Christmas in Adelaide in 2008 The Return of the Native (3)

December 2008 Christmas in Adelaide.

Prior to my imminent departure for Abu Dhabi in order to earn the petrodollars to remit to Adelaide I spend my first Christmas there with the family.....

Dec 12, 2008

Yeah, well we Nixons are always ‘up for it!’ as they say in Australia.

Up for what ? A fight of course!

Been here for 12 days now and things were all going very well as far as the “home” or “Unit” was concerned –or so I thought.

The Magill Unit or headquarters (HQ) for short is the little two bedroomed dwelling –a creation of the commercial world-the place in Magill Road we are currently living in. At the moment there are four of us here: M, yours truly, J, and S. All in one small living area with a tiny kitchen at the end and two match-box size bedrooms.

The sleeping arrangements have been complicated by the fact that as usual half the family is sick for Christmas. For as long as I can remember sickness has seemed to stalk us at Christmas –within the last decade I can’t remember a single holiday in Brunei where we were not stricken-except perhaps the Bali holiday when R had to leave Cornell for the first time on Medical leave.

J started feeling sick the day I arrived and has basically been going to bed at 2am and up at three pm. This is her routine when she’s sick. This isn’t much different from her normal routine except that at night she coughs every twenty seconds making sure that anyone else near her (S at present ) can’t sleep! So S moved out into the dining room on a mattress.

Meanwhile, in the other bedroom M had the nice new “Foley” bed and I had mattresses. But this was no good as my snoring kept M awake. I moved over on and slept on my side but I seemed to keep rolling back on to my back after a while and on to my back. Eventually, I started to snore again.

After a couple of nights J had had no sleep , and neither had M or S because the mattress hurt S’s back.

I slept soundly for the first few nights.

After a few nights J had to go to hospital only to be told her cold was viral and they could do nothing for her. J decided she could no longer sleep when she was not coughing- because S had been infected by her cold and he was now coughing , snorting and grunting in the lounge all night! She said it kept her awake even through the bedroom wall.

At this point I decided to enlist the help of S in an effort to get M some sleep. We agreed M would sleep with J the next night because of my snoring.

But that night M had also spent a sleepless night because of J’s coughing-which was apparently worse than my snoring!

Earplugs were tried by all except S who appeared to be able to sleep through most things including his own snoring. But they were of little use to us.


The new arrangements did not solve the problem as the teenagers insisted on going to bed in the middle of the night and waking M up and then lounging about the house all day coughing and spluttering at the television. After the next night M had still had not got much sleep and ended up back in my room but still complaining about my snoring. I thought she had left my room because of that. Back to Square one.

Through all of this of course we also had to deal with the snoring of the neighbour through the walls.

By this time I was thoroughly fed up with everybody nobody seemed to be appreciating my efforts to solve the problem


The next morning M complained about the teenagers going to bed late and we had a huge row which with ended up with me going for a three hour bicycle ride.

Next day M changed tack completely (but not perhaps surprisingly) by saying that the everyone, including herself were fed up with 'Yours Truly!'

Apparently, I was getting annoyed unnecessarily.

It is true I try to organise people and things and lack patience when people can't see what appears to me to be perfectly obvious!

But good intentions are not nearly enough

As we all know the the pathway to hell is paved with them

It was déjà vu.

It seemed to me that the problem was caused partially by a lack of mutual consideration for each other, exacerbated by the unfortunate circumstance of the small dwelling and universal sickness.

But I was wrong. Apparently it was really me all the time.

Silly old me!

It is a crisis...


From then on I start walking on eggshells….



Visit to the F’s on 30 December 2008.

So yeah, we are invited by A and P to a coffee in between their lunch and other commitments..

We are delighted.


I value their friendship more than oxygen. But they don’t know it.

I want them to be there for my lot when I go the desert.

Am I using them?

Mightily probably. .

But yes, it would be nice to be higher up in the pecking order….

What right have we outsiders to expect anything other than this?

None of course–it is the classic ‘Anglo culture’. Adelaide may be pretty–but it is definitely Anglo….


It is such a relief to meet people like the F's who want to talk as a group together!

They all sit at a table and EVERYONE is allowed to contribute! How about that? How long is it since we’ve done that?

Twenty years? Probably more….

Not just bilateral or trilateral gossip discussions……It reminds me of Mexico or Colombia or even my youth in Ireland . It reminds me of heaven…

And I sit there –like an awkward teenager –saying nothing.

I think to myself. What have we done wrong? Why is everyone so unhappy?


And then I think …Well, I’m off to live with the Bedouins…I won’t see them all for six months… I won’t even be part of their life?

Will I survive for six months?

‘Fifty fifty’ I’d say.