With temperatures topping 30°C on a daily basis now, sometimes reaching 36°C, it can be easy to forget that Christmas is just around the corner. Luckily there are regular events which act as reminders to keep us on track, like Christmas trees appearing in shopping malls and ordinary houses beginning to look like something out of Las Vegas as that competitive oneupmanship neighbourly light show power play thing kicks off.
Yes, we get that here too.
One such event took place on Friday evening, that being the switching on of the Christmas lights over at King George Square in the city of Brisbane. Of course we went!
The show kicked off at 6:30 pm. but we went to have something to eat first, so we didn’t get there till around 20 minutes to seven. They had a couple of acts on, some Christmas elves, a choir and, of course, Santa.
It was quite busy when we got there and our understanding was that the lights would be turned on at 7:30 pm.
Christmas tree - no lights
One of our party, (it would be unfair at this point to mention specifically that it was my wife) suggested that 50 minutes waiting for the lights to be turned on was too long and wondered if it would be a good idea if we went off to get a drink?
At the time of this suggestion, we were being entertained by one Katie Noonan, Australian songstress, “mother, singer, producer, songwriter, pianist and business woman, this multi award winning and 5 x platinum selling songstress first received widespread praise as the angel-voiced songstress of indie-pop band George and she has since taken audiences on sublime excursions through jazz, pop and classical music” source KatieNoonan.com
But no matter, it was a typically hot evening as you would expect being so close to Christmas, (come on, get used to it!) and a nice cold beer was a very tempting prospect. Forget mulled wine, that’s for Christmas in July. And forget Katie Noonan.
So five minutes later, we found ourselves in the Pig and Whistle enjoying a tipple.
At 7:20 pm. on the dot, we headed back to the square to see the lights being switched on. Except when we got there, we saw this……
World's Biggest Solar Powered Tree
We’d completely missed Santa, the elves, the choir AND the historic moment when the world’s largest solar powered Christmas tree, yes it really is, all 16,000 bulbs of it, was switched on. In London, Oxford Street lights were turned on this year by Jim Carrey who came all the way from the USA. Over at Bath, the lights were turned on this year by Nicholas Cage, again all the way from the USA.
Here in Brisbane, our Christmas lights were turned on by none other than………. the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Campbell Newman, all the way from ……..the town hall about 20 yards behind the tree.
Why did we miss it? Had we got there late?
Clearly not, as you can see from the Town Hall clock, which is also about 20 yards behind a tree. 7:28 pm. isn’t it?
Luckily, the children didn’t seem to mind they’d missed all these things, they had a good time anyway. And as we went from there straight to a party with more children, more fun and games AND swimming (yes, Christmas time is always great for swimming) then they surely did have a good time.
And so did we.
PS. Don’t forget to write to Santa, or you’ll get nothing!
