Our display of outdoor lights this Christmas was, at first, abysmal. The Man of the House would not put them up until the last minute; he had just begun to untangle them when a son-in-law arrived, and insisted on helping.
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Between the two of them they strung up loops along the verandah, on shrubs in the garden, and as far as they could manage on the gum tree out the front.
Only half a strand appeared to work, and that was the one climbing the gum tree.
That was it, until our son from Canberra arrived, complete with another four sets of lights, surveyed our pathetic attempts, and set to work.
Come Christmas Eve, and a fresh influx of family complete with a terrible twosome of eight year olds boys, who seemed intent on murdering each other and the dogs, thundering through the house, terrorising their little sisters, destroying the garden and generally creating mayhem, many more lights were up but we had not seen the full effect once evening fell.
It seemed our visitors might not see them either.
After an episode that involved threatening each other with large gum limbs they had torn off, the boys were told that their mothers were calling up Santa on their mobile phones and cancelling the delivery of presents this year.
Their Grandmother said as far as she was concerned, they could have a lump of coal in their Christmas stockings.
Then, one by one, the lights began to come out.
The full effect of the light show our son had created was working its effect. The boys calmed down, and, with a little prompting from their parents, apologised for their bad behaviour, both to us and to the dogs.
The lights had worked their magic.
- Anna Buck
