No rest for the wicked on this Friday December sure is a busy time. It seems that every second day there is some sort of event to celebrate having survived the year in one piece. I was rather relieved to learn that a band concert at the Melville Civic Centre for next Monday had been cancelled.
Last night was set aside for the Air Cadets Ball. We don't actually have any children in the
Air Training Corps, even though I was a member when I was a teenager. But we do have a couple of camo-clad beautiful daughters in
Australian Army Cadets and so this has not gone unnoticed by some of the aviators.
The invitations were issued some time ago. Daughter number one was allowed off work yesterday afternoon to prepare for the big night and was ably assisted by the girlfriend of our number-four son. She turned up with her set of ceramic hair curlers and toe-nail makeup. I was going to ask if they could trim my toe nails while they were on the job, but thought better of it.
At about 4pm our daughter emerged from the back building ready to party – and have her photo taken by her old man. She is starting to get better about this. She knows that if she messes up my photographic efforts by being overly uncooperative, the result might go into the blooper section of the annual
Weaver Family News. Traditionally this is compiled by me through the year and is published about Christmas Eve.
I am aware there has been much discussion between the girls on what to wear last night. There is quite a lot of interchanging of clothes between the young women now associated with our family because they are all about the same size - demure. Our daughter has some nice ball gowns of her own, but eventually she settled on a yellow satin number owned by my son's girlfriend.
I was the initial chauffeur. I had to first take my daughter to collect another young woman before a 20 minute drive to a Leeming rendezvous with their air cadet escorts and a group of others. From there they were going in a hired limo to the ball venue, which was at
Observation City on Scarborough beach. The ball was scheduled to finish at midnight and the limo would then return them to Leeming. The parents of the other young woman would then collect the two young women and bring them home. This was a great arrangement because it meant we could actually go to bed. Our daughter came in safely at 1am. It then took me ages to go back to sleep.
She wasn't the only one to come in late. Our plumber sons had a very big job on yesterday. They were commissioning a new Chinese restaurant in a large shopping centre north of the river. These sort of jobs are lucrative, but being in a shopping shopping centre there was very tight scheduling for the various trades. Restaurants have all sorts of highly specialised gas and water requirements. When we went to bed at 10pm the boys were still on the job. I see that their vehicles are now outside, so it is apparent they eventually came home too.
Quite a few of our kids will be pretty tired this morning, but there will be no rest for the wicked. They'll all have to go to work again. Just as I typed this, the ball-belle passed through the front door on her way to work. She paused long enough for us to discover the food was nice last night. Don't actually know what it was, just nice. One of the plumbers has just emerged too.
Our five plumber sons have all been very busy throughout the year. They've built a high reputation for quality workmanship are very much sought after for commercial and domestic jobs. My perk is a nice pile of scrap copper, soon to be converted into a new Nikon SLR camera.
Our sons also have a string of real estate agents. The agents love the boys because they do emergency work promptly for a consistently fair price. Recently one of the agents started engaging someone a bit cheaper and of course was let down with poor service and crappy workmanship. She came back on her knees to ask the boys to sort things out and now is charged a higher price. The unwritten rule is that if you treat reliable plumbers with respect and loyalty; and pay you bill promptly, they will go out of their way look after you. Now in December our boys are flat out. A lot of people want jobs finished in time for Christmas - kitchen renovations especially.
There are the free, but lavish trade parties to attend too. I think there is one on this afternoon. The various plumbing supply companies have refined these to an art form. Sometimes there are some pretty good giveaways. In front of me I have a $50 voucher for
C Restaurant in the Sky. It's the last one of four such freebies handed out to the lads last December. It has to be used by the 22nd so my wife and I will try and do the right thing by it.
© MMVI Paul R. Weaver.
About the writerCheck out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a couple of million words.
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