Heatwave.

If Port Phillip Bay is a clockface, Melbourne lies, smug, maybe even complacent, at twelve o'clock. The suburbs extend to maybe four o'clock and then the vineyards and ti-tree of the Mornington Peninsula begins.

Sometimes I take the road around the coast instead of the inland freeway. It's prettier. After Dromana, it edges past a cliff that reaches right down to the water and sometimes sheds rock. Houses cling impossibly to the cliff, picture windows the size of cinema screens staring vacantly at the stupendous view, the vast blue that sometimes turns grey, sometimes silver. Now we're at six o'clock on the big clockface, where the peninsula narrows to a few kilometres in width, the bay on the inner side and the roaring angry ocean on the other.

Here for a few days, up on the hill in the little beach house with the aganpanthuses grinning stupidly in the sunshine and the ti-tree creaking in the heat.

It's heading towards forty degrees.

*

Christmas was the usual amiable muddle, with siblings and cousins and second cousins and friends and other relations coming and going all day. Somewhere in the middle of the day there was a gargantuan meal that came out of nowhere and went back into nowhere after a few hours. All right, I'll try and remember what there was.

Nephew had pork and beef spinning away merrily on a spit in the back yard by 11 o'clock. By eleven thirty, things were coming along far too quickly. There were too many coals, the spit overheated, the electric motor melted and the pork and beef stopped spinning. After shovelling out half the coals and turning the pit manually for the next hour, nephew turned out the most magnificent pork and beef we've ever had, seared on the outside and pink on the inside.

He also baked fish and potatoes and pumpkin. A niece made a salad involving prawns and fetta amongst other things - magnificent. Mum made a warm salad of chickpeas and spices that she found in a book about the food of the ancient Egyptians. I stole this recipe for Goan Prawn Balchao from deccanheffalump. It was fantastic. Thanks, deccanheffalump. You can use mild chillis if you don't want to blow your guests heads off. I used mild chillis.

Later there was shortbread (T.'s - her mother's genuine Scottish recipe) and a stunning Sicilian festive cake containing pine nuts and dried fruit. And more besides.

*

So, William's first Christmas Day, spent with his cousins Amali and Darcy. They gurgled and slept and awoke in turns through the commotion. Three new little people, barely aware of the world around them and all it holds.

It hasn't been plain sailing for everyone in 2005. A sister's marriage collapsed, her daughter has been sick all year, two nieces separated from their partners, a nephew's business crashed and another sister's country lifestyle faltered and she moved back closer to town. It might have been the lack of running water and power but then again maybe she just missed us. Meanwhile, a brother and his partner are struggling through the latter stages of an immensely frustrating and so far unsuccessful IVF program - while all around them everyone is having babies.

But for one day, everyone was smiles and laughter and all was right with the world.

I guess that's the spirit of Christmas. May it live forever.

And Happy New Year to you all.