the park behind the beach and checked out the kids flying their new kites. I'm sure Australian parents in other parts of the country still buy their children Playstations and X-Boxes for Christmas, but they sure as hell don't in Avalon. It was all very quaint and old-fashioned, and I rather liked it.

Returning to the Beach Retreat for our Christmas dinner we found the familiar scent of turkey and t'all t'trimmings (as we say in Yorkshire) wafting appetisingly around the house. And it was delicious. For Mrs V and I this our first such dinner together, without parents, great aunts etc. We even had a cracker each, which my mum had insisted on us taking away with us. And yes, we wore the hats. Equally cracking was the Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin something-or-other that we drank with dinner - it was a pricey wee number (and would have been even more so back home), but sooo worth it. It was getting dusk outside as we tucked into our Christmas pudding, and just to confuse ourselves I put BBC Radio 2 on over the internet. Well, it was 5am Christmas morning in Radio 2 Land and Roger Royal was playing 'Walking in the Air' as the UK woke up to a day we were already more than half way through. Bizarre; it felt a bit like having two Christmases...

After eating, rather than passing out on the sofa in front of the Bond movie (de rigeuer for many at this time of year) we called on my parents via the webcam. Once again, it being Christmas morning for them, it was like Christmas Day Part 2 for us. Later on my Aunty, cousin and her little boy showed up, all gathered around the webcam and we were able to raise a glass together with a toast to the season (and all that). Terribly clever this technology.

Once Tizer was in bed we cracked open another couple of superb reds, played a little more pool and generally had a truly wonderful night together, the sort of thing we'd never manage to do at Christmas at home. Before we retired we set the Mac up in the garden outside, poured another large glass of wine, lit a cig and called my parents on the webcam again. They'd just finished their lunch and joined us in a glass of wine, chatting away for a good hour or so until we pointed out that it was well into Boxing Day for us and we really should get some sleep.

But not before there was crash of shrubbery and swaying of branches in one of the trees which overhangs the garden. What the devil was it! Maybe the spider we found the other day was just a baby and now the big mamma spider was coming to get us! Peering tentatively up into the tree we saw - well - an animal. I guess there aren't too many times in one's life when one can see a hairy, four-legged, bright-eyed creature, about the size of a small dog, staring at you out of tree without actually being able to say "Oh, look, there's a...". But that's Australia for you. We had to check on the internet and discovered that our garden is home to a potaroo, a marsupial quite common to these parts. So we've called him Paul and have taken some photos of him. Here he is now:

Leaving Paul to his own devices, we carried on for another half hour chatting to my parents, then bid them ta-ta and squeezed in another game of pool before bed (and yes, I lost. Again). A cracking day, and possibly the longest Christmas Day I've ever had. Just a shame we can't do it like this every year.